She gets it from me!

    Ok, so at first I was a little weird about posting a blog entry just braggin' about my kid. But then I was like "HELLO", that's what parents do!
I mean really... why do we push so hard for our children to become doctors or lawyers and the like? So we can say, "my daughter is totally a LAWYER. Yeah, that's right. She makes loads of money, and I think she even helped your kid get out of jail once!"
   Ok not really.
But I digress. I love little Abby and I am so proud of her, I'm braggin' on my blog!
Now keep in mind, she is still learning how to talk. So she can't enunciate all of them perfectly.




So when she was itty bitty, we started her on the "Your child can read" thing. She LOVED it. But with the stress of buying the new house it was pushed aside and she stopped watching because there was just no time. But we started it back up when she was about 12 months old.
Whether that helped or not, I dunno. Because you see, they teach reading by simple phonetics. So your child could read an entire novel and still not know the alphabet. So that's why I wonder.

    But I will say... she is OBSESSED with Elmo and Sesame Street. Her whole freakin' world is Elmo. I'm not a huge TV person, and I know it's bad to let your kids watch a lot but she watches it over and over again. (Thanks TIVO.)
So one day in the bath, she said a few letters with her foam alphabet. We weren't really paying attention until we noticed that she was getting them right! So a little later I busted out some flash cards and started working with her. She learned about 4 letters per day.
Elmo also got her going with numbers. She can recognize 5,3,7 and 2.
We also do colors and shapes and such.
But isn't that SUPER?!?! My little genius!
*tear*

Argh Corporate America! (Long and bitter post...)

Riddle me this...
How is it that the company you work for punishes you for being a great employee?

Allow me to explain.

     My husband works for a company, obviously. And the company on a whole is fantastic! Good pay, good benefits, etc... But his department is a little, well, different.

   You see each week they have what they call "goal". It's not a commission, but a point system in place to which you can determine what you can get on your bonus paychecks. Now first off, they call it a "bonus", but basically if you don't make this "bonus", you're fired. And now any points that you make over the goal is just more money in your pocket.
    Now this "goal" is not easily achieved. you have to really work hard day in and day out to make it. Almost everyone reaches the goal, but some don't, and some go over. But you see, my husband is a super star! He is very good at what he does, and he works really hard. He will go in early, or stay late in order to make OVER the goal so that I can stay home with our kids.
(Thank you honey!!)
Sometimes he would go WAY over, and it was super! But on a whole, we know about how much he will be getting each bonus with the extra points.
    But awhile ago, they sort of figured something out.
They noticed that he (and a few others) were able to go over the goal. So what did they do? They sent out a mass email (an EMAIL!!)  informing people that the new "goal" was now being increased. And when people complained, they explained that they now know how many points are POSSIBLE. Now granted they did increase the bonus, BY $50!!! which is nothing compared to what the extra points would have done.

But whatever... grin and bear it right?
So what did my super star of a husband do?

He worked even HARDER!!! He was going in at like 4:30 am sometimes, just to make OVER what he used to make before in order to keep the bonus the same.

And a few weeks ago just GUESS WHAT HAPPENED...

Another freakin' email was sent out informing people that once again the goal was made higher. But the bonus was THE SAME!. Based on the same logic as before. So Scott emailed his superiors pleading with them on behalf of his coworkers and himself explaining that this new goal won't be achievable for others, and in order for him to make the same amount he has to work even more now! But it fell on deaf ears.

Unfortunately this new goal is just to high. it is almost twice what it was when he started. If he goes in early every day and works non-stop, he will just be able to make the 100%.

But "THE MAN" is happy.
They now have an overworked department whose revenue is way up, moral is way down, and the customers are unhappy because people are rushing through the work too fast to make points. So things are getting slapped together. So much so that they had to hire people and make his team answer the volume of calls coming in.

And to put a little salt on the wound, they informed us yesterday that they are now going to take a standard supplemental percentage tax rate of 25% out of each bonus check. Which, with our income bracket and me not working, is WAY more then what we would normally contribute to taxes on our bonus checks. So we are facing MAJOR income changes.
Granted we will get the money back next year, but the government is getting an intrest free loan from us that we don't want to lend.

So ARGH!!!

Mom's day!

Mother's day was awesome this year! It rocked like a boat at sea!
I got gifts, which are ALWAYS cool! One was:

A DVD of one of the funniest movies EVER...








(2 thumbs up from me)

And a new faucet for the sink!
I know it sounds odd, but my husband knows me...

Followed by breakfast, Scott doing the dishes, a call from my son (who mainly wanted to know his Facebook password I won't give him), church, and then dinner at the in-laws!
SUPER DAY!!! I still did some cleaning, but only because I love it so much.

I tried to call my step mom, but left a message. And then I talked to my mom for like almost an hour.

And apparently I am like the
BEST MOM IN THE WHOLE WORLD!!!!
Yeah huh!
My kids and husband said so!!!
So there.

A STORY ABOUT MEAT

   So there I sit one day, just hanging around and checking my email and I notice the subject line of one of them. It states something about the cost of meat, and I notice it's from our ward emergency preparedness person.

(Is that an actual tittle?!? Moving on...)

"Hmm.." I think to my self.
    The email goes on to state that apparently the meat people (call them whatever. You could say farmer, but we all know there isn't much farming going on. It's more like a genetics lab) are reducing their livestock to all time lows because of the increase in the cost of ethanol (corn).
It continues to point out that for the next few months or so, the prices of meat are going to skyrocket. And with grilling time around the corner and the high demand, you get the point. And I LOVE me some BBQ!
"Hey honey?" I yell
"Yes"
"Come check out this email"
So there sit Scott and I reading about this new "disaster" that will be quickly approaching. I go out to the garage and take a look at our stock pile.
"Oh no", Shaking my head. "This simply will not do!"
I then proceed to look up the local store ads to see what is on sale.
    Now I am forever picky about the meat I buy. I am a health nut and so any hamburger I buy must be the ULTRA lean stuff! The 97% lean. And the chicken I buy must be boneless, skinless breasts, and so on.
But the meat gods were smiling upon me this day, and there were some AMAZING deals afoot!

97% lean hamburger a mere $1.88 a lb. and the chicken breast were only $1.77 a lb.
So off to the store I go.
FRY'S,
WALMART,
SAFEWAY...
Away to all of them I dashed! And when I returned home to my man I was bearing over 60 pounds of flesh! Muahahaha! *said with an evil tone

No but really, I scored!

How much did I spend? $140!!!

(each bag has about 3 large breasts)

And I got just about everything we eat. Salmon, turkey sausage, pork, chicken, hamburger meat, steak meat....

So there we are again, staring. Staring at all the bags of meat strewn about the kitchen island. 
"So now what?" Scott asks.
"Well," I reply. "Now we prep it and freeze it!"

About 3 hour later, all the chicken is washed, trimmed, portioned and bagged. All the hamburger is divided and bagged, the freezer was filled, and my Saturday was gone....

THE END

POSTING BLOGS...

Um, maybe it's just me but has anyone else's "New Post" area been changed? You know, where you go to start writing a new blog entry. Well my post editor has, and I hate it!!!
I used to be able to select multiple images and start inserting them and continute to work on the post. But now I have to insert one at a time and I am stuck on the uploading screen. It won't let me go back to the old window.

Anyone else having this issue?