Screw you Ticketma$ter!

Seriously? I wanted to take Connor & Logan to see Walking with the Dinosaurs in a couple weeks and looked to see what the best seats were that were still available thinking that something like that really will only be enjoyable up close. I'm willing to pay for a good seat but I am not, I repeat AM FU#*%NG NOT willing to pay the Ticketmaster fees to get them.

Walking with Dinosaurs - The Arena Spectacular Conseco Fieldhouse, Indianapolis, INFri, Jul 10, 2009 07:00 PM
Review Your Order
Tickets (Walking with Dinosaurs - The Arena Spectacular)
Full Price Ticket
US $59.50 x 4
Total Convenience Charge(s)
US $11.50 x 4
Order Processing Charge(s)
US $5.35
Standard Mail
No Charge
TOTAL CHARGES
US $289.35

$11.50 per ticket for Convenience? What is convenient about this other than getting raped via internet instead of in a dark alley? That's 11.50*4 = $46, yes I can do math, seriously? FOR WHAT?!? Then a $5.35 processing charge for them to pay minimum wage to some poor soul who takes them off the printer, folds up a piece of paper and licks an envelope? That may even be automated. But, how kind of them not to charge me for the $.44 stamp to mail it to me.

Well, thanks a lot Ticketmaster for ruining the prospect of a lovely memory for my children. Glad I was able to fight off your attempts to rob me blind. Have a great F*(%NG day.

What a great weekend. Friday night our dear friend Jessica came over and hung out. She is home from vacation so we had missed her. We ate pizza, watched What Not To Wear and chatted. THen my mom arrived from South Carolina and hung out a bit before we all went to bed. Saturday morning we got up and took Logan for his first T-Ball game. Grant had been his soccer coach for the last two seasons but wasn't going to to coach T-Ball after the challenging group of kids he had in this last soccer season. The coach of our T-Ball team has older kids but volunteered to coach our team when the YMCA didn't have enough coaches. He had an overlap with his other team and asked Grant to coach. Being the wonderful dad that he is he agreed. It was really fun. The kids were so stinkin' cute in their little hats and like five would converge on the ball every time it was hit resulting in kids falling, Logan getting a couple cleats to the shin, etc. Quite fun to watch. Logan was a great base runner and had fun. He said he likes it better than soccer (a boy after his papaw's heart) but he still wants to play soccer again this fall.


My mom and I took the boys to the mall for lunch while Grant















had to run into work for a minute. Then we came home and tried to get them to rest with no luck. We got the house and backyard ready for the Happy 30th to me BBQ. We were supposed to go to my friend Jenn's son's 2nd birthday party too but Connor finally fell asleep for a nap at 3:30 so we were sad to have missed that. Almost all of my favorite people - friends, family, neighbors, came to the party. Coop brought his Badminton set and it's always fun to watch tipsy people play sports. Grant grilled a bunch of brats and hot dogs.
















Frantz, our favorite Haitian, brought Jamaican Patties. They are my favorite little treat so thanks Frante! :)

Logan and Connor helped me blow out my candles and they put the first strawberry of the season from our garden on my cake. It was very sweet. I would have to say that this was my favorite birthday every. Viva la thirty! :)

Tweet tweet! (NOT a twitter post)

Just thought you might like an update on the birdies. It's been just over a week and they grew and changed every day! First they became less transparent and then the quills from their feathers started to immerge. Pretty cool to see the dark grey sticks coming thru. Now they look all grey and feathery. Enjoy!

HAPPY

MOMS

DAY!

We had a great weekend celebrating mom's day! My amazing hubby made me Banana Chocolate Chip waffles for breakfast (my favorite). Then when he asked what I wanted to do we decided to plant our vegetable garden.

We have cucumbers, green peppers, hot banana peppers, cherry tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, zucchini, strawberries, and romaine lettuce. The middle two pots are our herb gardens. We have cilantro, oregano, sweet basil, and rosemary. I also planted some marigolds in flower boxes to help deter the bugs.

Later the boys played with our neighbor friends and their kids while we did some yard stuff, etc. Well, Connor got a boo-boo and needed his daddy so Grant ran to the back corner of the yard to jump the fence and stumbled upon a birds nest on our little fence post! There were three BRAND NEW baby robins in the nest. sooooooooo neat! I'm ridiculous and dug up an earthworm to try and feed them. I kind of forgot the whole meaning of "momma bird-baby bird" and Grant reminded me that unless I chewed up the worm and spit it in their mouths they were too little to eat the giant worm I was dangling over them. This morning before we left for work both mommy and daddy robin were hanging out at the next. Mom was sitting with the birds and dad brought some food for them. Very neat!

