The other day I called to cancel a service with our cable provider. Guy wanted to see some Australian Rules football which was only covered occasionally by a premium sports network. We added the sports package for the season. When I called to cancel the service the guy tells me he is adding another service on for me that is free. He then goes onto tell me I’ll be charged for it starting the next month. I tell him I’m not interested. He makes a shocked sound and reminds me it is free. I told him I’d be happy to add the service if it was always free. To this he replies, “People always want to have everything for free.” This got me thinking about so many things.
The first thing I thought about was how he was trying to guilt me into trying something we really didn’t need and we would have to remember to cancel before we started getting charged for it anyway. The second was that I wasn’t asking for a free service and in fact pay a lot of money to have the cable services we utilize each month including the HD cable with DVR service, high speed internet and basic phone. Packaged together we save the cost of the phone each month over separating these services to other cheaper providers. Don’t try to make me feel guilty buster. I don’t.
The third thing I got onto was Facebook. I love Facebook. It is a great social networking place that I utilize to keep track of my family and friends. It is also a wonderful business tool for me. All the time I see posts from people complaining about Facebook. Mostly it is about privacy and advertisers getting their information. The only reason none of us have to pay a fee to belong to this amazing site is because advertisers pay to try and tempt us with their wares. Are they really getting your very personal information? Nope. Why is it that so many people expect to have this service for their own personal enjoyment, image sharing {huge amounts of server memory} and use with absolutely no give from themselves? I don’t get it. We should all know that nothing in life is free. There is always a cost associated with something whether it be emotional, financial or spiritual. These costs are in all relationships in our lives from family, friends & at church to business, school and with strangers.
This week I really thought about my tailbone pain and our yearly insurance deductibles, copays and coinsurance. This pregnancy is handled much different then the last. Our premiums are over $250 higher per month, the pregnancy deductible went from $500 to $2500 and we are now responsible for 20% coinsurance over that. With these things taken into consideration it makes a lot of sense to get my tailbone fixed before the insurance year is up in July. I have an appointment with a great Orthopedic who is a spinal specialist on Thursday. It will be interesting to see what they recommend. Will they recommend doing it soon so I can heal before labor and delivery? Or will they recommend doing it soon after? My thoughts on the before is will the tailbone area fully heal and not be susceptible to a new break during the stress of labor? Regardless, I’m very excited to get it fixed. It has been 8 years of adjusting how I sit and looking for cushy seats so I don’t put any direct pressure on the tailbone. It was broken on a roller coaster ride when the lap bar had a several inch gap and wasn’t snug against my thighs. Yes, I could carry around a donut or cushion, but I am apparently too vain or don’t want the extra item to carry around in addition to twins.
Madison and Blake came along with me to a session for my friends kids. There was no other time to schedule when Guy was available for the kids in time for the Christmas cut off. I was really impressed at how well they did. I only had to threaten them with being in trouble twice and Madison got her feelings hurt once when I didn’t give her enough time to adjust to them before hopping into work. We had a bit of a snafu when we first arrived. I put Blake & Maddie in the car just after waking them up from a nap to get there in time. Blake was so relaxed and sleepy he peed in his car seat. We haven’t been taking any extra clothes for a few months now despite the fact they are only 2 1/2. I improvised and washed his undies in the sink and tried to get as much wetness out of them as possible before putting them back on. His pants were way to peed to do the same. He had on an undershirt, long sleeve shirt and a hoodie. I took the button up long sleeve shirt and put it on him like a kilt tying the sleeves together at the waist. He rocked it!
Here he is going off with the girls to the next spot at our location.
And showing off his “kilted” cuteness.
Here they are sitting quietly while we were doing our thing. They were looking at Lisa giving instructions to her kids.
Saturday we were in heaven. I had an awesome shoot with a very interesting and pretty 2011 high school senior, we went to a birthday party, out to eat and to the toy store. On top of this we had snow!
The birthday party was at a place with a ton of bounce ‘houses’. Here is one of the birthday girls, Niomi, with Blake and Madison at the bottom of the slide.
Guy at the bottom with the kids.
Love the hair on Angie! She is mom to both birthday girls.
I had so much fun going on the slide over and over again with the kids. This pregnancy is so awesome that I can do all these things comfortably.
The stop action in this shot is the bestest! No Guy didn’t throw the ball at me, but I love that it looks like he did.
It’s so funny to see our Maddie off playing with all the big kids, and then act like the 2 1/2 year old she actually is mentally when she gets a little boo boo. She is still nursing the popped knuckle joint she got in Miami over Thanksgiving which is the part she seems to hurt most often when playing. Here she is cuddling with daddy for a minute then back on the road to playville.
I didn’t bring my wide angle lens in with us so here is a partial shot of the kids and parents who attended the party. The birthday girls are the in the front row closest to the camera in their parents laps.
My kids love cake and ice cream. I passed as usually since it just doesn’t appeal to me. Guy partook of the yumminess.
Our first and maybe only snow of the season. It typically doesn’t snow much around here. It was more like wet ice once it accumulated anywhere.
Blake about to be hit with a snowball from Guy! They kept asking him to throw more and more and more.
Maddie getting hit with a nice wet one. You can see the big wet snowball still clinging to Blake’s pants.
It’s super cold here this week. Tomorrow is the first time we get to venture outside since everyone has come to us the last couple days. We are off to their 2 1/2 year doctors visit. I’m interested to see where Blake is falling on the charts this time.