Play dates in the Park, and lies we tell others

Well, not technically a play date. But a play in the park day, nonetheless. Don't you like words that just seem like run on words?

Anyway, we met at a fenced and gated rubber tire park. I think the park is named for some kid, but the main lure is the gated fence. It means kids stay in and away from traffic.

Alice had fun. She followed some kids around. She monitored the gate between the big kid stuff and the smaller kid stuff. She even slid down several slides on her own! Though mostly she went backwards and on her belly.

Then we came home, she drank some Dr Pepper and passed out in my lap. Sounding like she has a disease in her nose.

Good times.

I also have to admit I lied today. I told "Discover Cards" today that I was Daniel. Yes, I know, not the most truthful of moments. But seriously they have called every single day for the last 2 weeks. I have chewed people out for the last week about calling during the day. Why? Well, he works during the day. Surprise. I told one guy to specifically put down to not call during the day yesterday.

So today when a woman called asking for Daniel I said that was me. No one said Daniel is a gender specific name. Now get this. I found out they are offering the SAME service we said no to two months ago. Lets see, I can get my credit report monitored for free online (though I can't remember who its with, but seriously totally free we both have accounts). Maybe I will pay the company that owns our credit card to do the same thing. For a free Experian credit score!

I don't think so.

If they call back I will request to speak with a supervisor and perhaps even consider switching back to a different household credit card. You know, one that didn't call every other month offering services. One that is also in my name as the primary, so I can tell them to not call back and they believe me.

Either way, lets hope the credit monitoring service they are trying to sell stops calling. Lets also hope that I get the house in reasonable condition. At least the living room and dining room. Cause we are feeding the missionaries. And, if we end up eating Arby's roast beef sandwiches, I won't feel bad at all. Especially if we serve them with salad or something semi-healthy. Besides, if worse comes to worse, we can eat at a park. Not quite the same as eating in someone's home, but its nice weather. And I can put off cleaning my dump/home until the weekend.

Enrichment committe meeting

I sent a whole pile of cherry tomatoes away today. It was great.

This morning I had an enrichment committee meeting at 9:30. Daniel has night class today, so I got picked up. He has been commissioned to find or create a carpool tonight for his Thursday night class. Even if its just for one night. Even if he just pays someone $5 to take him with them.

Why?

Well, next week will be crazy for me. I have LINK during the day. That means I will have 5 million things showing up at my house to drop off at the church that hosts the meal. I also had the university ward request to drop things off with me because no one had space that could drop things off in the middle of the day. Its totally fine, and really not a big deal because I don't care if they show up late. I won't be here. They can drop it off at the church. I don't have to call all the people and remind them what they signed up for. I don't even have to be concerned that they don't have enough servers for their ward.

Its great.

I by the way, have 3 servers and will be picking up and dropping off the Sister Missionaries as well as my trunk full of food around lunch time. Including my casserole.

After that I need to make a big pot of potato soup and peanut butter fondue for our enrichment activity that night. I hope our yellow flowers Helios (maybe black eyes susans, but some type of sunflower thing) are still in bloom because I want to pick several dozen for centerpieces. If they die we'll use something else.

We also did some more detailed talk about what we are in charge of for Super Saturday. FYI, it will probably be great. All of the crafts should be around $2 or less (super YAY!) and most of them sound interesting. You know, except for one that sounds totally dumb. But, the young women loved it and are teaching it, so its all good. Its just really not something I want to deal with.

Plus, we are going to set up baby sitting swaps for the temple trip! That means both spouses can go and not have to worry about someone watching the kid for 9+ hours, you will just swap for one session. I hope lots of people come if we set up that way. Plus, Daniel and I can both go with no worries about the kid.

Totally unrelated baby note:
Walked to the appointment on Tuesday. Daniel still had the stroller in the car. We were very slightly late because of it. Also had trace amounts of protein in the urine. They said it might have been from dehydration. (likely since I left the water bottle at home on accident) Have a sono next time to make sure the baby is doing ok and get measurements. I was measuring 3 weeks bigger than I should be. Next time we will be right on the 3rd trimester cusp. Crazy stuff huh.

And they burn, burn, burn!

Daniel hasn't got home yet from his night class.

Alice (after I sat in the dark next to her bed with my hand on her stomach) cried for 1/2 hour for Dad. I left because she was sort of asleep and I was getting sore sitting on the floor next to her bed for an HOUR. I decided if she was still crying when Daniel got home he could deal with her. She hasn't cried for 10 minutes though, so I think he is in the clear.

Alice and I sorted through some of the pantry. Enough to consolidate all cans to the bottom shelf. Not enough to sort by can type. We have an absurd amount of foods where we have 3-4 cans of that type. Surprisingly enough, we are nearly out of several things that we bought in May as our '3 month food storage.' Looks like those were sure bets on things we eat lots of.

I was having some rather bad heartburn and drank OJ cause it sounded good. I fell into a burning ring of fire.

Daniel carried in the car seat just now because I am getting picked up for an enrichment committee meeting Thursday morning. (I also have an OB appointment tomorrow and am taking the car, but its the thought that counts.)

The mini series Tin Man from the SciFi channel is really good. We rented it from the Library. I have watched all three hour and a half episodes. It was Wizard of Oz enough while still be totally SciFi channel. They had a pretty decent budget.

I am really tired, but Daniel should be home by now, so I blog.

