19 days to go... what else can we break?

Before I start, I want to take a moment in reflection. Ken called me from work today to tell me our friend and animator legend Ken Southworth had died this morning. Ken wrote up a lovely post on his blog, so please go read it if you have a chance. He was such a lovely man and so talented. This is a drawing he did for Ken and I during one of this last visits to the school (He was 84 when he did this!). Good ol' Scooby Doo, a personally fav of mine growing up. It was an honor to know you Ken, we will miss you.

Yes, in the past 48 hours we have had to replace not only our microwave but one of Ariel's beloved toys (the phone, good thing its a $12 toy!) and our keyboard and mouse to our computer. Argh. Our mouse had been acting up this past year, basically it would stop working and I could eventually get it started again. Well on Tuesday morning it wouldn't come back, even after I tried every trick. Blah.

So with Ariel in tow, we went off to buy a new one. Now ours is a cordless one, and it came with our keyboard (also cordless) which was also showing signs of age. At London Drugs they had another set on sale, so I got it and took it home to install. Here is were it gets stupid!

I install the new set, following the limited directions. Literally, it said plug in receiver and run the cd to finish installing the program. Well the mouse worked when I moved it and figured it was fine and restarted the computer when prompted. When I then had to sign in to the password area the keyboard didn't work! I called Ken who got good old brother Mike to call me. We tried several things, trying to see if was really online etc. Finally he said for Ken to bring home his keyboard from work (one that had a cord) so we could at least log in.

I called the London Drugs people to see if they had any insight and after explaining my issue the guy said that it hadn't finished installing, and once I log in it would finish. I laughed saying, well that's kinda hard when one can't sign in with a keyboard that doesn't work, and that the instructions should not say to uninstall the old one until the new one is ready. He agreed and when I emailed Mike later to tell him he agreed it was indeed stupid. I am happy to say or type rather, that the keyboard is all working now.

On a happier note, the goodies I ordered on Black Friday arrived this week. Did get dinged on customs a bit, but it was still an amazing deal over all. Here are some Ariel got now, everything else is going under the tree. I must thank Brenda for the lovely 20% off coupon that I added to the 30% off that Gymboree had for Black Friday. With %50 off in total, I got AMAZING deals on all this stuff. Yay!

My little ballerina in training!


I think Aunty Kara is going to like these ones.


A fuzzy outfit for those winter days.


My personal fav, my cupcake cutie!


Gosh she is growing up so fast!


Ariel also got her room decorated this week, with her nativity set...


...and her own tree! Every ornament on that tree is hers! She got 5 first Christmas ornaments last year, and not one of them is the same. Pretty darn incredible. She also got several from her Grammy when we visited the Christmas shop in Michigan last Spring. I love those Sesame Street cookie ones, too cute!


I got send a cool link today from a friend in Germany, and she asked if I pass it on here on the blog. Its called Free Rice and its basically a page where you can enhance your English vocab skills and with each correct word you donate 20 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program. Pretty cool, so check it out.

Lastly, I am happy to say Ariel and I now have very cute nightgowns! I got most of the sewing done last night and did the finishing today.


Tomorrow is the cookie exchange, yum... I am very excited!