First, I have all of my baking and decorating supplies ready to go for tomorrow. Tomorrow night I'm baking and cooking till the cows come home. I'm sending goodies to some of my teacher friends at the church, my mom, and my dad in California. I think it's so sad that we're not going to get to be with any of our family this year, so I guess I'm providing myself with sweets for therapy. Hum.


Second, Donald and I bought Peeler a set of Mega Blocks for Christmas, but we couldn't contain ourselves and had to get them out to play with last night. We made some robot-looking guy, which Peeler promptly destroyed. We also came to understand why the Mega Bloks were so cheap and the Legos were so expensive: the Mega Bloks suck. They don't stay together for anything! Guess we should have spent the extra $20 for the real thing. Oh well, I doubt Peeler will care. Anyway, I forgot to take a pic of the robot guy, so here we are cleaning up. Note Donald's reach-y thing....since I bought him that, he won't bend over to pick anything up, not even toys. Lazy man.

Finally, I had to entertain myself for a while today by decorating Peeler with a bow. She didn't like it.

We're baaaaack!

We're baaaack! We ended up staying a week longer than planned, but hey, we were having a good time.

We left Monday moring. I took this pic before we left and its just about the cutest thing I've ever seen.



The drive up wasn't too bad. We stopped at a lot of rest areas to play in the grass. Lauren slept most of the way until evening when she decided she wanted no more of the car seat. Can't say I blame her, so we stopped just north of St. Louis for the night.

Tuesday afternoon we finally arrived in Janesville. After making a brief stop at my mom's we crashed. Thursday was Lexy's graduation. Even though there was some drama (expected, of course), it turned out to be a nice day. Here's a pic of the grad and Lil.



And here's my brother, Jake, (who's growing up WAY TOO FAST), with Lil. I think he likes being an uncle :o) I couldn't resist the shades.



We spent our trip mainly just hanging out with our families. Oh yeah, and shopping. Lots of shopping. But I'll tell you about that later. Now, just pictures.

Here's Lauren trying to eat a grape stem. It just wasn't what she was hoping for.



And here's my very good friend Erin with Lil. I miss her :o(



Oh yes. From the depths of Donald's parents' basement, is the outfit that Donald had made for him when he was a baby. I had to put it on Lil, just because. She'll kill me when she's older.




We also spent time at the pool. I love Janesville for their FREE!! wading pools.



Lounging in the sun is so much fun! Lauren loves to chew on her duck.



We took some pictures in the grass at the park. I love these shots.






Here's my mom and Lauren with Addy the dog. A little blurry, tho.

Off to Wisco I go

Lilo and I are leaving for Wisconsin Monday morning. My sister is graduating high school on Thursday evening, and I promised her a long time ago that I'd be there. So, the pickle and I are packing up the car and going.

Donald can't come because he's too chicken to ask for the time off at work :o) Needless to say, I'm not overly thrilled about driving 800 miles alone with Lil, but we'll survive. We're taking our time, staying over night in St. Louis on the way up.

I'm not sure when we'll be coming home, probably in a week or two, depending on how soon I get sick of my family and how much school work I have. I'm really excited about seeing my sister, though, and I've gotten her the best graduation gift (can't tell you, I think she reads this, hehe). I'm hoping she has some days off work to go thrifing with me (hint, hint). So anyways, we'll be back in a few weeks with lots of new pictures!!

Sometimes I Hate Mississippi

I'm really upset right now. I found out that it is going to cost nearly $2500 to license my car in Mississippi. EVERY YEAR. Are you freaking crazy?!? That's almost as much as Donald makes in a month -- there is no way we can afford to spend a month's income putting a sticker on just MY car. There's seriously something wrong here.

Here's how car licensing fees are figured: it's 30% of the blue book value of your car plus whatever the county wants to charge. I drive a 2001 Ford Focus that's worth about $8000. 30% of $8000 is $2400. You've got to be kidding me.

I get that states need to charge taxes to make money, yada yada yada. But come on now. I know Mississippi is not the richest state out there, but charging that kind of money to license a car is ridiculous. In Wisconsin it costs $55 a year, period. How does this state expect its citizens to ever get ahead when the average annual income is about $20,000 and then charges over 15% of that just to legally drive your car???

Charging that kind of money to license a car just doesn't make sense. I guess I could see charging a percentage on luxury vehicles. I mean, really, who NEEDS a car worth $40,000? If you've got that kind of money to spend on a car, then I'd guess you've got the money to pay high taxes on it. But for average, everyday people like me and my family, charging those kind of amounts only hurts us. With my car payment, insurance, gas and the liceensing fees, it costs $635 a month to drive my car. I don't even want to think about how much it will be when I add in Donald's car. That's more than we pay in rent each month.

If there was an alternative to owning a car in Mississippi, I'd consider it. But there's not. No car = no job = no money. There's no public transportation system here. So really, this state's gotcha by the balls. That is, unless you want to drive a $500 piece of shit rust bucket that MIGHT get you where you want to go. I don't get it. I really, really, don't get it. It makes me want to move.