I'm so frustrated.

Seriously. How hard could it possibly be to be a customer service business in this day of computers?! ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS ENTER MY INFORMATION IN CORRECTLY!!!! I am so sick of the mistakes these businesses make.
Take for example the illustrious company of Qwest. Spirit of Service. (If I were of a lesser vocabulary there would be some expletives right here.) Six months ago we moved. I spent no less than AN HOUR on the phone with a Qwest Rep to get my service moved and add a phone line. AN HOUR!!! Only to find out several days later when my service was suppose to start that my bumbling rep had NOT ENTER A SINGLE THING INTO THE COMPUTER AND THAT TIME WAS ESSENTIALLY WASTED!!! Good thing I had absolutely nothing else to do with my time, huh. So I spent another oh so expeditious phone call with Qwest so that I could have service. I have been paying my bill faithfully for the past five months until I get this bill. My "price for life" bill: $41.41 is $194.27 today. Yup. Super. Let me just go out back to my money tree and I'll get that right in the mail. So I call Qwest. Naturally. The ever helpful rep points out that I haven't been paying for my internet for these past 6 months. (THEN WHY WAS MY BILL $40?! I HAVE THE CHEAPEST PHONE LINE EVER!!!) I should be grateful that Qwest is only going to charge me for the last 3 months instead of the last 6. Oh yes. Thank you for your generous service. I mean, truly, I should totally have to pay for your mistake. HOW HARD IS IT TO GET THIS STUFF RIGHT???!!!!!!
I was very polite on the phone. I didn't raise my voice or say anything nasty. Actually I hung up rather quickly but not rudely. I think I even said, "you too" when she wished me to have a nice day.
Or, how about another example of KP. I HATE INSURANCE. I think I said that before. I had to request 3 times (!) to get our membership cards sent. Really. They missed billing us for the first month so we had to fork out over $1,000 the next month to pay our premium. WE STILL HAVEN'T RECEIVED A MEMBERSHIP BOOKLET EXPLAINING OUR BENEFITS (Yes, I've asked.) I've called three times about charges from November that they assure me are incorrect (they are) and each time the answer has been "Well, yes, I see it here in the computer..."
I could talk about the $164 Verizon bill or the other KP bill for Lab work that I didn't even have to have. HOW DO SOME OF THESE COMPANIES STAY IN BUSINESS? Oh, because idiots like me keep sending them money.
Anyway, I have to go water my money tree so that it will eak out a few more hundreds. Really, I should have planted the thousand money tree. What was I thinking?!

Ta-Da

What do you think? I finally updated!!

RS fanclubs and a product review

I am not in the fan club for the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer. I heard about the series nearly two years ago. For what ever reason - even though I enjoy reading fictional series - these books never really caught my interest. I looked at checking them out from the library a time or two just to see what the hype was but they were never available and I never bothered to put a hold on them. Anyway, now they are even more big time than ever. I've heard/read more than I ever cared to know about them. This has actually caused my interest in them to disappear entirely. So I can not contribute intelligibly into a Twilight conversation.
I am, however, securely in the Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen fan club (figurately speaking). I have looooooong been a fan of Pride and Prejudice - and several other Austen books- but now I have completed the orientation by watching the entire 6 hour BBC miniseries. *Sigh* Colin Firth.....
Really.
I have owned and viewed the newer P&P with Kiera Knightley many times. I think the miniseries and 2005 movie were done very well. Both times I start out thinking, "Seriously, they cast that man as the attractive Mr. Darcy?" But by the end of the movie I find myself thinking, "WOW! That Darcy is quite an attractive fellow."
Anyway, just thought you all should know where I stand on these two issues. Because whenever I am talking with a couple of LDS women there are two things sure to start conversation: Twilight and Pride and Prejudice the BBC Miniseries.

Product Review:
Elmer's Squeeze and Brush
(If I knew how to get a picture off the internet and put it on my blog it would be here...)
I have a 4-year-old who likes to paint. Alot. So when I saw these I thought I'd give them a try. The idea is that the paint is inside the brush, kind of like a marker. You just give it a little squeeze to get the paint out to the brush and begin painting.
It works. Unless you are trying to create the next Van Gogh. But if you are 4 and really only care about smearing as much paint around the paper as possible, it totally works. Also, the paint is washable (OR IT WOULDN'T BE IN MY HOUSE) so clean up is pretty easy. Oh yeah, and it's non-toxic if the 18 month old eats it she won't die. Just trust me on this.
Because a 4 year old and 18 month old were the testers, all five paint brushes ended up painting mostly a sickly brown by the time they were done. The brushes totally washed out and because the paint is inside the tubes above the brushes it actually stayed the original color. So even though the yellow was NOT painting yellow by the end of the event, it will paint yellow the next time we try (at least for a little while...)
So, if you are looking for a painting option, I say: Give it a try.

I'm back!

Back from blog-cation/real vacation. I suppose I should say it's good to be home... I mean really, what could be better than being back in your own house with your own kids and no one else to clean, cook and watch the kiddo's but you. *sigh* Too bad grandma lives so far away.

So Christmas was good. (Argh! My feet are asleep!! I hate the painful tingyness!!!)

Here's our little shephard with the 'baby Jesus' he arranged all by himself. It really was adorable watching how excited D was for a little family reinactment.

The gift opening frenzy. It really wasn't too frenzyish. Pretty laid back actually. K was mostly interested in her new bike and anything that resembled candy. D just wanted to open presents. Any presents. Didn't matter if they were his or not.

A few days later the kids and I flew to SLC for a 2 week foray into the lives of Grandparents. The flight was, erm, unpleasant. Between being anxious, not sleeping for three nights before because of a sick kid and pregnant it was most memorable in the not good way. But we made it. As one stewardess said when I told her I was prenant (no, I do not have the flu), "Oh, God bless you." And he did.

Here's a futile attempt at taking cousin pictures. BTW, anyone else who participated in taking pictures at that occasion, please email me the results. Please let them be better than mine.

Me to my mom: "If we could just get all four kids awake, happy, looking cute and holding still we could get maybe 12 good pictures for Grandpa's calendar."

Us together: "hahaBwahahahahahahaha*gasp*gasp*Bwahahaha"

It was a fun filled time in which we visited Grandma and Grandpa Bishop, Jones and Pyatt. We got to spend time will Uncle Rick and Justin as well as James, Mel and their kids. D got to go sledding (behind a 4-wheeler, so cool). I helped mom clean the 'playroom'/storage of junk room. But I promised I wouldn't talk about how you couldn't walk through it to get to the bedrooms on the other side because of the mountains of stuff (including the needlepoint for 'someday' and way more computer junk than any home should have to deal with). So I won't tell you about that.

Fortunately the trip home was much better. I was well rested, not sick or nearly as anxious (still pregnant with two small kids though). We also weren't late and didn't have to run at top speed through the airport. Which is good because we were a loooooooong way from our airplane. Even when we went through our gate, it didn't take us to our airplane! We still had to walk down a hall to get to another hall that lead to another hall that took us to the door leading out to the tarmac where our airplane was waiting for us to climb the stairs. Eh, we fly el cheap-o.

Well folks, that is a disjointed rehashing of the last month. Happy New Year to all and to all a good night.

Not dreaming anymore...

I was feeling jealous of Spokane and the awesome amount of snow they received. I was also mocking the 24 hour news coverage of our piddly storm.
Here's our "really, really deep" snow as one wizened newscaster described it.

Here we are sledding on our meager snow offering. Both kids loved it by the way. K would scream and squeal everytime she went down the hill. At the bottom D would say, "Let's do it again!"

Anyway, about the jealousy thing, ask and ye shall receive as the saying goes.

What I want to know is if that was "really, really deep" snow then what is this?

We probably ended up with just over a foot of snow. Which I realize is no where near as much as some places but way better than what we had. Incidentally, after the snow we had a freezing rain so there was about 1/2 an inch of ice over the snow. You can kind of tell in the picture of D's legs. He was having lots of fun breaking the ice and throwing big chunks at the garage to break apart.

Also, since snow is not very common for these here parts, the city/county doesn't really have much by way of plows. We went for a drive through downtown yesterday (everything was closed and church was cancelled but WE had to try out our chains...) and there was not a snowplow in sight. We did see a front-end loader pushing snow off the roads though.

In other news, look what I did!!!

That's right, I made stocking this year for our entire family. They are really big, which I didn't exactly plan but since I can barely follow a pattern I wasn't about to go and change it. Too bad I will be behind next year. Sigh. I still have the pattern. Really, I should have just done five to begin with.

Merry Christmas All!

Another 'journal' that I don't write in.

I looked and realized that it is now mid December and I haven't posted in weeks. It isn't that I don't think about posting. I just don't actually get around to it.
Anyway, for those of you who don't know (which is probably less of you than I realized {Rick}) we are expecting our #3 baby sometime next July. D is through the roof excited. He KNOWS it is going to be a boy and keeps asking me if the baby is big enough to find out yet. Um, no. K has no idea and just enjoys being the baby for another 6 months.
Another exciting thing -- K is almost 18 months old. You know what that means, 2 more Sundays before we are officially in Nursery!!!! Yipee! Oh, and she is learning to walk on her tippy toes and scowl at me from under her eyebrows. Its very cute in a she's-too-little-to-have-attitude kind of way.
Since this is turning into a family update I guess I'll update you on Roy. He is busy to the gills between work and scouts. He was sworn into the Washington State Bar Association by a judge a few weeks ago and is now official to practice law in WA. Spread the word... we need clients : )
Ahh, quiet time is over and the whining and teasing has begun anew.

If you want to smile...or not.

I got this link from Sue at Navel Gazing...
The Brokers with Hands on Their Faces Blog
It is humorous. Unless, of course, one of those pictured is your broker. Then, I'm so sorry.
Go ahead and scroll through the pages, there are only about 4 or 5. Happy investing!