Caution....You Might Wet Your Pants

I watched this last week on the Ellen Show and I literally laughed so hard my stomach was hurting afterwards. I can't tell you the last time I have seen something sooo funny. I was hoping to find it on youtube so I could share it and so here it is. Be sure to pause the music at the bottom of the blog.

Have fun laughing!!

Ribbit Ribbit

Scott found this creature out by the pool as we were heading to the park to attempt at flying a kite. Needless to say Madison and Macey were very intrigued by this ugly little thing while Makaylee started to go into convulsions as you started toward her with it. Me personally I do not like frogs, I'm not scared of them they pretty much repulse me. Of course I grew up hearing that toads gave you warts if you hold them and though I'm sure that is a wives tale I'm not testing it to see. It amazes me at how ugly these things are and how cute they make frog merchandise to sell. By the way, our attempt at flying a kite today was not successful. It was a beautiful day hitting 78 degress, we even had dinner outside on the pato this evening.

Makaylee horrified.

Macey and the toad having a stare down.

Enjoying The Day No Matter What

It wasn't the most beautiful day but we still got outside and enjoyed it. It has been raining quite a bit since we moved here but that's ok too, I sort of like hearing it rain. This morning we headed out to a new part of town we found and decided to check out the towncenter/mall. Loved it!! Mind you it wouldn't be that great in the winter time but spring/summer/fall will be awesome. It is a really cool outside mall with a lot of rare stores like Crate & Barrel, Jack & Jill, Guess, lots of kids boutique stores. The mall is in a circle and inside the circle it is open sky and the entrance to all the stores. There are water falls, fish ponds, places to just sit and relax and just soak up the sun as you shop. We had lunch at my favorite place, the Cheesecake Factory. If you ever eat there you have to try the Chicken Thai Pasta, it is to die for. After we came home I took the kids to the common area/park here in our neighborhood, the great thing about this little area is it is just one house down from ours so it's a pain free walk to get there.

I caught this picture of Macey as she was going down the slide.

Makaylee striking a pose for her paparazzi, aka mom.

Glad To Be Blogging Again

It seems I finally might have some time to blog again. I have really missed my blogging. I had put everything off on hold until I was able to get everything put up in the house......I can't stand clutter. I think I am about 99% done now with only a few minor things to organize. I went ahead and did my spring cleaning as I was putting everything away so at least I won't have to do that in few weeks. I have purged quite about of things and am actually considering selling my scrapbook stuff, let's face this chick doesn't have time to scrap right now. I am seriously thinking about switching over to the hard bound books you can custom order. Don't get me wrong I look to scrapbook but the books take up so much space not to mention all the supplies I have. I also saw an Opera episode a few weeks back where a mother had also scanned or took pictures of her child's school work and put in there as well and purged the originals to save space. The digital hardbound book is looking better everyday. I have so much to blog about it's not even funny. I have a lot of my pictures on the laptop that I need to transfer over to my desktop. Below are some pictures of the past few weeks trying to get settled in the house. Please excuse the girls hair, the first three days we moved in here we could not even find a comb or brush. We had all intentions of staying here in the house the first night we arrived. We put all the beds together so we would have something to sleep in but then later that night and I mean like at 9pm I realized that we did not have any pillows, bedding, towels etc. It was kind of funny because we had all the major things but none of the little things to make the big things useful. Like I had all my pots and pans, bake ware but not a spoon, fork, spatula in sight. After the big nightmare with scammers we decided we would just move our belongings ourselves but we could not fit everything onto one truck so we had to rent one of those drop trailers and have it delivered, well all of our bedding and etc was on it and we didn't get it until after we were here for four days. I am so glad to be back with my own things and so are the kids.

Here Macey is playing in cardboard boxes.

Here Makaylee is digging into a box of their cups and was excited she had found her Chuckee Cheese Cup.

The girls we so happy to have their toys back, it was like Christmas all over again for them.

One day I stepped around the stairs case and found this. Don't they look so sweet working away on their laptops.

