Because I've got nothing better to do!!!

I've been running to and from the dealership that I bought my car from and it's driving me a bit nuts.

I suppose I could have saved a few of the trips... If I had bought the car on Friday night instead of taking it home and buying it on Saturday. If I had remembered to get the title for my old car before making the deal that would have saved a trip too.

But the dealer caused my trip in this morning... they misplaced my lender's electronic check. so I had to go over there today to take them a new check for that.

And now the lender has sent me yet another form to take back to the dealer because they needed an adendum for the final amount that we are borrowing. UGH!

If I had known that I would need to take this paperwork tonight, I could have had the bank just fax the dealer the paperwork that I took over there this morning and saved myself a trip. I sure wish they had told me that! UGH!

well instead of coming home while Darly is at the gym tonight, I get to drive yet again to the dealer.

boy I sure sound very whiney... sigh!

Cuz you asked nicely...

I'm here, I'm still here! Rumors of my demise were greatly exaggerated.

Why I've been absent? Well frankly I've been pretty lazy. It's so much easier to post a little blurb on Facebook than it is to update you here. Hummm I wonder what I've been up to over on Facebook? Should we have a look? Sure why not? What else have you got to do?


Renee says it is about time for Church. see you later! 5 hours ago · Comment · Like / Unlike Write a comment...

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RemoveRenee I went, I saw, I test drove, I got to take it home...but it still isn't mine yet. So I'm not gonna post the pictures until DH says it's a go! He better check his email tonight (tomorrow morning for him)! LOL! If not he might end up with a car regardless.Fri at 8:13pm · Comment · Like / Unlike · View Feedback (9)Hide Feedback (9)
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View all 8 commentsRenee I should explain...the link above is to pictures of an expedition...The car currently in my garage (until about 10ish) is an explorer.
Yesterday at 7:58am · DeleteJoan Can't wait to hear whether this is THE car for you so we can finally see pics!
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If you followed any of that, you might have caught that this weekend I went and looked at some cars and you might have even caught that I bought one too!

Here's the story...
I've been car shopping for a while since DH finally agreed that my old car was getting to be too much of clunker. So Thanks to the internet I've been able to do most of my shopping online. whew! Cuz looking at all the dealerships is a pain. Darly & I went to one and I ended up missing my electrician coming by. boo!

So after looking for quite a while I decided that it might help if we had our financing all lined up and I went to my bank's website. Let me say right here and now how AWESOME USAA Bank is! Along with all the other things we have through them I found that they also have a Car buyer's program...where they've worked out discounts on cars! WOO HOO!!! I immediately signed up for it and we saved so much money! :D They hooked me up with some local dealers who had the car I wanted.

I went on Friday and looked at 3 cars, test drove the one and ended up taking it home with me that night! I had a pretty good deal hammered down (after the first round went total bust! Why do they even bother playing that stupid game???) But I ended with telling them that I should really check with DH before making the final purchase. It seems only right...it's a $30K vehicle!

So I go home take some pictures and zip an email off to DH right away...and wait! and wait and wait! When it was almost noon and I still hadn't heard from DH I prayed about it and went to go buy the car. It is now ours.

Of course when I got back home, DH finally emailed me back to ask me more questions about it. LOL! In the end DH is okay with my purchase, but I'll owe him when he gets home.




Okay... The color of my car is called Black Pearl. This immediately brought up images of Pirates of the Caribbean and so it seemed that a name for the car from the movie would be in order. I'm thinking Turner or Swan for Will Turner or Elizabeth Swan. I'm leaning heavily towards Turner cuz well Orlando is CUTE! But Turner is the name of the camp where DH stayed so he's against that. Darly likes Ella for the car's name cuz she's reading Ella Enchanted right now. I could also be talked into Sparrow I suppose. But I'm not a huge Jack Sparrow fan (or Johny Depp either!) and honestly I didn't like that Elizabeth decided that after years of loving Will that she would rather have Jack. I need to see movie #3 still.

So any ideas or help?

Zhu Zhu Pets – Product Review & Contest!

Parents everywhere: Has your child been begging you for one of those cute Hamsters they see in the pet stores? Your first thought was “How much work is one of these buggers?” If you’ve ever had hamsters before you then already know about all the feeding and cleaning that is involved with real hamsters and UGH who wants to do that again? Right?

A while back we were asked if we would be willing to host a Zhu Zhu Pets party for our friends to try out a new toy. We checked out the website http://www.zhuzhupets.com/main.html and were excited for this opportunity. Like every other child Darly had been bugging me for a real live hamster because they’re so cute! And now I had this opportunity! YAY!

The day the box arrived Darly’s friend K was visiting. The girls are both 11 so I allowed them to open it up and check out the party kit. The girls immediately were able to set everything up and start having fun with their hamsters. I also allowed the girls to plan the party. We decided to not invite as many kids as the party kit had hamsters for because we wanted to give all the girls a chance to play and so that we could give a few away on our blog…more on that later. This is a shot of the girls playing with the hamster city

Besides the obvious perks of these toys (all the fun of a live hamster without the mess!) there are many other great qualities to these pets!

