JTOK Chatter > Page 370

Amazon ROCKS!

Posted on by

You all know how much I love Amazon, but here is one reason why Amazon really rocks.

I bought a hard drive recently that came with a $20 mail-in rebate. I sent it in and was denied because the dates were invalid. Huh, what? I pulled out all my info and yep, I bought the hard drive ONE DAY before the rebate started. >:XX But Amazon had the rebate on the item page when I bought it, so I really never thought about reading the rebate terms that closely.

So I emailed Amazon, explained what happened, and said I was upset that they promoted the rebate before it was valid, and asked what they could do. Within hours they apologized and credited my account.

YAY AMAZON!

First Crayon Drawing

Posted on by

We were up in Grayling for the weekend to visit with Filipek’s, and I was sitting doing something with Izzy when she suggested she get a piece of paper for Owen to write on. Well, he was using a pencil, and kept poking through the paper, so I suggested a crayon instead. She ran to her bookbag and brought back a turquoise crayon. I held the paper and let him go to town…

(Gramma says it’s a nice picture of snow-capped mountains behind a lake!) Then Izzy wanted to write on the back. 🙂

A little while later, while we were all still eating dinner and Owen was left to his own devices (having already finished eating), we suddenly heard Marcus saying “NO, OWEN!” Yeah, he had just drawn his first crayon WALL art. |-|

Owen's first wall art

Thank heavens for Magic erasers!

Owen and the Tomato

Posted on by

I love the fact that Owen loves balls so much, but I am not appreciating him picking all our cherry tomatoes because he thinks they’re balls to play with. But I am currently playing fetch with him and the tomato he picked, and it’s way cute. 🙂

New car colors – blech.

Posted on by

We are starting to think and plan for a new car minivan [Toyota Sienna]. Shoot me. Yeah, I know people love them and I am sure I will come to love it…but I just love my Toyota Highlander SO much I don’t ever want to get rid of it. It’s nine years old and would likely last a lot more years…but if we want to have a second kid, a minivan is definitely in our future.

Anyway.

What really annoys me about buying a new car is all the really blah colors offered. I hate HATE blah colors. Really, these are it? /gag XX(

What happened to green? Turquoise? Orange? Purple? Give me one of those and I’d buy one ASAP. (As a point of reference, my first car was gold, my second car was bright purple, and my current car is a deep/bright green.) I actually like the black the best, but I would never get a black car. The second closest would be the South Pacific Pearl, but it’s still too muted for me.

Maybe we can hold out another year and the 2012 colors will be better. 😐

P.S. Here are the color choices I had in 2001—soooooo much better.

Three firsts today!

Posted on by

1) We took him to the Grayling fish hatchery with Gramma Jean and Grandpa David. He was still a bit too young—maybe next year will be better!

2) Tom took him wading in the AuSable River—we were impressed that he didn’t mind the chilly water…although the current intrigued him.

3) Grauntie Marge brought over a watercolor paint book!

Kmart online. NEVER again.

Posted on by

Kmart. Need I say more?

Yes, I know I am spoiled with Amazon Prime and their two-day shipping, but seriously. We are going on THREE weeks since I ordered, and I still don’t have my items. When I ordered, I expected to have the items within a week (that’s what their estimator told me). It took FIVE days just to get a shipping notice. And then I waited. And waited. And checked tracking. And checked tracking. As of today, the package is still in INDIANA. We’re leaving for a week, so will be a PITA to receive now (haven’t been able to ask a neighbor to check mail yet).

So I call to see if I can get a discount on my order or s/h charges reversed. The lady first asks me what store I ordered from. Huh? I ordered online. “Yeah, but what store?” WHAT? ONLINE I say again. Then she argues with me that my order number is incorrect. Apparently, the order number in my email was NOT the actual order number. |-| Due to them being Sears/Kmart things are screwy, I guess. The email said “Thank you for ordering from Sears” and then later it said “Item provided by Kmart.” WTF?

So the CSR finally finds my order by phone number and I tell her my story and looks it up and says “It will be there tomorrow” with a finality that she’s done her part. Okay, that’s NOT what I asked for at all. I can follow tracking as good as you can. So I tell her that it’s ridiculous that I’ve had to wait this long, yada yada yada (staying nice) and she tells me she’s sorry, but it will be there tomorrow. I ask to talk to a manager.

I wait on hold for FIFTEEN minutes and go through the entire thing again with him. HE tells me it will be there tomorrow. You’re kidding me with this, right? He goes on to tell me that it was out of stock at the warehouse so they had to outsource it to [somewhere, another store maybe?] so that’s why it was taking longer. Okay, I said, so why wasn’t I made aware of that? Well, he says, they’re working on a new system to better streamline this sort of thing. OH, WHATEVER. So it comes down to what I am asking, and he doesn’t even say “We’ll refund your shipping” or anything. I HAD TO ASK FOR IT. Then you can hear in his voice like he’s really not happy about it…but he will refund the shipping.

Lord have mercy.

I will never shop at Kmart online again. I only did it because I didn’t want to go to two stores to get what I needed (I called, and each store had one and I needed two) so I thought it would be worth the $7. Ha. HA HA.