Every tried stirring brownie mix with a plastic spoon? Well I don't recommend it!! Unfortunately it was all I had for the first few days since the silverware was on the drop truck that had not been delivered. Madison's first day of school. Her first school bus ride. Madison is now a bus rider. The great thing is we are only a mile from the school so she is on the bus less than ten minutes. It just works out better this way since you have to go into the school everyday to sign your child out if they are a car rider. Gotta love the last picture as she is saying get my paparazzi mom out of my face. hee hee

I found Makaylee like this the first day we had moved in. The poor little thing had just exhausted herself. Look how dirty her pants are, you can tell she had worn herself out.

I heard Macey whining help and I found this. I started cracking up and had to grab the camera for this one. How this girl manages to get herself into these situations is beyond me.

Here Makaylee is using her imagination for dress up. She has a pair of Scott's dress socks on her arms for glamour gloves and my bridal garter as some sort of neck fashion.

Makaylee the rock star singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to paw paw Raymond.

Just wanted to say a big thank you to Joann and Tim for letting us take over their house for two months. Also a huge thank you to mom and Raymond for helping us get settled in new house, we couldn't have got done what we did without you guys. Thank you we love you all!!

Whew, What A Week!!

This has been one heck of a couple of weeks. Last week it was all the chaos of the moving and the kids being sick, which turned into really really sick this week. I feel like my body has just shut down today. Monday I took both of the little ones to the doctor, which by the way cost $406.00 since we currently don't have insurance and that didn't even include the $108.00 in prescriptions for Makaylee. All I can say is I can't wait for our 90 day waiting period for our new insurance picks up. Any how I got really frustrated with the doctor because I asked her if she would go ahead and prescribe Macey an antibiotic knowing that hers would turn into exactly what Makaylee had. But no, apparently she wasn't sick enough for the doctor yet. So Thursday I had to take her back because the poor thing was basically lifeless, green junk pouring out of her nose and eyes. I have wiped her face so much it's raw and her eyes are black. I suppose she finally looked sick enough for them to prescribe some antibiotics and now from all the drainage she had a ear infection. Things have to get brighter....right?? I guess it's official, we are no longer Idahoans. Scott is on the road with our belongings and should be moving into our new place Monday.

