I had seen the Flip Video camera on Oprah and had been wanting one for a while, primarily because the videos I’ve taken on our old digital camera were of poor quality, and got even worse when I would try to upload them to YouTube.  I considered getting one for my birthday this past year, but I had read some stuff saying it wasn’t very good, so I forgot about it.

I revisited the idea after we got our DSLR camera and lost the video capability that our old digital camera had.  I found some more reviews, and better yet, some examples of Flip Video movies, and decided to check the Boxing Day sales for a good deal.  Boxing Day, by the way, is that weird Canadian day-after Christmas holiday which is a lot like our Black Friday.  As they say, “When in Canada…” Read the rest of this entry »

We took the kids to the mall today so Calista could talk to Santa.  Ace and Nate weren’t keen on sitting with him, so Santa got down on the floor and let them sit on a little sled for the picture.  And Nate did sit with Santa after a bit.  It was so cute.  Santa is the best!  And if you look closely, you’ll see he likes Starbucks like a true Pacific Northwester.  ;)

Shh. Shh. Shh. Shh. Do you hear that? It’s the winds of change.  (Yes, that’s a totally cheesy line from Monsters Inc, but I don’t care.)  What started out with the potential to be a really bad day turned out to be a pretty good one after all.

The bad part was that I went into the garage to grab a rice milk and as I bent down to pick it up, I bashed my mouth on the corner of the recycle bin and split my lip.  I started bleeding and man did it hurt!  My gums are bruised, my lip is split, and I had some skin hanging down the inside of my upper lip.  I said “had” because as I was trying to bite it off, it got caught between two of my teeth and RIPPED off.  AUGH!  I shudder just thinking about the pain… Read the rest of this entry »

When our van was totaled back in October, we had two Sunshine Kids Radian 65 car seats, as well as Calista’s Graco Turbo Booster.  When a vehicle is in an accident, the car seats need to be replaced, even if there is no visible damage to them, because there is a risk that the components could have been weakened or compromised in the collision.

Our insurance told us that they would only give $50 per seat, but the Radians are $200 car seats!  Then the insurance agent told me if I could produce the original receipts for the seats, that they would give me the amount I had paid for them.

Normally, I would have these filed nicely in my “receipts” drawer.  For some reason, though, I couldn’t find them.  I started searching online and did locate one of them, but couldn’t remember where I bought the second one. Read the rest of this entry »