A few new things...

Well, a few new things have happened lately. Let's start at the beginning. Remember how I told you my good camera crapped out on me after Christmas? Well, I picked out a new Canon (John tells me that error occurs in 1 out of every 1000, so I'm taking my chances). It will arrive next week. I can't wait!! I probably would have had it this week, but somehow someone got ahold of our Mastercard number and charged over $800 worth of stuff. Chase was right on top of it and called me with all of the erroneous charges before I was really even aware of it. We are not responsible for any of the charges that aren't truly ours. Good job Chase!!

The next bit of news is that we bought a "new" used car for the girls to share. It's an older Nissan Maxima in very good shape. Kierstin has been driving (with me in the passenger seat) to school and to church. She's been doing a pretty good job. The biggest thing she has to remember is to brake when she's making a turn. She has a tendency to accelerate and then when I remind her to brake, she says, I am! When I tell her she's not, she continues to argue with me. Hmm... a teenager arguing with her parents. Go figure! But, after practicing some more, she is most definitely getting better at it. It will just take practice, practice, practice!

There will be plenty of pics coming soon, as soon as I get my hands on my new camera! It should be here middle of next week.

Oh! I almost forgot! I got a Costco membership for Christmas and we've been a few times. It's hard to get into the "jumbo" package frame of mind while you are there. I see things that we use, but then say, we don't need THAT much of it. We have found that Costco has awesome bagels (Einstein Brothers) - I found out that Sam's Club uses Sara Lee- too bad for them- ours are much better!! Anyway, we have purchased a few jumbo sized items and since we have no formal pantry or shelves built downstairs yet, these things just sit around the kitchen (on the floor or on tv trays in the corner). Hey, you do what you have to do. Just saying. Anyway, we came home last week to find that Sasha had drug the 2 jumbo bottles of hershey's chocolate syrup into the family room and punctured one of them. There were 2 or 3 big puddles of syrup in the middle of our fairly new family room carpet. YIKES! She did get sick upstairs on the old carpet by the washer/dryer. Can you believe I was able to get out the spots? In both places! I really can't remember where we got it, but we have this package of carpet cleaning stuff that is basically chopped up sponges. You sprinkle them on the spot, working it into the fiber, then sprinkle more on top. Let it dry, then vacuum it. The spots were still lightly there after that, so I just took a damp rag and rubbed at them for a bit and the spots are GONE! I couldn't believe it! John said that really saved Sasha from getting into HUGE trouble, so I was glad to have gotten the spots out. So, we thought maybe she had learned her lesson- her little chocolate syrup escapade had given her pretty bad gas all night, but she never got sick. I know chocolate is bad (and can be fatal) for dogs, so I was glad she was okay. Yesterday, the little you know what decided to get into the jumbo sized box of Cheez-it's and Peanut Sweet and Salty granola bars we had. I guess when the girls got home from school, there were 10 granola bar wrappers on the family room floor. Those things are full of sweet stuff and Sasha was shaking all night long! Not sure if she got sick (she spent a fair amount of time outside after that). In fact, John said we really haven't saved that much at Costco yet because Sasha keeps eating/destroying what we are buying. So, he's decided she will be outside from now on during the day when we are not home (Duchess is kennelled in the kitchen during the day). I hope she is learning how NOT to get into trouble from Sasha instead of how to actually get things down off the counters that she wants! Whew! I'm tired of typing now- more in a few days....