Busy, busy...

Wow where do I start. Max got tubes in his ears last Tuesday so about 11 days ago. Since then the boy has started to talk up a storm. He is telling his teachers at school "want more" when he wants his snack and "All done" when he is finished. He has even said Robyn. The funniest thing he has done yet was yesterday when we were out to lunch. I was giving him pieces of my seaweed salad just to see if he would like it. When I stopped feeding him pieces he yell "not done yet!!" and tried to grab for more. It was so funny. I was very proud of him.
He has also decided as of yesterday that he actually wants to walk and he is starting to practice on his own. He got up to 7 steps.

It got worse....

I was talking about the fact that little man got the stomach flu on Monday. It is now Saturday and we are home from an overnight to the hospital on Thursday. He got severely dehydrated and had to go in for IV fluids. The good news is that he is back to his happy little self and playing with his big sister. He still has the runs something fierce but is on his way to recovery. I will keep you all updated on him. Thank you to all of you who knew about him and kept me in your thoughts.

Long weekend..

The wedding is finally over. Thank goodness. Hopefully everyone in the family can get beyond all the nastiness that has happened and become a happier family again. It was such a shame that the wedding was about everyone buy my Sister-in-law. But she was a beautiful bride and had a wonderful time at the wedding. Robyn was a beautiful flower girl. The little boy who was the ring bearer was the same age. At one point during the service he couldn't remember her name and kept tapping her on the knee saying, "hey pretty girl." It was so cute. They played during the whole reception and the best part is that they live near us so they will be having a play date soon.

The bummer is that last night Mister Man came down with the stomach flu and has been sick all day and all night. Hopefully we have seen the worse of it.

First Steps...

Max took his first steps today!!! Just three, but it is starting. I am so so excited for my little man...

Help my Temple....

Hi Guy...
This is a plead for help.. Temple Emmanuel of Wakefield had a major oil spill in Nov 2007. We are now at the end of cleaning up from the spill. The break in our oil tank leak over 700 gallons of oil into the ground. We have had to have environmental cleans and the like to be able to use the Temple again. What this means is that we are now looking at a bill of over $200K ( we are a small temple of 60 families and do not have the means to pay this). This is where you can help. We have set up several ways to earn money for the Temple without people have to donate money. Here is what they are..

iGive

We are now registered at iGive.com. This is a very simple way for all of us to help earn money for the temple without a lot of work/financial commitment.

Here's how it works: when you go to buy something online, simply go to http://www.igive.com. You will have to register the first time with this website. Choose your charity ("Temple Emmanuel of Wakefield"). Next, check to see if the vendor you are planning to make the purchase from is available (there are ~700 vendors, including many popular online sites). Click on that link and continue to shop at the vendor's site as usual. If you make a purchase, the temple will get a percentage of the price. Some stores will give us as much as 10%, but 1-2% is pretty typical.

Every time you go to purchase something online go to igive first. If the store you're looking for is registered, this can be painless for you, and very helpful for the temple.

Amazon.com

Like iGive above, but even easier. Before you buy something from Amazon click on any black Amazon logos on the Temple web site.

Anything you buy while in that session (ie until you close your browser) gets the Temple a cut for between 4 and 10% of your purchase!

As with the stores through iGive, if you're planning to "shop there anyway", why not have them send a cut back to the Temple?

Good Search.com

Now this one is the easiest one to earn money for us. It take a longer time but there is no
payout what so ever for you. Every time you search we earn 1 cent from the searches. What you need to do is go to Good Search, go to the who do you search for box and type Temple Emmanuel of Wakefield. This will become your default charity. Below it gives you the choice of putting Good Search as you search engine on your tool bar. Please do this and set it as your search engine. Every time you search using this tool box, we get one cent. Now isn't that easy?

Thank you to everyone for their help and support. Hopefully this will help us pay a huge bill.

Maxwell...

On Sunday was his first birthday party. He had such a good time. Loves all his toys, but the best part was that he stood on his own. He was playing with a toy using it for support, then let go and stood. Now that he know that he can do this he is practicing standing every chance he can get.
He also found a bag of bread on the coffee table left by darling Robyn, brought it over to me and said dis... I asked him if he wanted to eat it and he shook his head and said dis... He is growing so quickly.

I have been very bad..

I am sorry to all those people who check here and never see an updated blog. Life has me very busy with the kids. Maxwell is now 1 years old and is as sweet as sugar. Today when his big sister Robyn was outside playing and walked by him he yelled Rob!!! I guess we all now know what her new nickname will be until he can talk better. He is such a sweet little man and I have really enjoyed getting to know him this past year. He is now a scooter and refuses to crawl but looks like he will be walking very soon.

Robyn is a sweet, sweet girl even though she is quite the handful. Has come up with quite the interesting vocab and often tell me things with words to large for her age. Told me the other day when I said no candy that she would just organize it instead. Then funniest story with her the other day at the grocery store. We were out shopping during Passover.. OK it is still Passover but this was at the beginning of it. Every single thing that she picked up to eat was chametz (flour, corn syrup) filled goodies, I kept telling her no, you can't have this, this week. Next week. She finally broke down in the ice cream section crying. It isn't fair to us Jews making us eat all this stuff this week. We should be able to have what we want just like everyone else. I don't know why Jews have to be punished. It was the cutest thing ever. I felt awful for her, but she still couldn't have her goodies.

All tied up in a knot...

I am here to actually ask a question about sock yarn. I am a long time sock knitter and just purchase some beautiful Madeline Tosh sock yarn. As I was making it in a ball I found a knot in it. Now I have over 20 skeins of sock yarn at this moment in my house, nary a knot. All of them hand dyed yarn. I wrote the owner who told me that this was standard practice and to basically cut the knot out and to knit it together... Really... no kidding I have been a knitted for over 25 years. I know how to handle a knot in my yarn. My issue is that when I am spending over $20 on a skien of yarn I expect it to be perfect, especially considering that it is hand dyed and I am assuming hand wound. Am I being unfair to this company by complaining?
TIA
Here is her letter...

I must say that one knot in a skein or ball of yarn is pretty standard in the industry. I am quite sorry that the yarn displeases you, we do strive for quality in our yarns. When the commercial yarns that we use to dye have more than one knot in a single skein it is not sent to our retailers. We believe this is a fair policy and a honest compromise between the wool mill's desire to created yarns with great yardage and the hand knitter who wants as few joins as possible in the garment they are creating.

In reference to your knitting, what I often do, is cut the yarn right before the existing knot and then join the yarn back in without the knot, the same as you would when joining a new skein of yarn.

Thank you for your input we hope to always be open, honest and fair with our Madtosh customers and feel our policies reflect that.

Sincerely,
Amy Hendrix
Owner of Madelinetosh Co.

Back to Basic Toy's- Fixed...

After canceling my order through Back to Basic toy's on Christmas Eve I was going to let go of the issue. I decided to change my mind. After a little research on the company I discoveredd a couple things. One they had an employee stealing from them. They were scanning in the FedEx boxes and putting the stuff into their car. Guess who's package was one of them. The other thing I found out was that they were totally overwhelmed by the amount of orders that they received for the holidays. Something like 6 times they were expecting. Hence the shortages and just general mayhem at the company. I called them back today. I explain to them the whole issue and that I would like to give them a second chance and ask what they could do to help make things better. They are sending the toy overnight when it gets into stock and took some money off the order. Needless to say I am happy with the outcome and Robyn is going to be one happy little girl.