Redbox VS. DVDPlay

Have any of you ever rented a movie from one of those red kiosks in the grocery store? It's a great deal if you want to see a new release and you know you'll watch it that night - you rent it for a dollar plus tax. You give your credit card info and if you don't return it the next day they charge you a dollar a day till you return it. We've done it several times and have always been good about returning them the next day - or so we thought.

About a month ago I went to return a movie we got at safeway at the kiosk in Raleys and discovered that it wouldn't accept it because the kiosk in Raleys was a different company - so I had to return it at Safeway. Up till that point we had been under the impression that all the red kiosks were the same company - and it tells you that you can return the movie to any kiosk. Well, that incident started me worrying because I was pretty sure that Nathan had successfully returned a movie we got at Safeway at Raleys a few weeks before that.

It turns out that I was right. I got an email from DVDPlay saying that we were being charged $25.99 for WallE because we never returned it. Except we had returned it the day after - only to a Redbox machine. Dumb. I don't know how Nathan made the machine take the DVDplay movie but he did.

So I called DVDplay trying to get them to reduce our charge in light of our stupidity but they said they couldn't do that. If we were able to get the movie back from Redbox, we could return it to DVDplay for a half reimbursement. I laughed and said "yeah right" - how were we supposed to get the movie back. But I had to try anyway. So I called Redbox and gave them all the info and was told I'd hear back within 7-10 days if they found it. About two and half weeks later, after I had given up all hope of getting WallE back, I got a call from the local Redbox lady. She said that she was sure she had a DVDplay WallE lying around somewhere and she'd be happy to leave it for me at Raleys! So last week I went and collected the darn movie that caused us so much problems.

Since we liked WallE we decided to keep it rather than go through the hassle of getting half of our money back. So we officially bought a used movie for $27! Isn't that outrageous!? Oh well, lesson learned. And hopefully you can learn from it too - pay attention to the name on the red movie renting kiosks!

Valentines Day

I haven't felt like writing in a while but I really wanted to share how sweet my husband is and how he surprised me for Valentines Day. So here I go...

On the morning of Valentines day I woke up to my daughter babbling loudly in her crib. I brought her back to bed with us and handed Nathan a card - we agreed to only get each other cards this time. In reply he said, "I didn't get you card but tonight Ruby will be spending the night with my parents and we are spending the night at the Obrien Mountain Inn." WHAT!!! I was so excited. Nathan has never surprised me with something like that before. Apparently he's been planning it since Christmas when he got a reimbursement check from his work. I was blown away and touched because while getting to spend the night away from my daughter at a bed and breakfast was great, the fact that Nathan took the time to plan it and surprise me was the real treat.

To top it off he told me his parents expected us up there around noon so we could go to a movie and dinner before heading up to the B&B. So I packed Ruby up, dropped her off and we went and saw Push. It was really good! Then we ran a few errands, which is always lovely with out a child, and we went to Olive Garden for dinner.

After dinner we headed up I-5 and slowly became worried about the weather. It was raining all day and I heard the freeway had been closed the night before. We turned our radio to AM 1600 and heard that all vehicles had to get off at the Fawndale exit - which is about 5 miles before Obrien. As we approached Fawndale we saw cars whizzing past the exit and cars that stopped. We thought we'd be law abiding citizens and stop and find out what the deal was. We found out that there were a few big accidents and they had to close the freeway from Redding to Yreka for at least a while. But he said to check back because since we didn't have to go far, they might let us though. We decided to try again and be non-law abiding citizens and just drive through the stop and see how far we could make it, but by the time we turned around they had set the cones up. We tried again and again over the next two hours during which we were interview by Ch 7 news and thus were on the 11:00 news. Finally we had a guy that would let us through if we had chains and had been to the B&B before - we had to be honest and say no on both accounts. So, we gave up and came home.

Still we had a great night at home and the in-laws dropped Ruby off the next morning. We made it through our first night without her :)

And, we have something great to look foward to because we rescheduled our night at Obrien for March - so I'd say that it all worked out perfect!

I am blessed to have such a great husband. This is a Valentines Day that I will always remember.

Birthday Girl

We celebrated Ruby's birthday with a little party at my inlaws house. It was a great time and I want to say thank you to all who were there that made Ruby's first birthday celebration so special! Here are some of my favorite pics (oh and for the life of me I could not fix the alignment of them so they look a little funny):

Here's Ruby's current favorite funny face-

This is the adorable birthday hat that Mike and Kerry got for Ruby. She wouldn't keep it on but it will be a keepsake for years to come.

Here Ruby is checking out the beautiful quilt my mom made for her - she loves it and so do I!

In these next few pics Ruby is hangin with the boys. Alani (who is 6) was the only other little girl at the party. Ruby will definitely have her pic of the boys :)

Here's Ruby with Noah and Gavin...

Here she is with Wyatt...

and here is she is Daniel :)

Her first taste of cake - I think the flame intimidated her a bit.

Isn't she precious?

Here's most of the ladies that joined us. Thanks for being there! Hugs!!!

Ruby's a Year Old!

I can't believe it. Where did the last year go? One year ago at this very moment I was in the tub at St. E's pushing with all my might to get all 7lbs and 20" of Ruby out of me. It was a long an exhausting labor (20 hours) but absolutely worth every second of it. I am still so proud of my birthing experience (which every mom should be), but I know I could not have done it without the support of my birthing posse :) That would be my mother-in-law and doula extraordinaire Renee, my amazing mom, my friends Tricia and Angelina and of course, my incredible husband. Each played a unique role in Ruby's birth and I know the only reason I was able to stay so strong and not give in to the pain was because of their presence and words.

Here is the amazing crew (minus Angelina who was taking the pic) helping me through a contraction-

After several hours of hard labor I finally was dialated enough to get into the tub - I loved it (however I was also extremely delirious by exhaustion and in the la la land I created to let me escape from the pain)-

At 9:20 pm on February 9, 2008 she arrived. Here's the grandparents getting their first good look at her (this is probably one of my favorite pics of all time!)-

We sure were (and still are!) proud parents-

Ruby, you have filled our lives with more love than we ever expected. Every moment of pain, every sleepless night, every ounce of drool and spit-up on my clothing is worth it because I get to have you. I get to see your beautiful smile every day, see you try new things all the time, comfort you when don't succeed, cuddle with you when you're sleepy. Mommy and daddy love you so much and we can't imagine our lives without you! I can't wait to see what this next year brings!

PS - I thought about sharing photos from Ruby's first year, but through this blog you've already seen many of them. I'll post birthday party pics soon!

Help With Food

Ruby's a little on the late side for transitioning from baby food to finger food. She just loves her pureed stuff. But I have been painstakingly working on the transition for about a month now. For a couple weeks the only thing she'd eat by herself was bananas and crackers. But now she's ventured into a handful of other things: kiwi, prunes, pears, pasta (sometimes), cheese sticks, zucchini and yams (sometimes). So I need advice. What else should I try. Obviously it needs to be something she can eat easily without too many teeth. Any ideas?

Oh and any advice on transitioning to a sippy cup will be helpful too! I've kind of given up on that for now.

New Teeth

Ruby has only had her bottom two baby teeth for a while now and I was starting to get worried that that was all she was going to get. It really worried me after Rosetta shared about meeting a women in Target whose daughter was three and only had those two little teeth. I panicked when I heard that thinking, "dear God no; I cannot spoon feed this child for the rest of her life."

So apparently God heard that little prayer because Ruby is currently getting four teeth on top and I can see that she's working on two more on the bottom. While this is wonderful news it also makes for some sleepless nights which are even harder when I have to work the next day. Ahhh, the joys of being a mom :)