Monday, August 11, 2008

My Summer Vacation Report Part 1: July 4-22

Okay, I wasn't technically on vacation, but I was on hiatus from my blog and most emailing. I dove deep into listing on Ebay and I made almost $300 for the month off of miscellaneous book lots. I specialize in book lots, and they are my favorite thing to ship (very easy to package). My mom came to visit for three weeks. I wasted no time utilizing her babysitting services. My husband and I went on a date her first night here. I think she was really eager to visit our kids, so I thought heck, we should go to dinner and a movie and let her have fun with them. (Thanks mom!) We saw Wall-E. Yes, it is a fantastic date movie, and I teared up at the end. If you don't, then your heart is made of stone. I hope it wins lots of Oscars.

We got our fingerprint notice from USCIS on the 17th, so we went the very next day. I was praying we could go while my mom was here because I had no desire to drag our three kids with us downtown to the immigration office. I have to say that we were pleasantly surprised. It was the nicest government office I have ever been too. They were all so helpful and polite and organized. (If only the DMV in Conroe was that nice.) I'm still glad we didn't have to take the kids with us though. Here is how much I like them - we got our approval letter on the 22nd! They must have sent the I171H the day after we were finger printed. Woo hoo!! Awesome! That was the last bit of our dossier.

Oh, also my wonderful, generous mother helped me have a garage sale. It was not quite as lucrative as my last one. I only made $100, but compared to some of the garage sales we used to have in Florida, that qualifies as a success. Other events: I went to the dentist and found out that I will be eating some of our savings, quite literally -root canal and crown = $700 out of pocket. Yeah, that sucks. Then I took all of our crazy animals to the vet for a much delayed visit. Annual for cat, annual for old dog, semi annual for epilectic dog = $430. Sigh, there goes my Ebay money. Sad thing is, I go to the cheapest vet in town. That was a tough few days. I kind of let a few tears sneak out, but at least, my mom was there to offer perspective.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your mom sounds like a candidate for Sainthood! But all good mothers are.

Ali said...

Yes, I agree. Even when my sisters and I were growing up, we thought she was rather martyr-like. We tried to nominate her for Oprah and later for Extreme Makeover: Home Edition but to no avail. But true saints don't get their just rewards on earth, do they?