Feels like fall…

 It’s Julie’s birthday! Happy birfday, Gma Julie! We made her crepes for breakfast and Ross is mid-way through a red velvet cake for after dinner, skillet lasagna 🙂 We got her a little gift with some soothing leg lotion and tea tree oil foot spray and aloe infused slippers. Good stuff 🙂 

All the leaves are dying, I am not ready for this… Kasin is switching back to Denali Elementary, the school by our house, starting tomorrow. He is in Mrs Becwar’s class, and I have no idea who she is… we looked her up in last year’s year book, though, and she looks nice enough. We went in on Friday and got all of his supplies and his notebooks and stuff from Woodriver… Wed was the finally straw, for me.. he faked sick and got sent home, and practically cried on Thursday when I sent him back to school… I was just so done at that point. I was trying to talk him into having fun, "you have Music today! that’s fun! you like music!" and he said "No, Mrs Hackett is mean, I only liked music at Denali because of Mrs Oboe… I miss her… she was nice, and fun…" he was so unhappy, and the one meeting I had with the teacher was so negative.. Denali is so warm and encouraging, and Woodriver seems so dour and mean spirited. He’s only in 2nd grade, I don’t want him to start hating school already… and he LOVED school at Denali, and they loved him, too! So, back he goes.

Im okay with it, even though he’s missed the first three weeks. Could be worse, right? It will be fine. Julie goes to work at the same time Kasin needs to be at school, so she’s going to drop him off at 815 on her way to work each morning, and for the time being she’s going to take her lunch break at 2:45 and pick him up at 3, then bring him to Educare.. hopefully, he can get into the After School Program for free, and then he will just stay at Denali until Ross/Julie gets off work and one of them will pick him up. 

Ross bought Jesse’s car, and Jesse and Jamie are scheduled to leave the state on the 20th.. they’ve had two garage sales and made about $200, got rid of some of the bigger items they were hoping to unload, and are giving away a lot of things.. they also have listed some stuff on CraigsList, trying to get rid of things they aren’t taking.. they aren’t taking very much with them, as they’re going to drive. Both of them had their last day of work on Friday. 🙁 I dont want them to gooooooo….

So Ross has Jesse’s old Grand Am, he bought it from Jesse for $900. He has a personal loan at a local FCU and has like $110/mo payments for 11 months, or something like that. Ross is hoping to pay off most of it with his dividend, though. I’m hoping to save most of my dividend… *sigh* I’ve budgeted $500 for xmas shopping for the kids, and I’m sure I’ll spend a little of my actual paychecks on stuff for Ross/Julie and other people, too. Christmas is so expensive. I want the kids to have an equal amount of stuff from me/Ross, but the things Kasin wants are so much more expensive than the stuff I’m getting for Milo. Milo’s getting a Little People farm and tractor with the farm animals and the farmers, and some Little People lift-the-flap books, a couple of bath toys, and some paints and brushes and easel paper for his table-top easel that Keely got him. He’s really been digging Elmo lately, so I might get him an Elmo stuffy and possibly some Sesame Street DVDs. There’s several Elmo ABC/123 and Potty Time books/dvds, so I may get him those, as well as "The Best Of Elmo" from Sesame Street’s collection. I’ve never been big on Elmo stuff, and I honestly tried to avoid it (worked with Kasin) but Keely has all these Elmo apps on her phone that she lets Milo play with, so he always asks for Elmo now, and that has got him watching Sesame Street on Netflix. At least it’s a quality show 🙂

Elmo just seems so generic and overdone, he’s kind of annoying, too… lol. Oh well, I’m sure Milo doesn’t mind. 

Anyways, Kasin is getting a few Ninjago Lego sets, and the season 1 dvds of the show, as well as some DS games and MAYBE the Mario Chess game.. I am reluctant to buy it for him, because I think he will take all the pieces out and play with them like action figures, rather than keeping them in the box to actually play Chess with, and then I think the pieces will get broken/lost. He used to have all these sets of all the figurines, but he broke or lost most of them.. I’ve replaced a few of them but they always disappear again, so I’m not going to do that over and over. He has been asking for this Mario Chess Set for the last two years, and it’s on Amazon as well as in our local Comic Shop.. it’s expensive, though, like $40. I’ll probably get him some Pokemon cards and figures for his stocking, as well. He’s getting a pokemon DS game, as well… I feel like he isn’t getting very much, but all the stuff he wants is SO expensive… I might get him a Pokemon sticker book he’s been asking for at Barnes and Noble, too. 

I like to do matching sets of things, like a couple years back he got a ton of TMNT stuff for Xmas, and Santa usually brings Art Supplies, something that forever need to be replaced. I like to have a "theme" from Santa and one from me.. so like, Ninjago from me, and Pokemon from Santa, that kind of thing.. but I dont stick to it too strictly, I just like to get him complete sets of things rather than, say, ONE Ninja Turtle figure and then he has to wait and collect the other ones at other events. I got him all 4, Splinter, Shredder, the Pizza shooter van, and a few TMNT movies. Maybe that’s overboard? lol. Milo’s getting Little People and Elmo, Kasin’s getting Ninjago and Pokemon. Solid. I just gotta figure out how to divide it up into Santa/Parent gifts, and figure out how to not spend a million dollars on Xmas and still get him cool stuff.. Milo’s getting a lot of little items, so he’ll have a lot more to open, and his gifts will look "bigger," so I’ll have to talk with Kasin before Xmas and tell him that his presents were more expensive that Milo’s, and that’s why Milo seems to have "more." 

Uhoh, Milo woked up from his nap, time to go. 🙂