Ya know what is not so great about being a two teacher family? Too much together time. Oh, and two months of no paychecks.
How does the whole too much together time get solved? Slumber party at Nana's house!
I'm sure I don't say it enough, but today was yet another reminder of how much I appreciate my mom. When it comes to the kid/ family stuff, she "gets it". Thank you, Mom!
My dad and brother are on a road trip to celebrate my dad's retirement. So, yesterday my mom picked up the kids at about 5:00pm, fed them dinner, played with them, put them to bed (and experienced a ton of bedtime "visits" from Ashlynn until she finally fell asleep), made them a pancake breakfast, took them to the park, let them run in the sprinklers, fed them lunch, put them down for naps (Ashlynn too, since she went to bed really late), and brought them home for dinner at our house tonight.
Yep, Eric and I had a 24-hour break from kids. We certainly love them, but after 2 weeks of quality time, we needed a break.
We ate leisurely meals. We talked. We hung new curtains in the living room. We went through our gift card collection.
I discovered that I have $120 worth of Barnes and Noble gift cards (apparently, when families think about what their teacher might like, they think B&N, Starbucks, and movie tickets... which if you know me you will realize is pretty funny/ ironic). Still, I am thankful.
Anyway, I was looking at the B&N website, considering how I might spend those gift cards. And then I had a brainstorm. . . A Nook Color!
I am a big fan of the Pioneer Woman website and she was just talking about how cool it was, so I decided to check it out on the B&N website.
It turns out that it is way more than an e-book reader. It's almost like a fancy tablet (like an ipad), which there is no chance of us affording. You can check your email, browse the web, add (a limited amount of) apps, and many of the kids books are interactive. And, it's $249, which is a ton of money, but with $120 worth of gift cards, it's not quite so bad. I'm nearly half-way there!
And, considering we don't own much cool technology (no ipad, no smart phones, not even any hand-held game systems like Leapsters or DSs), it seems like a reasonable idea, right?
And, it would be really great when we travel with the kids this summer.
And, since we only have one computer, one of us could check email while the other one of us was on the computer, without buying another computer or having to pay the data package fees on a smartphone.
And, shouldn't the fact that I am still carrying around a 3 1/2-year-old, broken flip phone qualify me for a little piece of modern technology? (Okay, I know that a Nook Color won't fix my cell phone problem, but hey, it sounds like a good argument.)
Are you convinced?
