After hitting up the Dr. Seuss birthday party last weekend, MacKenzie, Aviean and I grabbed some lunch from Chick-Fil-A and headed to a nearby park to have a picnic and spend a few hours playing since the sun was finally beginning to show its face in our town.  My friend Perry joined us and, after the girls thoroughly wore him out on the jungle gym, he and I sat on my blanket watching them play and talked about life for a bit between each of us repeatedly telling Aviean to stay out of the creek.

On our way home from the park, I suddenly felt like I was in the mood to cook.  I sent a text out to my college girls and it turned out that several of them didn’t have dinner plans, so dinner was on at my house!  MacKenzie and Aviean absolutely love my college girls, so they were very happy to have a house full of them and you should know by now that I’m always happy to have a house full of them.

After we ate dinner, we played a bit of Wii before I made myself go back into the kitchen to face the task ahead of me: baking a whole lot of muffins.  You see, I work with a woman who is currently in the process of adopting a daughter from the Philippines. She and her husband recently went to the Immigration office to apply for approval and were told that it would take around three months for the approval to be granted.  Although they didn’t want to wait that long, they were also thankful for the time because they needed to use the time to save up the $900.00 needed to submit their dossier to the Philippines.

You can imagine how surprised we all were when Immigration sent their approval immediately after they applied!  This, of course, meant that as soon as they had the $900.00 in hand, they could send their paperwork overseas.  I immediately rounded up my office student workers and we came up with the idea of doing a bake sale for donations.  I emailed a bunch of staff members and faculty from the University and, to make a long story short, by Friday afternoon I found myself with orders for 15 dozen muffins and 15 dozen brownies to be delivered on Monday morning.

Um, oops?

Another coworker of mine immediately offered to bake some of the muffins, so that left me with only eight dozen muffins and 15 dozen brownies to bake.  I dutifully went to Sam’s to buy the mixes, eggs, etc. and, as I was leaving, I saw a woman carrying a tray of pre-made brownies straight from the bakery section.  I immediately wanted to exchange my many boxes of brownie mix for pre-made brownies but decided that, no, I would make those brownies from scratch because I am every woman!

As it turns out, however, I am not every woman.  I am a woman who can handle two little girls, two puppies, go to a Dr. Seuss birthday party, spend a few hours at the park, cook dinner for my college girls, bake eight dozen muffins, attend church, etc. all in one weekend whilst still recovering from mono (oh yes, it is still here).  But I cannot, on top of all of that, bake 15 dozen brownies.

Thankfully, Sam’s Club was ready to come to my rescue.

That’s right: on Sunday afternoon, I took the walk of shame to the service desk at Sam’s Club and exchanged my boxes of brownie mix for eight containers of pre-made brownies that could be simply cut (thank you, college girl Anna!) and delivered.

On Monday morning, Anna came to my house and helped pack up the 15 dozen muffins (thank you, college girl Kimberly for helping me bake on Saturday night!) and 15 dozen brownies and, before long, we were off to make deliveries!  Anna and I delivered muffins and brownies for several hours and I’m happy to tell you that we raised the entire $900.00 dossier fee for the McMullin family just from a few hundred homemade muffins and store-bought brownies.  I loved being able to do something practical to help and I was so glad that MacKenzie and Aviean got to “help” me during the weekend as I’m trying to instill the value of caring for others early on in their little hearts.

Of course, I also instilled the value of purchasing pre-made brownies instead of baking your own but all I have to say about that is that sometimes it’s good to learn early on in life that there’s nothing wrong with a few pre-made brownies.