Pujols...Smoojols!

I am sure many of you wonder what I am thinking about Pujols moving on from the St. Louis Cardinals (or maybe you're not, but I'm going to tell you anyway).

Bye Bye Pujols!

Here's my thing.  I love Cardinals baseball no matter the players.  Ozzie Smith was my first favorite player, then Tom Pagnozzi (ten points for anyone who remembers who that is...), then So Taguchi (my all time fave although it is a close race between Ozzie and So), and now Molina.  Pujols was never my favorite.  Yes, the past ten years have been awesome with Pujols, but I really liked Pujols because I thought he played for the love of the game, not the money.  I give him props for being an amazing player and I like that too, but I really loved his commitment to St. Louis and his love of just playing baseball to play baseball. 
With his choice to go to California for more money, he apparently isn't the player I thought he was.  And that is ok.  That is his decision and I know he made the decision that he and his wife felt was best for his family at the time.  I wish him only the best out there.
Although...it sure would be nice if the Cardinals make it to the playoffs or World Series this year and the Angels don't.  I think there is a definite possibility of that happening this year.
It is going to be an interesting year for baseball with the loss of Pujols and LaRussa.  The team is solid though and I think the Cardinals always play best as the underdogs.  Underdogs, you ask?  Yes, underdogs.  Even though they won the World Series in '11, with the loss of Pujols and Tony, they will be back at the bottom working their way up in the eyes of most people (but not mine-I know they can do it!)
We, of course, have many plans for the summer with the Cardinals although this year definitely has less traveling than last year.  Click here if you can't remember where all we went last year and want a recap.  I've added links in the original post that will take you to each trip! (FYI-the links are in the names of the cities.  If you hover over them, they will turn blue.  Links don't show up well in this blog layout I have going on right now.)
As baseball season gets closer and we have more solid plans, I will blog about what Cardinals baseball 2012 has in store for us!!

What I'll do for a deal...

I have been researching swing sets for Logan pretty much since last summer.  We are in a rental with a smaller back yard, so we needed a small set.  I didn't want to pay a whole lot because we will eventually get him a nice wooden swing set.  I had hoped to get one at our consignment sale, but they were already gone by the time I got there.  I opened my email to day and see a great deal on this:


The Toys R Us price was over $100 cheaper than I could find it anywhere else.  I called our local store and I was told they had one in stock.  Since I was worried it would be gone by the time I got there, I decided to order it online since the website said shipping was free on everything.  So into my online cart the item goes and I check out the total...WTH!!  Shipping was $224!!  Shipping alone was more than the $150 price of the set.  I know Logan would love this set because of all the climbing areas.  It is really hard to find a set like this with a decent swing, so even though it has no swing-he needs this. 

So off I go to our local Toys R Us.  I get there, grab the card and take it up to the front to pay for the set.   Guess what- they don't really have any in stock.  The store manager tells me that they can probably get the shipping waived and order it online for me.  So after about 15 minutes and several phone calls later, it is determined that this is one of the few items that shipping cannot be waived.  Then another girl thinks she can get it from another store.  After about 30 minutes, many phone calls, and the help of about 4 other staff personnel, I was able to purchase the set for $140 (I had another $10 off coupon that could only be used in the store) and the set should be in either next week or the week after.

I really appreciate that they went to so much trouble to allow me to get the item, but Toys R Us is a big chain and you would think that they would have a quicker way of getting this situation figured out.

a) who charges $220 shipping??? Really?  There's an easy fix to that problem.

b) why do they make it so difficult for the employees to get the items shipped from another store?  Living in rural America, our stores rarely keep large items in stock, so I am sure this is not the first time a request like mine has come through the door.

c) it should not take almost an hour for a huge store like Toys R Us to figure out how to get an item for a customer that they do not have in stock.

d) why not have rain checks on the price?  That would have made things very easy.  Give me a rain check for the price and call me when another set came into the store.  That would have taken like 5 minutes.

All in all, our local Toys R Us worked really hard to get me my item for the price I wanted, but it seems they shouldn't have had to work so hard.  I'm very excited for the set to come.  It will be Logan's Easter present from the Easter Bunny!!

Worry, worry, worry...

I have officially decided that becoming a mother should come with a disclaimer (among many others).

Warning-Days of worrying ahead!!

Every single day, there is at least 5 new things in the news, in a magazine, or a comment from friends and family that cause me to worry anew. 

Today, I was confronted by many. 
a)  comments from friends about my VERY researched daycare choice that were less than stellar.

b)  apparently all drinking water is tainted and we all may die from drinking it (I actually didn't even read this article because I just didn't want to know...)

c)  taking my son to a very fun park that unfortunately is a death trap for my toddler.  (Pretty much all fun parks are this way for me.  Having a toddler with no fear makes playgrounds awesome for him, but stressful for me!)

d)  going out to dinner and knowing our eating out days are numbered.  Logan is a terror in restaurants now.

So, what is a worried Mom to do?  Pick my battles. 