1) They’re so cute!
2) They make cute noises as they zoom along.
3) The habit trails have something that the hamsters read so the hamsters know what part of the trail they are in and they respond accordingly.
4) Did I mention the cuteness?
5) Your child will be happy with just the hamster toy as they run on any solid surface (they kind hop on carpet which of course leads to more cuteness!)
6) The habit trails are easy to assemble in a variety of ways…unlike a real hamster’s habit trail where once you decide how you’re going to put it together, you better leave it alone or your hamster could escape!
7) When you’re done playing with your hamster, you just turn it off!

We had our party and it was a HUGE success! The girls all loved the hamsters and had fun picking their very own from the four different hamsters (5 more coming soon!) Everyone had a blast putting their hamsters through all its paces. Here is a video of the girls playing…

I think another thing that I loved was finding out how reasonably priced Zhu Zhu Pets are. They'll be available at Walmart, ToysRUs, & Amazon.com soon!

and now... for what you've all been waiting for... the Contest! We have 3 Zhu Zhu Pets to give away. So go earn your chance to win one you'll have to first visit http://www.zhuzhupets.com/toys.html, leave a comment on my blog here with what part of the Zhu Zhu hamster city you like the best and then visit Darly's Blog and leave her a comment too. Only folks who comment on both my blog and Darly's will be entered in the drawing.

The small print I received the Zhu Zhu Pets products you see here for free from BSM Media/MomSelect in exchange for me telling you about them. It was my idea to give away the extra hamsters on my blog.

Chatting with mom

Sunday morning (yes...I'm just NOW getting to blogging about it! If you read my Facebook you already know about some of this.) as I was leaving my bedroom to come downstairs I heard the unmistakable chirp of my cell phone going off for just 3 or for notes of it's song. Enough to know that it wasn't someone on my call list...see each number stored in my call contact list has it's own ringtone assigned to it. Some of the tones are really humerous (to me anyway) and fit the caller well. I like being able to know who is on the other end of the call before answering.

okay I digress...so the phone rang for just a bit and it wasn't someone on my call list. So when I got downstairs I looked at the phone to see who had called and was shocked to see it was my mom's phone number. (yes, I know I'm a bad kid for not having my mom's phone number on my cell phone. but I should tell you that every time I call my mom it's at least a 90 min call and I AM NOT USING MY MINUTES ON THAT!!!)

I'm going to digress again... see I have a cell phone but I have it under protest. I never wanted a cell phone. I don't like them. If you need to reach me via phone, call my land line. If I'm home, I'll answer (usually!) and if I'm not home there's this really neat invention called an answering machine that will record your message for me...if you're really desparate for an answer, perhaps you should email me. Anyway if you're lucky enough to know my cell phone number you've been given directions for it's use...Call the land line first!!!

Okay back to our story...so I see it's mom and I'm in a panic mode. Why is she calling my cell phone?!?!? So from my land line I call her back and my step dad answers. Still in panic mode! why are they calling? Is mom sick again?

Step dad immediately appologizes. See he was setting up the voice mail on mom's phone and accidentally hit the send button...he tried to end the call quickly but not quick enough. But since I called back...why don't I have a chat with mom.

and so we did!

We ended up having a really good chat focused mostly on me this time. See having a deployed hubby and a hail storm and needing a new car...helped me keep the conversation on me. hee hee

So the talking about the hubby part went really fast. He's there and he's hot.

I did get some good info about the hail bit. When I was a kid we had a hail storm and they filed a claim. She said that back then they never saw the insurance check at all. it went directly to the mortgage company who dealt with the contractor after they hired him. So I guess I'll go ahead and send the check to the mortage company for them to deal with it. sigh!

We talked about how I need a new car. She tried very hard to talk me into buying in Lincoln Navigator instead of the Ford Explorer Eddie Bauer. Saying how much nicer it is and well insulated and it comes with roadside assistance & free maintence. Ummm yeah, it also comes with a price tag that is about $15K more!!! After being car payment free for about 10 years now, seeing payments that are upwards of $700 per month is quite shocking enough...I don't need one that rivals my mortgage!!!! So sorry Mom, but NO! I won't be buying a Navigator! I don't need a vehicle that is that big anyway!

I checked yesterday and it seems that the local dealer with the used 2009 Eddie Bauers has sold them. :( They had a few fleet cars that had less than 10K miles on them. sigh so now it's back to the drawing board for my new car. I can buy either an older car with more miles on it...or I can buy a new one. pout pout pout! I really wanted that blue Explorer...or the red one! But alas they are gone. They don't even have any of the Eddie Bauers left.

I cannot believe that it is already September. Where did summer go? I guess I should start bugging the kid about doing school work again. Which means that along with all the house/car and yard stuff I need to get crackin on school stuff too. sigh