I had one of those weeks last week.  You know, one of those weeks where everything goes wrong.  Like if you sit in your Adirondack chairs and they break or it rains every time you have plans.  I’ve had bad days before, but it seemed like last week was against me.  It kicked me in the butt.

We spent that entire weekend looking for Madison’s retainer.  You know, those suckers are $500 and insurance doesn’t pay to replace if you lose them.  She’s been so good with it that it was amazing that we lost it.  We dug through garbage at our house and at my mother-in-laws house too.  We looked everywhere inside and outside, under outdoor wooden benches and even the kids beds!  We literally tore 2 houses apart.  Her orthodontist was on vacation last week, so we couldn’t get in to see him to see what we could do.  I knew heading in last week we were in trouble since the weekend sucked.

So that happened.  Then, my sites went down.  This was a 2 prong problem.  First, I had no access to my sites.  You may have seen some funkiness on my sites.  That’s why (it ended up having to do with a WordPress upgrade.  Hostgator ended up fixing it) I was a wreck on Twitter, on Facebook, and on Google+.  While digging through the backend stuff, I found out I was almost out of disk space.  Now, I currently pay $50 a month (yes, I know its a lot).  They told me I’d have to upgrade to the $80 month package (yes, I almost keeled over).  I had a great friend dig through my sites and found out that I had a rogue plugin that was backing up my site.  It wasn’t suppose to be saving to the server, but it was without my knowledge.  I had backups dating to 2007!!!!  Needless to say, we deleted 10 GB of backups!!!!!  (Crazy, isn’t it?).

Those two issues pretty much consumed my week.  However, this looked up by the end of the week.  First, Hostgator fixed the issue.  In talking with friends, I found a cheaper host for my blogs (which I’ll be moving to this week sometime if any funkiness happens).  I’ll get more space for less money!  I know somebody using this company already and they love them.  Best of all, I was doing laundry Friday morning, and guess what I found??!!??

Madison’s retainer.

My laundry room is also a junk room and also has a freezer and fridge in there (its all downstairs).  I was throwing in towels to the washer and her retainer was sitting in front of the fridge down there.  It looked great, and I ran it upstairs and brushed it.  The bad news is that she can’t get it into her mouth now.  However, we found it and it can be adjusted.  We have an appointment Thursday morning to do just that.

It’s amazing how your week can just turn better on a dime.  I now can sit outside on my Oakland Living outdoor furniture and relax.  How did your week go last week?

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As we get ready for the Super Bowl here, I wanted to pass along this really cool preview. You’ll see the full spot tomorrow night while you are watching the Packers (hopefully) kicking butt!

You can also join Jack’s Crew to see an EXTENDED look at Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides delivered right to their phone during the Super Bowl!

Text PIRATES to DISNEY** (347639) to receive:
- A special EXTENDED look at the Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides big game spot delivered straight to your phone
- Pirates sneak peeks, trivia and updates
- An opportunity to purchase tickets to the movie before anyone else.
**Standard message rates apply.

Enjoy!

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On top of the exciting things that have happened this week, I have to tell you about the WBNA Chicago Sky game we were privileged enough to see last Thursday.  My kids have never been to pro game before, so I wasn’t sure how they were going to react.  At first, Will wasn’t too thrilled (it was loud and he just woke up from a nap):

However, he soon warmed up to all the action:

Will, who is 3, most favorite part of the game was the Sky Guy:

Madison liked him too:

Bill and I enjoyed the game too.  Bill actually said it was much more fun to watch the womens game!  There were fouls called on stuff like traveling.  The Chicago Sky kicked some butt too.  Anytime there was a timeout or intermission, they were ready to keep the kids (and the adults) occupied.  My kids were never bored once while we were there.

I’ll be honest — I never considered taking my kids to a Chicago Sky game before this.  What I love the most is that the Chicago Sky tickets are affordable for you (and me) to take our families and not break the bank.  My readers can even get up to 27% off per ticket depending on the price range:

$10 tickets will be discounted to $8.
$19 tickets will be discounted to $12.
$25 tickets will be discounted to $15.
$55 tickets will be discounted to $30.
$60 tickets will be discounted to $35.

Just go to http://bit.ly/WNBASkyTix , enter promo code WNBABLOG to purchase tickets and experience the WNBA’s exciting, affordable, family-friendly, entertainment!   You will need to create an account in order to use the code, simply enter your email address, create a password – and discount!

I know we will be taking my family back again.  Hope to see you there!

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My public school drives my absolutely bananas.  I wanted to get Madison’s hearing screened just to make sure that there were no problems.  We thought maybe some of Madison’s attention issues were due to her not hearing.  However, my school being the pain in butt that they are wouldn’t do it unless we scheduled her to be prescreened for preschool through the school (which is a joke but I’ll tell you about that later).  Obviously, there is some sort of federal funding they get for this, because I wanted a five minute screening and got stuck with an hour long screening.  I sucked it up and took her.

I swear that they expect these kids to have a flash memory drive in their heads. I could hear some of the things they were testing her on, and from what I could tell, she was doing well.  When they called me up after the testing was over, I was right.  Except for cutting and catching, she scored everything else in the 6 year old range.  Madison is only 4.  I am seriously wondering if some of the attention issues we are having with her at preschool are due to her being bored. That was the good news.

The bad new was that we failed her hearing screening.  I asked what the school would do for that.  The answer:  nothing.  We would have to pay for additional testing elsewhere.  The other thing that ticked me off to no end was that she couldn’t even get into the school preschool if I wanted to send her.  The only kids who get in are those who are considered “at risk” (which Madison is obviously not) and if we made less than $80,000 a year.  Umm, yeah.  We make more than that.  In Chicago, I am not sure if you can even own a decent house making less than $80,000 a year.  Basically, the only kids who get in are those who don’t speak English (because there were several kids like that there) and low income people.  I guess my question is what about the middle class?  Why do we always get screwed?

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Friends are like butt cheeks.
Crap might separate them,
But they always come back together.

Send this to all your butt cheeks

Copyright © 2011 My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact mythoughtsideasandramblings.com @ gmail.com so we can take legal action immediately.