Lights Out!
So yesterday I was working really hard on a post complete with pictures and everything, but Blogger wasn't cooperating and wouldn't upload my pictures, so I kept working on it all throughout the day in hopes that it would work.

And then the power went out.

And stayed out.

And it wasn't supposed to come back on until 3 AM. But it came back on at 11 PM. But then I was all tired and relaxed from doing nothing in the dark so I went to bed.

And when I got my computer working again this morning, the entry was lost.

So I'll have to start over. And I'll attempt to do it later today. OK? OK.


The Park
I took the kids to the park today. There's a standing agreement among the kindergarten class that every Thursday at 1:00 is park day. We haven't been for the past 5 weeks because of summer school. It was nice to see everyone again. The kids were having a great time until The Pink Princess fell out of the swing. Don't ask me how. Then things calmed down, and then The Purple Dragon fell out of the swing. Again, don't ask me how. The Dragon has a scraped elbow, and The Princess has two scraped knees. I'm sure they'll live.


There Just Ain't Pleasin' Anyone
The Pink Princess was true to form today and on a roll. The conversation went something like this:

Princess: Alex is so lucky, his backyard goes all the way to the top of the mountain.
Me: He is pretty lucky, it's lots of fun to climb the mountain.
Princess: I wish my yard was like that.
Me: Well your yard is nice too. After all, you can run through the spinklers, and kick balls, and play baseball, AND you have a swimming pool.
Princess: Alex has a swimming pool. And an electric Lego train.
Me: You have a dollhouse.
Princess: Mooooo-oooom (two syllables), dollhouses are for girls.
Me: Well, you do have a lot of nice toys. Alex has toys that you don't have, and you have toys that Alex doesn't have.
Princess: Well, I wish our yard was bigger.
Me: I think our yard is plenty big. It's bigger than a lot of other kids yards. And we have grass. Did you know that some of the kids in our neighborhood don't have grass in their yard?
Princess: Well they're lucky. They get to play in the mud.

AAAAAAGH!


Rebate Update
You may recall that I sent in many many rebates at the end of June. Everything was supposed to take a minimum of 4 weeks (or longer), so I haven't been expecting anything to show up. But my portable DVD/CD/MP3 Player showed up today. Okay, I guess it's OURS. But it's here. I haven't opened the box yet, but I'm sure it'll be fun to play with. 1 rebate down, 5 to go.


Sara's Room:

The Pink Princess loves her new room. It's very pink. My original goal was to spend about $100 on her room, but I broke the budget when we did the chair rail. I spent $30 on pink paint, $20 on the desk, $15 on the curtains, $10 on the canopy, $10 on the pink lamp, and about $25 on the pink mushroom chair, and I still need to buy a chair for the desk, but the chair rail was about $50 in and of itself. I had to buy white paint too, but that's being split among 2 or 3 or 5 (LOL!) other rooms... so that's only another $3-$5. I'm very satisfied with the results, even though I broke the budget, but the important part is that The Princess likes it.



The dresser is now pink. A friend of ours was throwing away this dresser back in Virginia and we quickly rescued it. They had painted it very bright red, blue and yellow. We quickly painted it white with light green and pastel yellow drawers. Now it's pink!



The Pink Princess and her dollhouse. One of the first things she wanted to set up in her room. She doesn't really "play" with it. She just likes to set it up.



The bed and her princess canopy.



Details of the chair rail. Yep, I painted it myself. It ain't perfect, but you can't really tell unless you get right up close to it in the room. It's a nice touch.