December

Christmas projects galore, and now we'll be moving in the next few weeks = hectic but fun.  Here are some pics from our trip a few weeks ago to Dland with greema and papa.

Small World...Beckett's favorite

Mickey's house

Giving Mickey fives

Didn't want to say goodbye

So excited that papa showed up!

Nemo

"Hurry Papa!"

Amazon

That's where I'll be buying a lot of textbooks for Jeremy and other things from now on.

Here's the story:
8 days (more than ample time to receive an item purchased online via ground shipping) before the fall semester started for Jeremy, we got online and ordered his textbooks.  I have been known to shout praises and recommend half.com (a branch of ebay) for textbook buying needs.  I found it and loved it back in the days when I owned and frequently used CD's because it was one of the only places that I could find Kanye West's first cd edited.  Many semesters of school taught me that I could find my books there for sooooo much cheaper than at my school's bookstore.  Naturally, I let people know that they should look there for books because the amounts of cash my parents were throwing away on textbooks for me was disturbing.  Not to mention that many sellers will let you upgrade shipping to get things quicker.

This semester of school was approaching, and I bought one of the books Jeremy needed on half.com.  I would usually get an email a day or two later saying the book had shipped.  No such email ever came.  I emailed the seller and asked that they would hurry and ship it because my husband needed the book for school.  His first week of school came and went, and with no response from the seller, Jeremy had to buy the ridiculously expensive book from his school.  Meanwhile, my debit card has already been charged over $100 for something that clearly isn't coming.  Ebay is super awesome with customer service (NOT!), so they don't let you file claims on not receiving items until the allotted shipping period (two weeks) has passed.  At exactly two weeks, I "filed a claim" about my never sent item.  They tell you it will take up to 30 days to process your claim.  30 days later, and no email from ebay or refund of my money.  This is where it gets fun.

Go ahead and try to find any contact information on ebay's website...I dare you.  You won't find any number, email, or be able to make any sense of their customer service portion of their website.  I googled and googled in an attempt to find a number to call to get my money back.  I found plenty of phone numbers...all of which were disconnected but one.  You have to somehow pick the lucky sequence of prompted menu numbers to find out that you need some kind of claim code from the website to be able to talk to a representative.  Don't worry because this claim code is not the number given to me when I filed my claim, instead it is supposed to come from part of the customer service portion of their website that does not exist!  I called the same number again and by some stroke of luck navigated correctly thru nearly a dozen menus to get to a live person without the claim code.  Then I sat on hold for almost an hour.  I am finally on the phone with some fool, from India no doubt (ironically I find the show "Outsourced" hilarious), who takes about 15 minutes of putting me back and forth off-and-on hold to tell me that he cannot do anything to process my claim, he could only direct me to send a reminder email to support@half.com about my case (aren't YOU the support@half.com??).  I hang up, send the email with more information than should be necessary asking for my refund.  A week later I get a response.  One Week.  The response asked me if I was sure the item still hadn't arrived (really??), and that my claim would be resolved within 30 days.  I responded letting them know that no, after more than two months the item still wasn't here, and also I don't want it anymore!  I want my money back!


That was two weeks ago.  No response yet.  No money back.  No acknowledgement that there is an end in sight to getting a refund for an item never sent to me that I ordered 3 months ago.

I will never be visiting ebay/half.com EVER again.

                                                                                                

Compare that experience with this...
After two weeks of seeing empty shelves above the "How to Train Your Dragon" blu-ray tag at every walmart and target I went to, I found it on Amazon for $3 cheaper than it sells for at target.  And because we have a trial of amazon prime, we got free 2-day shipping on it.  I was more than thrilled not to have to waste gas searching for it anymore, and it was actually at my door within 24 hours of me buying it online!  Not 48...24!!

Amazon...you have my business from now on.

Beckett's New Hangout

The inside of the new ottoman we recently purchased.  He likes to watch his "mooh-pees" from there...go figure.

Costumes, costumes

Because I went to school in Provo, every themed party/ward talent show/etc. required a trip to D.I.  Even now, I always attempt looking at thrift stores for costumes before anywhere else.  So for your viewing pleasure, one mostly thrift-store costume, one old/remodeled costume, and one store-bought costume with some alterations and additions...

Peter, Tiger Lily, and a Lost Boy

Go Cougars!

I loved my time at BYU.  It was everything I hoped for and more.  It was crazy-hard at times, but I'm glad I had to earn my degree that way.  From religion classes to the student wards, everything was amazing.  It still seems crazy to me how fast it went (not at the time, but looking back now).  I am very proud of my school and all it is as an institution.  Amazing football teams may come and go, but the rankings this university gets in all areas will continue to be way up there.  Just wanted to brag about it for a second...

BYU Grads 11th in WSJ Rankings

Recruiting companies ranked BYU grads 11th in the nation, according to the Wall Street Journal. America's Most Popular University according to U.S. News #1 MBA Program #1 Stone Cold Sober Campus

Date Night

And it was nowhere near like the movie.  We went to see Mindy, our former landlady, play at a really fun charity event in Carlsbad.