The Moving Company Were Scammers

These past few days have been hell to put it nicely. The moving company we hired to move our belongings across country were scammers. Ok so here is the story......a few weeks ago we started searching for a moving company. This one particular company had a great rate and really wanted our business and was willing to do what it took to make us happy. Obviously we went with this company because it was the cheapest, I mean really, who wouldn't. We checked and made sure they were insured, bonded and we also checked with the Better Business Bureau. I thought we had done our part in researching this company to make sure our belongings were in good hands. So fast forward to this past Thursday when the movers were suppose to be at our house at 9am to load everything up. Well needless to say at noon they still were not there. Scott calls the owner and was informed that the transfer truck was not going to be able to make it and they were having to bring two 26ft trucks instead. Ok, everything is fine lets get going. The two moving guys finally arrive and as they walk through our house all of a sudden the price to move our belongings jumped from $3400 to $9000. That's right, I said $9000. When we hired this company we sent them an inventory list of everything we had. Now moving companies normally move your things based on weight, they charge you per pound. So what they do is load everything up and then take the truck to a weigh station and that's how they now how much to charge you. Back to the inventory list, Scott asked why the cost was going to triple since we had sent them an inventory list of what was going to be moved. Their reply to Scott was, "you don't have an average persons furniture". What in the heck does that mean, we don't have particle board furniture. Yes, all of our furniture is solid wood and is bulky but they never asked about what kind of wood our furniture was made of. Based on the inventory list we sent them they estimated that we would have around 6800 lbs on the truck but when they got to the house they said we would have at least 18,000 lbs. They charge .50 per pound. Scott calls me and we are both pissed because we felt like they knew they had us in a difficult position because they knew we had to move. Scott calls another company to come out and give us an estimate. The second company came out did a walk through and estimated we would have right under 10,000 pounds. The owner of the original company gave Scott and option of taking a flat rate of $7500 to move our things. They were going to weigh the truck if it was under the weight to equal $7500 we would not get a refund difference but if it went over that he would not charge us the difference as well, or we could gamble with the weight and pay strictly by the pound. I spoke with my moms husband who drove a truck for Shaw for over 25 years about how much he thought our things might way. After talking to him, Scott and I decided to gamble and pay by the pound because we felt like we did not have as much as they were saying. Things just seemed to escalate with the moving guys all that afternoon. They loaded things after Scott specifically told them not too. Ok, fast forward to the next morning. Scott calls me at 11am as says the movers still aren't there to finish the job. He is pretty ticked off at this point. He called the owner and the owner gets smart with Scott about how is had them there moving furniture until 9pm the night before and they were tired. Scott informed him he didn't care how tired they were if they said they were going to be there at 9am then they better be there. Scott had told me if had a funny feeling that they might try to load the truck down with something to make it heavier. So when the movers finally got there he told them he wanted to inspect the truck. You will never guess what the had done. Well, now we know why they were late getting there. They had put 60 50lb bags of potting soil in the back of the truck. Now that equals 3000 pounds, if we are paying .50 per pound that comes to an extra $1500 dollars. To say that Scott was livid is an understatement!! I can't really put on here what all he said to the guys because it wasn't pretty. He called the owner and the owner advised Scott that that's not the way they do business and he was going to fire the guy when he was done moving our things. I told Scott the owner was full of BS because what mover would take the initiative to do something like that without someone telling him and besides I'm sure the guy didn't go buy the potting soil with his own money. I told Scott I was afraid to let them take off with our things they once they got it some where that they might ask for more money or not give us our furniture but Scott said they couldn't do that. They continued to load our things onto the trucks. In the meantime I am sitting here two thousand miles away worried to death about Scott up there with those crooks and what might happen to our belongings. I started googling the internet about moving company frauds. And low and behold guess what I found. The EXACT same moving company who was loading OUR stuff onto THEIR trucks were SCAMMERS. They low ball offers to people to get them to take their bid, then get your furniture loaded onto their trucks and double or triple your price and if you don't pay it they will auction off your furniture. WTH!! I read complaints from consumers where it took them 2 1/2, 4 months to get their belongings back because they had to scrounge up money to pay these crooks. The sad thing was they could not get anyone to help them because it is pretty much a "Civil Case". Some of these consumers called the FBI, the Attorney General and lots of other people I can't even remember and no one would or could do anything. No wonder these idiots keep scamming people, they know they can get by with it. When I found the stuff on the internet I immediately called Scott and told him not matter what not to let them drive off with our stuff. I read him the things I had found. They were getting ready to go weight the first truck. So we came up with plan. Scott took pictures of the potting soil loaded on the truck and he acted like everything was cool. He called the police to have them waiting there when he got back because we were going to make them unload our things back into the house. I sat here anxiously waiting to here from Scott, I was praying that everything would go smoothly since the police was there. When Scott got back to the house the police was there, Scott called the owner and told him what was going on and that we new what type of people they were and told him if he didn't have his movers unload our things he would have his two guys locked up for fraud. The owner agreed to do whatever as long as he did not press charges. The guys unloaded our things back into the house. How crazy is all this. Insane isn't it. It amazes me how people like this are allowed to stay in business. I also lost trust in the BBB after reading that you can't really trust what they say. One of the consumers complaint that I was reading made a good point. If these business are paying a membership to the BBB, then the BBB is not going to dog that business out because they more in likely will lose that business' membership money. I thought the BBB was suppose to be looking out for the consumers not the business'. Anyhow, looks like Scott will be driving the moving truck to Virginia now. Not sure if we could trust anyone after this. Sad Sad Sad. I am very thankful we caught this in time and all we had paid was a $200 deposit of which I will be filing a dispute with my credit card company on. Thank goodness the good Lord gave us gut feelings. If I had never had that feeling and started googling we would be in a very very bad situation right now. God is good!!! I give him praise for watching out for us.