Been a While

Josh turned 18 the other day.

And I am feeling uncomfortable. That is just one of the reasons why. If you are a friend, feel free to drop me a line and say hi. I could use it this week.

The End of your Rainbow...

After such a great time at the waterpark. From one or two times I was a little peeved that my husband didn't want to join us. Number one it would have made this experience I wanted the kids to have easier on me. Number two it would have improved the quality of time I could spend with the kids. Number 3 we could have spent some good time together as well. But then I remember what I am learning, that I do what I want for my reasons, and I really cannot be happy if I don't let him do the same. And so that makes me happy to remember that. After all he didn't want me to go at all. But I went because it was important to me. Anyway this trip was a good opportunity to remind myself what are my goals and is what I am doing right now helping me achieve them? I didn't get to do all the things I wanted to do. I didn't get to hear all the speeches that I wanted to hear and attend all the funshops. But one night Brenda couldn't go to sleep and we stayed up together watching tv and eating chips and dip. The next day we laughed about it. Once a friend offered to play with Marley so I could go to the waterpark with the girls to go on some water rides with them. We talked about how for now on every year, no matter where we go, we should take a girls trip like this for the fun of it. We really did have a great time together, even though we weren't always together.

So that brings me to the rainbows in the pictures. These, of course, are brought to us by National Geographic. Where are you when you see you rainbow? Where are you when you get to the end? And what is there waiting for you? Those are my unschooling thoughts for the day.

PS my camera is being held hostage by the fact that my family lost or maybe accidentally threw away the plug in to the computer. Bret promises that he will buy a new one this week, but I don't suppose he will. So I will no doubt bug him until he takes me out to get one some time in the near future. I hope for more pictures of us soon.

Is Kroger being left behind? What do YOU think?

Funny story. If you don't know we are getting ready to leave today for the big unschoolers winter waterpark gathering. We are all excited. My girls are in the bathroom washing and brushing and primping as we speak. Getting ready for the ride. Well that is a subtopic for what I want to talk about today. An interesting thing happened when I was at a supermarket yesterday getting the food for the trip. Usually I frequent Aldi as a favorite grocery store. So of course I am used to bringing my own bags and bagging my own groceries. When I am at Aldi and people complain that the line is too long, I smile, because I know we are all standing in that line to save a few bucks. And also come on man, you know darn well the lines are longer sometimes at Kroger!! You know they are. Why are you grumbling?? Anyway, I digress.

So I am at Kroger yesterday with my own bags and Kroger is a mad house. First of all it is Sunday. Plus it is the first Sunday of the month (I think this might have something to do with foodstamps.) PLUS it is superbowl Sunday. So right away I have three things working against me, but I plow through anyway. When I get to the cashier she is snotty with me and implies that I am not getting my things on the conveyer fast enough for her taste. I grumble, forgetting that I can choose to keep a happy mood inspite of my surroundings. She is either too busy or she doesn't like "something" about me. I won't go into details with this one, other than to say sometimes in the town I live in, discrimination and prejudice is spewed from all colors, shapes and sizes. So I get up there with my bags and put them by where the food will eventually be dumped after it is scanned. The bagger begins fumbling unsuccessfully, trying to figure out how to bag my groceries without his plastic bags. I ask multiple times for him to not fill a bag with lots of 2 liter pops or I will not be able to carry it. It will just be too heavy. He doesn't seem to understand. The cashier leaves her station to help the bagger open my bags in the cart and put the groceries in that way, in an attempt to help him find a better way. In the end she tells me that I don't have enough bags for all my groceries and I will need to put some of them in plastic bags. They do that and I leave. When I get to my car, I find one of MY BIG bags has only a couple bags of chips in it and is half full. I find another one of my big bags with only two boxes of cookies. AND all the groceries that they bagged in their plastic bags were DOUBLE BAGGED! Probably I didn't save a single plastic bag from being used by bringing my own bags. Could it be that Kroger is too BUSY to take the extra minute to bag my groceries with my bags? They don't CARE to save the extra garbage of those plastic bags I must throw away?? Aldi has figured it out. Whole foods does it with ease. Why are you being left behind Kroger?