Here's a great idea:

If you a pregnant and emotional....watch a tear-jerking-chic-flick! Okay, maybe not a great idea. It was a good movie though.

Here's some make up blogging to make up for what I haven't blogged. We will be moving in a week. To a small apartment. We are hoping to have a down payment for our very own house in six months. In good news, this apartment complex that we are moving to has a swimming pool and a play ground. In bad news, well, it's an apartment. small apartment. Did I mention I am so tired of small apartments. The last 8 months have been a nice break. It is for the greater good though.

Here's a picture of our meatloaf. I found the idea to use cookie cutters to shape meatloaf. D thought it was great. Both kids ate meatloaf for possibly the first time ever without fighting about it. D called them cookies. Seriously, if someone gave me a cookie that tasted like meatloaf I would not be excited.
Before cooking:

After cooking: (cook's notes -- do not over cook...)

I love my kids but they make me crazy. Perhaps I have mentioned this before?

D is only 50 quarters away from his Wall-E truck. He's got a chart on the wall where he can earn quarters for doing jobs. Right now he is working towards a Wall-E truck to go with his Wall-E and EVE toys. It is a $60 toy. Roy took pity on the poor kid and decided that if D earned $20 we'd pay the rest. This seemed like a good idea so he could get the toy before he was 12. D's actually earning more like $26 and we're teaching him about tithing along the way. Ever 10th quarter goes in his tithing bank. He's such a good kid.

K isn't earning quarters. It's too advanced for this one year old. Baby #3 is doing fine by all accounts. She's an active little thing. Usually that's okay and reassuring. Sometimes its down right inconsiderate. It's like she doesn't even think about the fact that she's inside my body! Oh well.

Well, time for me to go find something else to do instead of packing/planning of the move.

I hate Qwest.

I wasn't going to blog about this again because, really, you all don't care. But I'm pretty worked up and find this to be an appropriate outlet in a way that yelling at my children isn't.

I didn't tell you that I finally talked to someone helpful and nice. We communicated, he took care of the problem. He told me that my final bill would be "$82 and some change." I verified at least THREE times that this replaces the old $197 charge. This $82 would be all that I owe period. Yes, yes, yes. So no more $197? No cancellations fee? Yes. Yes. Are you sure? Yes. I should get my bill in 10-14 days (ish). When I hung up the phone, I was hopefully skeptical. I even told Roy, we'll see what comes in 10-14 days. Here's what came: NOTHING.

I did receive notice in my ebills that I had a Qwest bill of $411 due. However, since I had cancelled my service, the Qwest site would no longer allow me to access my bill. I waited 4 days to give them a chance to send a paper bill before calling to request a statement be mailed to me.

Today we get the mail. Still no Qwest bill buuuuuuuuutttt..... A STATEMENT FROM A COLLECTION AGENCY!!!!

I HATE THIS STUPID COMPANY!!!!! Apparently no one knows what is going on at this place. As my DH would say, they couldn't find their b*tt with both hands! I have yet to call Qwest, but you can bet I will. Not that I really expect it to do any good. I'll either get someone who can't/won't help me or someone who will 'help me' but really do nothing.

P.S. I love being married to a lawyer.

It was Roy's birthday.

That was Monday. Here is the blog about it. I never did get around to the one about going to Seattle. I still may do the one about some new recipes I've tried. We'll see.
Anyway, the birthday.
D LOVES birthdays. He came in at 2:30 am Monday to notify me that the CD he'd gotten from the library had a birthday song on it. At 3:30 am he bounded in bubbling about how we could sing it for daddy's birthday and who knows what else. (I'm not a very good listener at that time of day.)
Finally, it was really morning. Roy was ready for work but before he could leave we-of course- had to listen to the song. It is pretty catchy. Plus it is really fun to watch D sitting in his little chair, foot bouncing along to the music following the words.
During the day the kids and I went on a quest to find the traditional ice cream cake. It should have been easier that it was. D was waiting in the car for me by 9:30am. At 10, we go by Baskin Robbins -- they don't open until 11. We had some other errands to run. We stopped by Safeway where we picked up some Captain Crunch (5 boxes for $.99 each!). Roy's fave is the peanut butter stuff. We headed to Goodwill to browse around. D found a game he wanted ($3 brand new!). Finally, it was 11 and we headed to BR again. They didn't have what we wanted so I figured 'no big deal, we'll go to Dairy Queen'.
Bigger deal that I thought. After driving 10 minutes to the nearest DQ only to find it waaaaay old school. No dining room. No drive up. Park car, walk to window, order food, wait in cold for said food, go back to car and drive home. I didn't even get out to inquire about cakes. We just went back to BR but a different store with more cake varieties.
Home to get dinner ready. We wrapped 3 boxes of PB Captain Crunch and the game D found at Goodwill in old grocery store ads. Since dinner was taking a while and Roy got home early we sang Happy Birthday and opened presents. Two games of Horton Hears a Who later we ate dinner, sang Happy Birthday again and enjoyed cake.
Good times.