Kindergarten time

So, I have officially registered my little five year old for Kindergarten. Eeek! My hubby and I grew up in very different worlds, he the son of educators/coach in Oklahoma, me the accidental daughter of a transient single mom in Indiana, NYC, LA, and eventually back to the Midwest south of Indianapolis where we both live now. His mom was a teacher and took him to school everyday. I lived in the Valley outside of LA and took a taxi cab to my kindergarten days because our neighborhood didn't have a bus system. The kids in our neighborhood paid $.50 a day and a cab driver took us to school. I was in the after school program which meant I ran around the playground for a couple hours after school until my mom picked me up. The principal put a tray out every afternoon with boxes of raisins so we could have a snack.

I assumed Logan would ride the bus to school and one of us would be home when he got home or we'd do the after school program for him until we could pick up. The after school program is structured, ran by the YMCA, they do crafts and stuff so not as unorganized as what I had. Grant assumed we would take and pickup. Then a busdriver in our school district got arrested for drunk driving with a busload of students in his care and was of course fired but made me think twice about the bus thing. Our plan is to take and pick up and we're checking in with a neighbor who has a 1st grader in the same school to see if some carpooling can be arranged.

I'll be thirty in a few months, I'm a soccer mom, I have a wonderfully bright and funny kindergartener and an equally silly and adorable preschooler. I don't know how I got here but I like it...

The Familyhood of the Traveling Kite

So Thursday mid-afternoon we get a call from the daycare that Connor had a low-grade fever. They gave him some Tylenol and we picked him up early. I took a sick day Friday which I never do to stay home with Connor. Grant went with Logan's preschool class from 9 to noon to the circus and then they came home and joined us. Connor went back and forth from wanting to play to wanting to snuggle and be sniffly. I woke up Saturday morning feeling like death. My throat felt like it was full of jagged glass and I ran a fever of just over 100' all day. Grant is the best hubby in the world and he took good care of me and made me stay in bed so as not to infect the two of them that hadn't been hit hard by this. He took the boys downtown to his favorite indie record store, Luna, hit the Starbucks down there and then let the boys play in the grassy area near some outdoor art exhibits. Then came home and gave them lunch. After lunch he decided to try and fly the wicked cool kite we bought on our trip to Mackinac last fall at:






He's tried multiple times to fly it but each time the wind dies down as soon as he gets out there. This time however the wind was boisterous. So much so that at one point the kite started zooming away and the string burnt a large red mark into the flesh of Grant's left hand causing him to let go for a second and the kite escaped. it ended up catching on something about a half mile away and was still flying for about five or six hours on it's own. We could see it from our backyard and walked over underneath where it was but there were a lot of trees, it was dusk, and we couldn't find where it was caught. We came home and Grant was chatting with two of the neighbors whose backyards meet ours and they had noticed a cool kite flying for hours and he told them the story. Before bed we all checked again and the kite had disappeared. We assumed the string broke and it continued it's adventure. Logan suggested another "expedition" so we ran across the street aways again and had no luck.

This morning, we all decided to go to Target for the weekly grocery run. (Normally I go by myself but I'm still sickly and they wanted out of the house too.) We kept our eyes peeled on the tree lines, the neighborhood behind ours and the cornfields next to that. I thought I saw the kite but decided it was a Halloween windsock. We drove towards Target and I asked Grant what colors were in the tail of the kite. He said it was black, white, and a tie-dyed pink/orange color. "CRAP!" I said, I bet that was our kite! After getting groceries we drove down the long driveway where I saw said windsock and low and behold, it was our kite. I retrieved it from a tree, careful to make sure it wasn't attached to the power line nearby, and pulled as hard as I could with a branch wrapped around the string and couldn't get the handle/string loose. So, I had to cut the string off the kite but the kite, though slightly marred from it's overnight journey, is in good shape. She'll fly again I say, she'll fly again...

Seriously?

I like Lane Bryant bras. I'm what one could consider a "plus-size" woman. I can wear some clothes, tops, sweaters, from "normal" stores but have a little too much junk in my trunk, badunk in my badunkadunk, juice in my juicy double, cushin' for the pushin', shizzle in my badizzle, plump in my lump, shake in my milkshake, etc. to wear pants in "normal" stores. Plus, when my hips spread from having two babies that nixed sizes that don't have a W next to them. Anywho, I digress, I like Lane Bryant bras. They wash well, hold up well, are very comfortable, accentuate the cleavage area I enjoy and come in a lovely variety of colors. I saw online that they were having a buy two get two free sale, that's a hell of a deal so I ordered four new bras - pink, black, ocean blue and a fun polka dot patterned one. Upon completing my order I get to the confirmation and these are the ads at the bottom:

Seriously? Figi's cinnamon buns? I get the other two plus stores and the shoes but advertising for what likely got most of us into the plus sizes isn't very cool. I can imagine an advertising exec pitching this idea to the Figi's people. Since more than 50% of women in the US are in the "plus" category chances are a couple bigger gals were in the room. Was he uncomfortable talking about how fat people like sweet goods? Were they embarassed? Was he? Just made me laugh but also kind of want to punch someone. Have a great day all!