A New York State of Mind

I had a great birthday last weekend. I was lucky to have my birthday fall on Memorial Day so it was a holiday weekend, even better! A couple months ago when Luke asked me what I wanted for my birthday I said I wanted a trip to New York. Well, that wasn't really in the budget, so we improvised with making Salt Lake City like New York City.

First we saw Les Mis which was playing at the Capital Theater. It was wonderful! And it felt like I was in New York going to a broadway show!

After the show we stayed in a beautiful hotel downtown, The Hotel Monaco. It was kind of swanky, like what you'd expect in New York City. And bonus, it was right across the street from the Capitol Theater!

After the show we walked over to The Olive Garden and shared a white chocolate raspberry cheesecake dessert. What a perfect night in "New York City!" I really did have such a great birthday doing exactly what I wanted, but at a fraction of the real cost.

Dance Pictures

Ava's Dance Video

Ava is the 3rd dancer on the right.

Coupons

So I'm trying to save some money and I'm exploring the whole coupon thing. It's pretty overwhelming but I'm taking some baby steps. Today I made my first money saving, coupon wielding, shopping trip. So here are the stats. The retail value of the products I purchased was $65.29. After combining sale prices and coupons I paid $41.94. That's a savings of 36%. I guess it's not bad, but it sure took a lot of work to get that $23.35 savings. I guess 20 bucks is worth a couple hours. Hopefully I'll get fast and more efficient soon!

Piano Lessons

Hey Everyone! I'm taking on more piano students for Fall! Yay! I've made a special blog to get all the information out there.

Here is the link: plymouthrockpiano.blogspot.com

Check it out if you're interested!

The Police

Well, I hate to complain or play the victim but we're having quite the week. On Monday morning I received a call from our bank. They said there were some possible fraud activity on our account. I instantly looked up our account online and saw that there had been 6 ATM withdrawals in California, totaling over $1,100. Obviously someone had got a hold of our banking information and was drawing out money. Somehow the thief had Luke's bank card number and PIN number. Crazy, huh? Well, the bank disabled his card and is doing an investigation. Meanwhile, they refunded the money to our account, thank goodness! Luke also filed a police report with the Oxnard California Police Department. Not that it will do any good. They basically say this happens all the time and there's nothing they can do.

Now, today on Wednesday I had to call the police again and file another report. This time I was dealing with the Lehi police though. Here's the story: Luke's out of town this weekend, and so today I took the girls to McDonald's for dinner. While we were inside someone smashed in one of the windows of our van. Luckily nothing was stolen (not that I had much in there anyway except a stroller and car seats). I called the police and they came to check it out, but unfortunately there were no eye witnesses and Mc Donald's did not have a camera on that side of the building. So again, the police told me the same story, there was nothing they could do. I've just got to suck it up, replace the window, and move on.

So basically, I've had two incidences this week with criminals and with dealing with the police, who unfortunately can't do anything to catch these guys.

Here are some pictures of the broken window.

What a Raisin Can Do

This morning the Comcast guy came at 8 AM to fix our phone line because it's been down for two days. I was able to call out but I couldn't receive any calls. If anyone tried to call us here at home all they got was dead air, it didn't even ring. The Comcast guy was here for an hour, trying everything he could think of to fix the problem. Finally, as a last resort, we checked every phone jack in the house. Everything was working correctly until we reached Ava & Tessie's room. Shoved inside the phone jack's tiny hole was a raisin. He pulled it out with pliers and the phones started working again. Crazy! I couldn't help but laugh at what a big problem a tiny raisin can cause. The Comcast guy said he'd never seen that before and we laughed about it. That crazy little Tess, she finds ways to create mischief! Ha! Oh well, at least she didn't get shocked or anything like that!