I have been very pleased so far with Logan's daycare and he seems very happy when I drop him off and happy when I pick him up.  It always looks clean and his diapers are always changed regularly.  Unfortunately, no daycare is ever going to be perfect, but this one is working for us.  His social skills really seem to be improving which is the main reason he's going.

I plan to continue drink water and let Logan drink water also.  End of story.

I just keep a constant eye on Logan at the park.  He loves it and he will be fine!

I'm going to have to learn to cook (or at least start making some more of the easy meals I already know how to make).  We will most likely end up saving money in the process.

So there it is.  I confronted my worries, prioritized, and Logan made it through the day happy and healthy.  He is now snugly in bed (but I better go check to make sure he's breathing....just another of my constant daily battles with worry!)

Cable smable...

I hate Cable providers.  No matter where you live they have a monopoly thing going and you are just stuck.  We originally had satellite when we moved down here, but switched to cable because it was going to save us around $40 a month.  I'm all for cutting costs.  The original guy who came and installed our cable brought us a box that would not DVR and after 4 or 5 calls to the cable provider, we finally got a box that DVR'd.  Now over the past several months I've noticed that the DVR fills up really fast and finally counted how many hours it would hold.  25 HOURS!!  That is nothing.  I like to tape Lifetime movies and cartoons for myself and L to watch when nothing else is on TV.  Yes, we have OnDemand, but it's a pretty lame selection for the most part.  I decided to call and see if something was wrong with our DVR because I've never heard of a DVR that held so little.  After talking to 3 different people in 3 seperate phone calls, it was decided by all of them that our DVR should definitely hold more.   Easy fix, right?  Nope!  I got three different answers.  First lady said they could probably send someone out, but to call back to see if they had any more DVR boxes available.  Second man was an idiot and nothing he said made sense at all.  He just kept telling me I was going to have to pay to get a external hard drive.  The lady today agreed that we would have to pay for someone to bring it to our house, no they could not mail it.  BUT-if we wanted a new box for free, I could go to the local cable office and get one there.  Ok, that's not too bad.  WA-IT!!!  Our local office MAY not even have the external hard drive and we could not call to check because the local offices don't take phone calls...SERIOUSLY!?!  I decided since the office was only a few minutes from our house, I would stop by to see if they had the hard drive on my way to the store to pick up milk for L.  I get there and the lady had no idea what I was talking about with an external hard drive, but she had a box that she thought would work better (THOUGHT being the operative word), but I would have to go home, get our old box, and bring it in to switch it out.  PLUS-do it in the next hour because she wouldn't hold the box any longer than that for me.  Are you FREAKIN' kidding me?  Needless to say, I came home, told J what happened and we will be switching back to satellite when we move.  I plan to call the cable company and explain that they will be losing multiple months of cable service payments because:

a) they couldn't send someone to our house to bring us a DVR that should have worked in the first place without charging us
b) that even if I picked it up myself I wouldn't be guaranteed it would be a better box
c)they expected me to come pick up said box right away and refused to hold it for more than one hour for me

Seems like they will be losing a whole lot more money that I would have in that deal, huh?  Satellite is going to cost us the same now (we are going with a different company that we had before) and we'll get more channels including more HD channels.  And we have no contract with the cable company, so they can't charge us any ridiculous fees. 
Ok, I'm done with my rant....

How Expensive?!?!?

How is it that being healthy has gotten so expensive?  It's no wonder why our nation is so overweight.  I'm always amazed at how hard my checkbook takes a beating when I try to be healthier.  It costs to get assistance to lose weight, it costs to get fit, it costs to eat healthy, etc. 
Today J and I decided we should really look into joining a gym.  Up north, our park district had a huge facility with multiple pools (including an indoor pool play park), 2 indoor tracks, tons of free classes, daycare, basketball courts.  You get my drift-it was massive and awesome!  For all that stuff, we paid a fairly decent rate.  I started calling local gyms and rec centers down here today- HOLY COW!- did I get a shocker!  Gym memberships are so expensive down here!  One gym wanted $65 per month per person unless we agreed to a 1 year contract (and who really wants to do that-what if you don't end of using it and want to cancel?)  This gym was pretty basic and no pool or indoor track. 
I also think of how much I spend to lose weight in general.  I am not an internally motivated person when it comes to losing weight.  I have absolutely no control over myself and will not be accountable to myself.  That being said-I do great losing weight if I have to be accountable to someone else.  That is why WW works so well for me!  I have to walk in the door every week and step on the scale and I feel so ashamed if I haven't lost weight and it upsets me all week and forces me to do better.  It's totally my speed and I'm very successful.  BUT-it costs a lot!!! 
Grocery shopping is another thing that gets me.  Ever since little man was born, I have tried to shop for more fresh foods and less processed foods.  The produce and meat alone that I buy breaks the bank!  I probably spend 3 times more on groceries now than I did when J and I lived off of Hamburger Helper and frozen meals. 
If I ever win the lottery-I'm gonna build a free fitness facility that sells cheap produce and offers free weight loss help among other things.  Of course as my Dad always says "You can't win the lottery if you don't buy the tickets!" 
Guess I'm headed to the nearest gas station now! Bye!