New (squeaky) shoes!

Posted on by

I’ve often joked that I want to hang a bell around Owen’s neck so I can hear where he is when he’s out of my sight…so I couldn’t resist getting these shoes when I saw them on sale. We put them on him tonight to test them out, not sure what would happen. Watch and see…and laugh with us!

Kinda sorta first gibberish words!

Posted on by

So for probably a month or so, when Owen gets cranky or whiny or hurt, it sounds like he is saying “mama…mamamama…mama” but even though we love hearing it, we know he’s not really truly saying it.

Yesterday, when Tom was playing ball with him (with his new hoop) he swears Owen would call the ball his “ba ba.”

So today we were at the pool and were playing with the ball and hoop there. There were quite a few other kids so we took our turn then left the ball and went to the other pool. But Owen did NOT want to go and kept his eye on the balls. He would try climbing up on us to see them. It was sooo cute. After about 10 minutes of us trying to distract him, I swear I heard “mama…baba” and he pointed.

So, I consider those his kinda sorta first gibberish words…

Yes, another haircut!

Posted on by

If you can believe it, Owen got ANOTHER haircut today! I’ve actually lost track of how many he’s had! And some of the kids in our mom’s group still haven’t had their hair cut!! Unfortunately, he still HATES the buzzing clippers and became VERY wiggly (even with Tom trying to hold him) and was crying (CRYING!) with big ol’ tears and a snotty nose. Good grief! When it was over, he settled down pretty quick, then had a blast next door at the resale shop playing while I looked around. You’d never guess that five minutes prior he was a snotty mess. Kids! 🙂

P.S. The scratch on Owen’s face is courtesy of Maggie. Tom was playing with Owen on the couch and Maggie got excited. Owen didn’t even make a peep when it happened… And I think this is the first scratch that’s happened, so we’ve set a decent record!

Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

Posted on by

This was the first pineapple upside down cake I’ve ever made, and I was planning on using fresh pineapple AND fresh blueberries! Sounds good, right? I used this recipe by Paula Deen), and was intrigued by the frosting since I’d never seen it that way before. But I made it. And honestly? I could have done without it. The cake itself was REALLY good (super moist!) but the frosting was complete sugary overload that ended up taking away from the fruit itself. (That said, I was impressed that just 2 Tbs of pineapple juice was enough to really flavor the frosting.)

I did have a slight issue with the cakes coming out of the pans—I let them cool for the recommended 10 minutes but they were still very hot and some of the fruit started slip-sliding off the cake! But I’m guessing the fresh fruit had something to do with the excess moisture. There also seemed to be too much sugar, as well. I was using 8″ round cake pans, and 3/4 cup brown sugar in each one just seemed like A LOT. If I make this again, I will use less sugar. Oh, and there was too much batter as well. I had two FULL 8″ pans plus a tiny loaf pan. Which meant we just had a separate blueberry-topped loaf (yum!).

The cakes:

Unfortunately, I suck at frosting cakes, plus the frosting wasn’t quite room temp so it was a bit hard to spread, plus the fruit was really moving around… I was just going to do the sides, but then I had frosting left so then I thought I’d just put a dollop in the center…but then it looked like there was enough to finish frosting it…then it got messy and yucky looking. 😐

Pool Basketball

Posted on by

The one bad thing about both Tom and me getting in the pool with Owen is that we can’t take pictures…and today we would have loved a video!

The community pool has a basketball hoop and two balls in one section. Well, Owen always likes to play with the balls, and today since Tom was there, he lifted Owen up to the net so he could put the ball through himself. Oh my, did he love that! Every time he got the ball in his hands, he’d look up at the net like “Why am I not up there yet?” and then Tom would lift him up and Owen would drop or push it through! It was sooooo cute! (I tried lifting him, but that was a joke!) I think we did that for probably 20-30 minutes total!

Toe update

Posted on by

Okay, so the toe didn’t look QUITE as bad the next morning… I don’t think he’s going to lose the nail (it looks like only one small spot is black and blue) and it looks like most of the blood came from two cuts on his toe.

But it doesn’t seem to be bothering him much, if at all. He’s climbing and walking and scuffing it to no ill effect. Of course, he doesn’t like me to touch it, but he never liked having his feet touched to begin with.

First minor injury—poor toe!

Posted on by

Owen got his first minor injury tonight.

Tom said (I wasn’t there so I didn’t witness it) a piece of 4×4 wood fell on his toe. :'( There was some crying and bleeding as we tried to deal with it—but really not too bad overall. He wouldn’t let us get near him with any type of ice pack but Tom did manage to get a band-aid on him. Then he sat with grandpa and watched Sesame Street and things were okay (until we had to put a new band-aid on).

I’m okay (LOL) and he’s pretty okay, except for when we need to touch the foot. And he’ll likely lose the nail since it’s completely black and blue.

Poor kid.

Water park!

Posted on by

We all went to the local water park today and had a good time watching Owen having fun in all the pools. He even went down a water slide by himself!

And here he is actually going down!

And then he was enthralled with the sign by the water slide—I just love this pic because it looks like he’s reading it intensely!

Reading the sign intently.