How not to buy tickets to the Monster Truck Show at the Idaho Center

5:30 - arrive at TCBY, watch 17 year old girl try to figure out how to use the Idaho Center ticket kiosk

6:00 - TCBY "guy" arrives, freshly showered and looking spiffy with that 3 day scruff - logs in, picks the seats, swipes debit card and prints me the tickets

6:05 - driving home, realize the tickets were for the WRONG DAY - guess TCBY "Guy" and 17 year old girl really were not all that helpful after all

6:15 - back at TCBY, now TCBY "Manager" is there - very apologetic - takes my tickets back, calls 3 people at the Idaho Center, but can't cancel/refund until tomorrow - trys to log on to ticket kiosk to buy tickets for the right day, but the kiosk LOCKS UP.

6:30 - TCBY Manager gets a hold of IC Ticket Lady, who is supposed to get me tickets over the phone. IC Ticket Lady asks "What day and price do you want" - Me: "Saturday, 2:00, Cheap seats" IC Ticket Lady reserves the seats, asks for my credit card and says "That will be $575" Me: "What the !...No, I wanted the CHEAP SEATS!!" Ticket Lady: "Oh, oops."  Trys to log in to reserve the cheap seats and then the COMPUTER FREEZES!  Says she will call back tomorrow morning, refund my tickets for the wrong day and then get me the right day, right time, right section, right price.
 
7:00 - TCBY Manager gives me gift certificate for $10.00.
 
Could not have been more unproductive.  My advice is to buy tickets on line.
 
 
 

Goals

My personal goal for the month of November is to compliment my kids more. It is so easy to get stuck in the rut of telling them all the things they are doing wrong but so much harder to take time out to tell them when they do it right! It seems simple but it isn't. I did OK for most of the first week and then failed miserably for three or four days and am doing better again now. I think with Thanksgiving comming I should step it up again though. Atleast ten strong compliments a day for each of the kids. It should be easy to be grateful when I have to say nice things all day!

While I'm feeling grateful, our friend Mark Halladay "woke up" three days ago and started speaking again after a severe stroke. His four little kids got to go in and see him for the first time in six weeks. Miracles do happen.

Thanks!

This afternoon my son sweetly  unloaded my dirty dishes out of the dishwasher and put them all away. We will just have to be on our guard since I don't know exactly which ones were still dirty. He totally gets credit for trying though!

Bryce explains the anatomical journey of a flatulent

And I thought it was just the refried beans.......

Red-Neck

Growing up in Egypt and Washington DC you would think I have grown up with a respect for firearms, I have never had one in my home until I moved to the rough and tough town of Kuna, Idaho. Go figure. I don't love guns but my policy is that if there are going to be guns in my house, I would be stupid not to know how to use them. So, a few times a year I go shooting with Paxton. He welded up these targets himself and is very proud of them. I don't understand the desire to shoot up something you have worked so hard on but whatever makes my guy happy works for me! We took the kids, who have been taught basic gun safety, but they are confined to the back of the truck. I have found I am pretty good with a 22 and respectable with a shot gun but I am pretty much useless with a hand gun. Paxton however is a wicked shot. That's my Idaho boy! Looks the kids are going to take after their daddy!

perspective

I'm having one of those reality check weeks. I'm in an airport in Denver on my way back home to Boise after being in Connecticut for four days. I had a really good time but I'm so ready to come home. 

Two days ago a good family friend suddenly became very ill and then had a stroke. He and his family live a few doors down from us and our kids play together weekly. He and his wife are in scouts with me. Our kids are in the same classes at school. They live a healthy, active life style and in a week their whole world changed. My heart is breaking because I have small idea of the rollercoaster of grief that that they are feeling.

I have often wondered how people managed back in the day with out anti-biotics or cat scans or medical sedation. I have wonderered how mothers could survive when it was almost expected that they would loose a child or a husband or both. That time seems distant sometimes and then I have a reality check and realize that sometimes things aren't so different now.

In the last few months we have had friends who had a young husband pass away, a four yr old daughter go into liver failure, a premature baby, my sister finishing her last surgery to be put back together after brain surgery, not to mention our friends and family struggling to make ends meet financially, passed the three year mark of the loss of our son, and now our friends who's husband in on a ventilator while they try to find out how much damage was done by the stroke. This is reality of life, I just forget that sometimes in the course of an average day. It is these kind of weeks that makes me pray harder, kiss my kids more, appriciate my husband and take a little extra time to sit in the sunshine and appricate the quiet moments because who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Sick Days

I've had my second talk with the school nurse in two days. Yesterday Shaylee called saying she had a headache and since she had a cold I thought she could have some bad sinus pressure so I went to pick her up. When I got there I found out she had been hit in the head with a basketball but it hadn't even left a red mark so I sent her back to class and told the nurse that she tended to overeact.

Just now Bryce called from the nurses office saying he threw up in the lunch room because someone had cottage cheese and he looked at it and smelled it an it made him throw up. The kid has such a touchy gag reflex I totally believe it. He had already come up with his own plan for the rest of the day. He said he now needed hot lunch because his sandwich would make him sick and that whenever he walked past the lunch room he would hold his breath and plug his nose so he wouldn't get sick again. I could hear the nurse laughing in the back ground.

When the nurse got back on she asked if I thought she would be seeing any more of my kids this week and if we got Jake and Avery in we would set a school record. I said if that happened I would by her hot lunch.