The first dinner Tom cooked for me—a week after we met in February 1997—at my mom’s house in Grayling. I drove over from Traverse and he drove up from MSU. Neither one of us can remember what he cooked (it looks like maybe chicken?) but I’m laughing at three types of alcohol on the table.
This is what you get when you’re decluttering old boxes to sell a house: GMS Students of the Month 1984-85
We’re decluttering but I saw this on a yard sale site and couldn’t resist. It’s called a Crash Mat (or Crash Pad) and it’s basically a gymnastics landing pad…something the kids are completely free to jump on! Unfortunately, it’s a bit bigger than it showed in the picture (it wasn’t this tall) so we don’t really have the best space for it right now… But I’m hoping the next house will. 🙂
So, Katie took it upon herself to get some water…with a toy cup from the animals’ water bowl.
Hoo boy. She’s gonna be a handful.
This is one area Katie definitely differs from her brother—she loves drawing at a much younger age! She saw the chalk sitting out and wanted to use it…so we went out to the driveway and she Had. A. Ball.
The tongue is out!
“Here, mama!”
She was scooting all over, legs and feet going a mile a minute…
And then she’d lay her face right down on the driveway…
She was covered.
Then she stuck her hand in the exhaust pipe and was covered in black. 🙂
She did this by herself! No prompting from me!
From school recently…
I found this while cleaning today. I love the big eyes and little legs.
I’m not exactly sure what this one is.
It was that kind of night. :/
If Owen puts a washcloth on his head…
He’s so creative with Legos… Usually it’s panels from his Star Wars Lego video game, but today it was a fish!
I asked Siri to remind me to start the chicken. I like what she heard better.
And as it turned out, I should have listened…as that’s about the time my day started going to shit.
“Siri, I’m an hour late…please forgive me. I should have listened.” 🙂
Katie walked over to the swings and said “Mama swing peas” so I put her in. Then she’d say “Mama swing!” So I would swing next to her and she’d say “Thank you mama!” Every. Single. Time. So I’d get off my swing, go over and push her high, then she’d say “Mama swing!” And if I didn’t immediately go to my swing, she’d say “Mama swing! Mama swing!” So I’d get on the swing and she’d say “Thank you mama.” How can you resist such cuteness? And she had such great fun swinging in tandem with me…
Just chilling:
Today I got rid of a laminator and some letter-sized pouches. In other news, Owen’s pre-k teacher loves me. 🙂
No, it wasn’t a bag but it was something, right?
What a nice kid..sharing with Maggie. 🙂
Well, down the street to the golf course…
…where we went off the golf cart track. 🙂
She always tries to help zip our zippers. She can’t actually do it, but she knows the two pieces go together.
To preface: Before we headed in, I started a dispute with the credit card company just in case but hoping we wouldn’t need it. We also learned a golden rule: “Always get it in writing.” We had the word of our 10-years-of-great-service sales guy who turned his back on us the minute there was an issue (likely due to his negligence…).
That said…it was over before it even started!
We walked in ready to fight tooth and nail—I had all my talking points ready, website print outs ready, and arguments ready. And our guy saw us and came right over, immediately saying (bluntly, I might add, with none of the friendliness we’ve always gotten) “They changed their mind—they’ll take it back. They just wanted to avoid all the hassle…”
My immediate reaction was (of course) YAY but then it was “Yeah right they wanted to avoid the hassle. They knew we were right.” He then went on to say that we were the only people of the 1000 people who have bought this bed that didn’t like it. And we are the ONLY ones that will have their bed returned because from now on it’s a written/confirmed “one exchange only” guarantee—basically saying we screwed it up for everyone… But really, that was what he had tried to tell me their initial policy was…?? So that’s what makes me think he really knew what happened and that’s why they made the decision they did. But we’ll never know because we weren’t going to press too hard…
He was also completely befuddled that there might be a Serta mattress he knew nothing about. When we were telling him what it was (the Hampton Inn bed) he asked where we bought it and looked at us like it was a shady deal or something because it wasn’t anything he knew about. He made sure to tell us his manager had never heard of it, either. AND he reminded us again that they’d NEVER had anyone (of the 1000!) want to return a bed and then go buy one somewhere else. So…? Not my problem. But! By him admitting they didn’t even know what it was…there’s no way they could have ordered it for us like he wanted us to think last night.