I want a Pantry Makeover!

Erin over at $5 Dinners is promoting a $250 pantry makeover in the form of a $250 gift card to the grocery store of your choice! This is an extra entry, and what follows is yet another, so enter if you want (though I want to win, so personally I discourage too much competition.

Anyway, since I don't care if people think I am messy, plus this is in a closet so it seems ok to show...here is our pantry! Sorry its sideways, I can't be bothered to figure out how to turn it. I used to know how, but then I lost my brain to pregnancy. This time next year I can probably figure things like this out again.



Let me explain. Our pantry is literally the only place we store dry food (aside from the plastic storage containers that we have things like flour etc in). As you can see though we do have back up food for the containers in the pantry though. If you look closely behind the tater and onion bin (empty BTW, onions are pretty gross this pregnancy) you can see non food items that are just in there. I also forgot that {nearly} all the pasta as well as canned tomatoes and pasta sauce are in giant plastic storage bins in the computer room.

The multitudes of bags at the bottom are holding things like cereal and random canned foods. Because obviously i didn't have room for them on the bottom shelf or any of the other shelves that are holding canned food. Some are hard to put away because I have like 2 cans of that food item.The other bags are bags of grocery bags. (Don't ask why i keep so many.)

You know, its funny that I want a pantry makeover, when really a couple of hours or moving and organizing will make over my pantry quite soundly. But hey, with an extra $250 I can totally complete our '3 month food storage' as well as pick up lots of easy foods for when we add another kiddo in a few more months. Even if I don't win, I will probably try to do this in the next few months. Just cause it needs done.

Oh well, lets hope I can get it done for only the cost of my labor instead of labor and money.

New Travel Plans!

Well, Daniel called AirTran just a few moments ago. We are leaving on the first flight Tuesday morning which means Daniel can go to school and work Monday, which means more benefit time can be saved for when the baby comes, since he has to accrue benefit time next year which is retarded...

Interlude by Daniel:
Actually, they sold the company that I work for last year and they are finally going to make us follow the benefit program of the new company starting next year. It's sort of ironic that when the change over was happening they claimed that the benefits were "substantially similar", but what really has happened is insurance has doubled in price... and next year I will get less benefit time by 5 days. :-| Oh well, at least I'm paid pretty well and am in next to no risk of losing my employ. Hoorah?!?

Return to Becca...

We are also flying back on Saturday instead of Friday, and we got a non-stop flight back. For no additional cost! I am so excited to leave florida at 10am and get into Kansas City at noon (well local time). Either way, yay no busy holiday airport for the layover back!

The confirmation email is hilarious. The total for our airfare is $12 more than the price of one of the non stop return ticket. LOVE it! So the best thing to do, book really really early and if they change flight times on you get a better flight!

The only small concern. Our layover on the way down is about 40 minutes. Lets hope the plane doesn't get in late or that it takes a really long time to get off the first plane and onto the second. If we are lucky we will get onto the same plane or one really close. Most likely we will get on a larger plane from Atlanta to Orlando though.

Changes in Flight Times, holiday travel stress

I am slightly miffed. Why?

Well, we bought tickets for our Thanksgiving trip to Florida to visit Daniel's family in July. We found a great deal, got an itinerary that we liked (you with the shortest layovers), and even paid extra to choose our seats.

Then today I get an email from the Airline. The first email I have had that wasn't about their great ticket prices or joining thier rewards club. It was titled "SECOND NOTIFICATION: Airtran Airways Schedule Change." Huh, maybe they emailed me last night and then again at 9am today. So I look and they say they are changing our flight times and to click the link to accept.

I clicked the link.

The schedule changes were horrible (for having a toddler along and a 32 week pregnant woman). They want us to leave later in the day the Monday before Thanksgiving. That's not so bad, except that we would get into Orlando at 6:15. It would be 7pm by the time we got our bags, we wouldn't have eaten dinner, AND we would still have an hour or so drive from Orlando to Daniel's grandparent's home. That means at 8pm, Alice's bedtime (in thoery) we would be driving or just getting in at Edgewater.

Now, if that were the only thing I might have accepted it. But no. Our return flight was moved to 15 minutes later and our retun layover was more than doubles to over 4 hours. I refuse to be in a huge airport like Atlanta with a toddler for 4 hours. Let alone add in that I will be way pregnant at that point. There is something that will give me high blood pressure.

Now unfortunately, the tickets are reserved in Daniel's name, so I probably can't even call them and change things.

Fortunately, thier policy is that if they are changing our flight times we can change to the day before or after with no added fee. Daniel is hoping for either a red eye out of Kansas City or Tuesday morning (so he can go to his night class Monday night). I told him, if we are getting in later, I want to leave later. Lets hope for Tuesday to Saturday instead of Monday to Friday. I mean sure its wishful thinking, but hello you don't mess with people that have 'infant in lap' and one of them is pregnant.

I will update after we have have anything definate. I mean, I would accept seat upgrades for a crappier itinerary. We shall see, no?

Sickness Diagnosed

Heartburn.

Must buy stock in Tums Smoothies.

Apparently it can lead to coughing which in my case leads to cookie tossage. It also explains the added fatigue. Lucky me!

Sadly I have lost the bottle of Tums. Or rather Alice has. She thinks they are candy and will carry the bottle everywhere. Oh well, heartburn is way better than sickness. At least no one can catch it from me.