Riley and Avery

Riley looooooves Ginger!  She is so patient with her, unlike Avery who runs after her like a crazy person, trying to catch her, and wonders why Ginger disappears at sight of her.

Rudi took the girls to the mall yesterday to see Santa while I cleaned.  They also brought in a carousel for the holidays, which the girls were all a-twitter about.  Riley asked for pet rats and Avery asked for a Zhu-Zhu pet and a toy truck (a $50 truck she saw in a catalog that is definitely out of our price range).

I am really starting to look into dental options for us.  I mean, I need at least, bare minimum, $20,000 worth of dental work.  Seriously.  With brutal honesty, probably over $30K.  Even if we made three times as much as we made now we wouldn't be able to afford that.  Even with dental insurance, and their $2000 yearly max benefit, it would take 10 years!  This is not really something that can be done a little at a time.  I know some people think it can, but I'm the only one who has taken a good, hard, close look inside my mouth, and trust me, it can't be.  Really.  It's all or nothing.  Fix them all at once, or just do nothing and wait for them all to fall out.  I don't have money to waste on this and that, when it's just putting chewing gum in the hole in the dam.  Why get a root canal when I can't afford the crown?

Forgot to mention a couple things in my last post!

First, Riley lost her 6th tooth yesterday.  It was one of the teeth on the top next to the center teeth.  Yippee!  And then the toothfairy fell asleep last night, so as she was searching her bed this morning for the dollar, I pretended to help her and slipped a dollar in.  Ooops!

So, today being the warmest day of the week, and most likely the warmest day we'll have until spring, we decided to go check out Old Orchard Beach.  OOB is the closest thing we have to Ocean City here in Maine, with an amusement park and whatnot.  Of course, we knew everything would be closed for the season, but we wanted to see the beach...

Nothing new, don't get all excited!  If I update about it on Facebook, or speak to family about things, I never see the benefit in blogging about it.  Or, sometimes I update of Facebook and just forget to blog about it.  But blogging is an online record, I need to post things here.  I always come to blogger to search posts if I can't remember when something happened, or how precisely it happened.  I realize that I never blogged about the speech therapist stuff, which is mighty important, I think.

So, apparently there was some tropical storm Tomas that caused wind gust of 63 miles and hour and constant wind of over30 miles per hour on Sunday night.  By midnight our power was out.  Riley's school was canceled on Monday.  We thought, it will be back on by morning, no biggie.  When we woke up we were greeted with the most discomforting sound: the sound of dozens of generators kicking on.  Oh, turds, we think, I guess this is a common occurrence here, and we do not have a generator!

Regardless of what happens on the national stage, I am happy to finally be living in a state that is not afraid to vote "yes" on issues even if it means an increase in taxes.  In Colorado Springs, voters would never vote to increase any tax, no matter how minutely.  Never ever.

Riley got invited to a Halloween party held my a classmate the day before Halloween.  The thing that sucks about have Riley and Avery in different schools (or no school at all in Avery's case) is that they are no longer a 2-fer.  Before, Avery was always invited, or at least welcomed, to events where Riley was invited.  Most kids now have no idea who Avery is, and might not even know that Riley even has a little sister.  Needless to say, Avery was quite disappointed that she couldn't go to the party.  So, I took her to a Halloween event at Borders, which was good enough for her.  It's a good thing she went, and that I brought the camera, because that was the only time she wore her ladybug costume.  Right after, she decided that she wanted to wear last year's witch costume.  The ladybug costume was a wee bit small anyway.  Halloween costume sizing is wonky.

I found out today about another reason to like Maine.  It's called "implied warranty."  You know when you go to the store and buy an electronic, and they ask you if you want the protection plan for x number of dollars?  It's always bothered me.  Do they know that they sell crap, so are charging you extra to protect the junk?  Anyway, no such thing in Maine.  (Best Buy and the likes will still try to sell it to you, but whatever...)  Everything you buy in Maine (except used cars) is covered by a warranty of at least four years.  By selling things, merchants imply that they will last a reasonable amount of time, which the government has decided is at least four years.  Major appliances, for example, are intended to last much longer than four years, so the implied warranty is longer, generally about 10 years.  Now, if I buy a pair of running shoes and go running across Africa and wear them out, that's not covered, but still.  Which is convenient, because Rudi just came home from buying a super-cheap recliner, proudly announcing that it has a 2-year warranty, and I'm like "actually, dear, it has a 4-year warranty, they just don't want you to know that."