So, we’re very happy overall…even though we’re still taking a beating because we have to eat the initial delivery cost, the return delivery cost, the two “free” pillows (MSRP $100, available at Amazon for $89 I think) that we never even wanted, and the mattress protector (that protected the warranty on the bed). Which comes to a grand total of about $600. So we will have paid $600 to use the bed for 45 days. I do hope to recoup some money by selling the pillows…
In other mattress news, the Hampton Inn people called to make sure we ordered what we wanted and we ended up able to cancel the box springs to save about $260! (You can only order the whole set online—there’s no picking and choosing.)
So, with the charges we had to eat for the first bed and the deals (the sale) plus the credit of the box springs, we’ll end up having spent about $2000 total, which is fine with us.
She loves loves LOVES to swing. Today she started in the baby swing but then asked to go on the other one!
Then she let go to try to touch the wood beam—and wobbled. She put her hand back to hang on in a hurry!
Katie almost stepped on him as she walked by. This is what happened when I pointed him out:
I was FLABBERGASTED that Owen attempted to touch it—he doesn’t like bugs or normal little boy things.
But Katie loves that stuff and she was ENTHRALLED…getting as close as she could!
Unfortunately our mommy group doesn’t get together on a weekly basis anymore because the younger kids are in school, nap times conflict, and people are just busier…but today three of us met! It was great. Katie also had a fun time playing with new toys…and didn’t really play too much with the older boys (about age 3.5).
But she came up to me once tugging on me and saying “Mama! Mama!” And I looked down to see this. This is why I love having my phone immediately available in my pocket. 🙂
Bagel Tuesday at Panera! We don’t always go inside, but when we do…
Grannie Lin sent a cool new jacket for Owen. It’s a much better fit than the one I found to replace the one that busted a zipper.
I got rid of more clothes, tossed some shoes, and the glider rocker sold and left the house! Tom also got rid of more clothes.
Well, we get to go fight with the furniture company tomorrow. Yippee.
When we bought the mattress we specifically said “So, with this guarantee, if we don’t like the bed for any reason, we can return it?”
Yes, of course, you have 120 days.
Great. Take our money.
Fast forward about 40 days and neither of us like it. We call to say we want to return it and we get a little grief but our sales guy says sure, he’ll start the paperwork. He asks if there’s another bed we want and we say yes, another Serta, but you don’t sell it—can you maybe order it? He says no. Not “Let me ask my manager and get back to you” but a direct no. Okay, so we order it online ASAP since it takes 4-6 weeks.
So our sales guy calls tonight to ask if he can’t get us the bed we wanted—he talked to his manager and he was pretty sure they could order it. I say it’s too late—we already ordered it and all sales are final. So then he was half arguing with me about trying to return it/cancel it and buy from them instead. Um, we tried and you said it wasn’t possible. So he says okay, he’ll call back with our return amount—reminding us that the two free pillows can’t be returned and we’ll be charged for them. Wait. What? Ugh…but I guess in the long run, not a life or death deal.
So two hours go by and he calls from his cell to say he just got done talking to his manager and we can’t return the bed for a refund—the return is with Serta because it’s their guarantee and the “comfort guarantee” is only for exchanges. I immediately say that isn’t going to work, we specifically asked about returning it—not exchanging it—and we were told we could…HE told us we could. He says “Oh no, I just read off the poster.” Yeah, right. You wanted the $$$ sale so you told us what we wanted to hear. Besides, I didn’t pay Serta, I paid your store. Your store can REFUND us.
Now, we’ve been doing business with this guy for TEN YEARS and I honestly just want to say “Really, John? You’re going to try and pull that? I’m pretty sure your manager saw the return claim for $2800 and freaked out so now you’re trying to claim ignorance.” But I didn’t.
I just reiterated that an exchange was NOT going to work and he said we could come in and sit down with his manager and we could see what we could work out. Lovely. He said we’re the first people that have wanted a return—everyone else just gets a firmer or softer mattress. Sorry, not my problem.
WE ARE LIVID. There is no $&@?#% way we would have bought the bed without that RETURN policy. That’s the ONLY reason we bought it. And the Serta website says the return and exchange policy is “up to the individual store”—so the store can do whatever they want…but I’m guessing they are blaming Serta because they don’t want to give us our money back.
Tomorrow is going to be fun. :/
Owen had special daddy time after dinner (he got to play Lego Star Wars) so Katie and I went out to swing!
And then she was pretending to sleep!
And then she wanted to try the big kid swing!
And she was almost swinging herself! You can see her slightly moving her legs the right way!
And getting more comfortable on the bar!
Like brother, like sister…just a bit apart in age. Owen’s was at 25m, Katie’s was at 20m.
Owen:
Katie:
