Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Oh, What a Day!

At this point I would much rather be blogging about preparations for the upcoming Iowa State Fair; but as many of you know our lives this summer have made that a bit impossible.  However, I have received numerous e-mails from people who are entering and prepping for the upcoming fair.  All I have to say is HOW AWESOME!  Good Luck to all of you and I hope you have lots of fun!

Now for a word of warning - the next part of the post is more of a story than a blog but I wanted to put it in writing.  So no pictures but I'll try to make it an amusing tale.

For our family Friday through Monday this past weekend was simply a flurry of activity as we finished off all those little (and in our case some large) projects that we expected to get to slowly as we had time and money around the house (we really never expected to move - at least not anytime in the near future).  The house is lovely now.  My poor husband had to put up with "wow - that would have been great to have done 'x number' years ago".  We still have a few little details to work on and some more cleaning both inside and out but we accomplished a lot.  The boys had lots of sandbox and outdoor time but not a lot of mommy and daddy attention the past few days.  Although Clark was a big help moving empty boxes for me and even Grant helped haul and load some little items that were just his size.

On Monday the inspector and buyers were to do their walk through starting at 1 PM.  So, we worked up until we needed to leave.  We thought we would take the boys out for a treat and get some lunch and head to a movie.  If we all fell asleep in the air conditioned theater we decided that wouldn't be all bad.  First we needed to deposit a refund check and take out some cash.  Upon depositing our check we realized our bank account was over drawn.  That seemed very strange to me since I had been carefully watching our ins and outs with all the extra bills and purchases we've had to make with the finishing work on the house.  But I thought - well, I must have miscalculated somewhere very badly.  Normally, I would have headed straight home to check the accounts and see where I went wrong but that wasn't an option.  With two hungry kids in the back of the car we had to come up with some sort of plan.  Luckily, while cleaning out the garage Alan and the boys had loaded up our pop cans to take to recycling.  On our way to the recycling center I went through my purse and found a $5.00 bill and $4.00 in my change purse.

Of course, Grant fell asleep in the back seat during our driving around town.  Once to the recycling center I stayed with sleeping Grant while Clark and Alan took in our cans.  Clark felt like such a big boy hauling in two bags at the same time all on his own.  We could tell this little excursion was fun for Clark because he talked about it non-stop and asked a million questions when we were back in the car.  It has been a long time since Alan and I have taken back cans in order to get a meal but if that's what it took to get some food so be it.  We now had $19.00 to spend.  How ironic - we had plenty of food at home but we couldn't go home.  It was a bizarre feeling.  We headed to HyVee and bought some fruit, meat, cheese, chocolate milk and crackers.  We bought a couple fountain drinks and sat down in a booth in their meal seating area.  The boys thought it was a great picnic.  They were completely happy with their meal.  We decided to just enjoy the time sitting together as a family (in air conditioning).  We laughed and munched and had a good time.

Of course, at this point we still had about 1.5 hours of time to kill before heading home.  The boys decided even though it was hot they wanted to go play at a playground.  Mommy decided on the most shady one she could think of in Bandshell Park and we headed out.  While at the park my husband gets a phone message from Shazaam saying they have noticed unusual activity on our card.  We call in and yes, over the weekend while I wasn't paying close attention some charges had been made on our card - not by us.  We tell our hot and sticky boys that we need to go back to the bank and figure out what happened to our account.  Clark is determined to find the "bad guys" that stole our money.  Which somehow morphed into a lesson on Jesse James - having a history buff for a husband comes in quite handy at times.

Funny enough at the bank I felt worse for the bank manager who told us this was the second case she had handled that day than I did for us.  Yes, we had our entire account wiped out but we signed all the paperwork and the bank will take care of it (in about 7 - 10 days).  The boys even got suckers which made them happy little campers.  The bad thing is the banks have to pay out of their own pockets for these crimes and the perpetrators are rarely caught or held accountable.  Sad.  All I have to say though is stupid on their part for stealing our pin number - since there wasn't all that much to take at the time anyway.

Amazingly enough after the bank we still had a 1/2 hour to kill.  We headed to the library.  The boys found some good books (since most of theirs are currently packed up it was nice to get some new reading material) and had some good play time.  Grant snuggled up with daddy to read some books and do some puzzles and Clark played at the Lego table (no surprise there).  Having someone else along I was even able to look for some books at my leisure and my husband found the comic book section and found some items he has been wanting to look at too. Oh and I found the Brer Rabbit collection of stories that I decided we had to check out.  I remember reading the story of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby with my grandma before naptime over and over again.  Grandma once told me it was by far my favorite story.  I would beg to have her reread it to me.

Long story day short - we went home and we enjoyed a nice evening meal followed by early bedtimes for all (and mommy enjoyed reading Brer Rabbit to the boys at bedtime).  Oh- and we still have $4.00!  You know - all in all the day made me very grateful that God has so greatly blessed our little family.  Although sometimes the end of the month feels a little tight I know that we won't go without and that is a great blessing.

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