I won't lie...when we first moved into that basement apartment we had no idea who Mindy was.  I don't even remember how we realized it, but we found her on itunes and realized her voice was very familiar from some of the very best EFY songs ever.  Many days of studying to Mindy's piano playing upstairs made her music indelibly stuck in my mind forever (and I like it!).  Fast forward a few years...we've moved back home and sister, the current apartment tenant, tells us Mindy is coming to play just 15 minutes from us.  We pretty much invited ourselves to the charity dinner that the gracious hostess was putting on for mostly friends and wardies (you know...ward friends), but I'm so glad we did!  The house was gorgeous, and the mood was charming and whimsical.  Even though we didn't know anybody, the night was perfect.  Good food, good cause, great decorations, and even better music.  I can't even tell you how bummed I was that I left the house without my camera that morning!  Here are some pics I stole from someone else...

Our place settings/favors...

And don't let me forget why I really wanted to make this post...

That night, Mindy sang one of her songs from her new album "Anchor" (<-- buy it!) which is called "Hourglass".  She wrote it to/about her two boys, and I almost cried sitting there while she sang it because it is such a beautiful song that expressed my deepest, most tender feelings of love for my own little one.  Every day he is less and less a baby, and more and more a little boy.  I love being his mama.  Listen to it here and here are the lyrics...

Little boy, when you speak

I can’t help but kiss your cheeks

I love the way you grab my hands

And tell me all about your plans

Rocket high, comets fly

You and I could take a ride

And fly away to Neverland

And give our best to Peter Pan

When you reach for the stars

Don’t forget who you are

And please don’t turn around and grow up way too fast

See the sand in my grasp

From the first to the last

Every grain becomes a memory of the past

Oh, life’s an hourglass

Life’s an hourglass

Story’s read, prayer is said

Close your eyes sleepyhead

While angels linger in your dreams

And hold you in their feathered wings

Just like you, I was small

Not that long ago at all

I wish you all the happiness

That God gives freely if you ask

Chorus

Two things...

First, like most women I have hair a.d.d. and wish I was Tonks from Harry Potter and could change it's color to the desired shade at any given moment.  Speaking of which...did the new Deathly Hallows part I trailer give anyone else goosebumps?!  It shows so many amazing parts exactly how you imagine them when reading (or in Jeremy's case, listening) to the book.  Needless to say, we have already decided we will be seeing it at midnight on Nov. 18th.

Second, this little dude...

has become quite the "Chatty Cathy".  He repeats most words that we say, and runs around shouting things all the time, unless he's around people who he doesn't see almost everyday, in which cases he won't say much at all (but crying, screaming, and tantrums are still acceptable in front of strangers).

Quiet Time?

Sometimes Beckett wanders into his room to play, and when it gets quiet I get suspicious.  The last few times that this has happened and Jeremy or I have gone in to check on him, this is what we have found....

And this is how it happens...

He's my little reader boy and I love it!

The Great Debate

For the past 12 years the media, etc. have been blaming autism on vaccines mainly due to one magazine article known as The Wakefield Study published in a British medical journal in 1998.  

"On August 27, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld the 2009 ruling of a special vaccine court denying a link between vaccines and autism."  Since 1998, 18 highly controlled studies have evaluated the previous findings of Wakefield, and all 18 came back with the same result..."There is no link between vaccines and autism."

The study from that journal from over a decade ago has recently been retracted, and the doctor who performed the study has had his medical license revoked due to his actions and falsifying of results.  If this isn't enough evidence for the world then I don't know what will settle this unfounded debate.  Read the whole article on these recent events here.

Being a scientist and knowing how difficult it is to prove a hypothesis through my own personal experimentation, I know how definitive and undeniable results must be in order to come to such a conclusion.  The recent outbreaks in my own city of Measles and Pertussis, which the CDC has concluded are due to children that have purposely not been vaccinated, really hit home.  Some may not like me saying this as it is a personal decision and other factors (genetics, etc.) may be behind your choice, but if your reason for not vaccinating is autism then reconsider and please vaccinate your infants and toddlers.  We all (me included) need to stay up to date with adult vaccinations as well because they wear off and these diseases are coming back with deadly force. 


Sorry if this post leaves a bad flavor in anyone's mouth.  It is not directed at anyone.  I'm off my soap box now.

St. George

Here are some pictures from our last summer trip...

Poreotix

"Love Story" by Taylor Swift is on a playlist on my ipod that I frequently listen to in the car, so it comes on often.  Every time it does, all I think of is Poreotix and the bird isolation movement at 0:36, and it makes me smile...

Bon Voyage

Last weekend we went on a land and sea tour of San Diego Bay with Jeremy's family.  It was pretty cool!  We got to see lots of sea lions and Beckett liked it.  This weekend we're going to St. George.  We couldn't handle how it's been heating up here, so we decided to go somewhere even hotter.  Haha.  

Welcome to...

Beckett's wipeout wonderland!

Grandma and Grandpa got him this fun pool to go in their backyard and he loves it!

Even Sheba came out to play.

If you love shade...

...then you better get online now and stock up on essentials because the company just announced that they will be liquidating their inventory and then going dark for an unknown period of time!  I just ordered a bunch of maternity shirts and I'm not pregnant and don't plan on trying to be for around a year, so that says how much I love shade (and the discounted liquidation prices).  Haha.