Preview** Six Days of Christmas** Preview

I had so much fun shopping for all of the prizes for this giveaway! Everything that I picked out is something that I really liked and want for myself. (Can I enter my own giveaway?) Remember the theme is All About Mom so everything is with YOU in mind, not your kids!

When you see the prizes you're going to ask yourself "How could she afford all of this?" Part of it is from my BlogHer money -- remember all the money I earn from the ads on the sidebar I turn around and use for my giveaways so be sure to click on those ads!

Part of it, the largest part, came from a gift certificate that Best Buy tried to buy me off with after our little escapade. Newer readers don't know about my dishwasher saga with Best Buy. It made great blog fodder with multiple posts. From the first purchase and bad installation to the moment I realized that Best Buy was holding us hostage by not repairing my broken dishwasher to when it was finally repaired 8 weeks later. I think Best Buy realized that I was a public relations nightmare, not with standing the Hostage Crisis Counter I had prominently displayed at the top of my blog. So long story short (or not so short) to say that they paid me off compensated me for my extreme discomfort by sending me a large gift card. Not large in size, it was actually quite small in size, but large in monetary worth. I had vowed to not shop at Best Buy again, part of their incentive for sending me the gift card, so I decided to use it for the giveaway. Wow, that was a long explanation!

Without further ado, here are the prizes for the Six Days of Christmas listed in order of their days. The giveaway starts Sunday and goes to Friday.

The First Day of Christmas is a snowflake candle holder and votive candle from Yankee Candle. Ross helped me pick out this day and Day Two's prize also.

*Child not included, well maybe she is if she's having a particularly moody day on this day's giveaway.

The candle is Sparkling Snow. Ross picked this candle out from all the other candles at Yankee Candle. He wouldn't let me pick any other candle. When Julia picked the candle up she exclaimed "This smells really good!" I can't tell you how it smells since I have no sense of smell. You newer readers might not know that, but yes, I am special needs. So much more could be said... but we'll let it go.

The Second Day of Christmas is a gift bag from Bath and Body Works.

The bag includes shower gel and body lotion in the scent of Japanese Blossom and also has a loofa. Poor Ross, I drug that poor boy around the entire store sticking open bottles of lotion and gel in his face. He was a trooper though and swore this scent smelled the best. I promised him lunch at Appleby's for helping me. My children can be bought. Well not bought bought, like I'm not selling them. Barter maybe, but selling them would be illegal.

The Third Day of Christmas includes 2 books and chocolate. The first book is The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs. I loved this book! I was completely surprised to see there was a sequel titled Knit Two. The first book is a paperback but the second is hardback. I'm dieing to read it and asked Ross if he thought the winner would notice it had been read. He looked at me like I was an idiot and merely answered "Yes, it would be noticeable." So I am refraining from reading it but its not easy!

Also included are two Dove chocolate bars in Dark Chocolate and Milk Chocolate. When you are laying around reading your books you can indulge in some chocolate too.

Okay, this isn't part of the giveaway but Ryan has recently decided he wants to be in photos. He was feeling a bit left out so I took his picture. So there he stands in his new snow boots that he insists on wearing from first thing in the morning and until I took them off to put his pajamas on. Obviously, pants are optional. He is wearing a diaper so his thing isn't hanging out.

The Fourth Day of Christmas is a Sex in the City gift basket! The day after taking these photos I realized the irony of this one!

Included is a wide screen DVD of the Sex in the City movie, 2 clear plastic martini glasses, a bottle of Cosmopolitan mix and 6 squares of Ghirardelli chocolate.

When I think of Sex in the City I think of Cosmo's so I had to include it. The mix is alcohol free but you can add Vodka if you like. It's alcohol free because for one thing some people don't drink alcoholic beverages and secondly because to the best of my knowledge, its illegal to transport alcohol across some state lines-- Arkansas definitely comes to mind. If I got sent to the big house I'd have to change the name of my blog from There's Always Room For One More to Doin' Time in the Hokey. Do you know what a hassle that would be? Also although it might be a nice vacation, orange jumpsuits really aren't a good look for me. Trust me on this.

The Fifth Day of Christmas is a Digital Picture Frame! Ryan is so happy because he finally got to hold something!

There's a lot of mumbo jumbo about what this puppy does. You can enlarge the photo to see the fine print. I almost didn't get this because it seemed too "mommy" to me but my sister-in-law Janne' convinced me it was a great prize. Its so great that she signed up for a Google account yesterday so she's already to start leaving comments on Sunday.

And now for the final prize, the big finale, the prize my children are fighting to get:

A pink 4 gb Zune mp3 player and case.


I know its pink, which isn't everyone's favorite color, but its girly! And it's All About Mom! Besides, beggars can't be choosers! Didn't your mom ever teach you that?

So the rules are simple. I will start posting on Sunday morning at 12:01 am. A comment gets one entry and if you follow me you get another. I had said that I would keep each day open until 11:00 pm CDT but I have decided to close it at 9:00 pm CDT. That way I have time to pick a winner and announce the lucky person's name before the next day's post goes up.

I can't wait until Sunday!

Black Friday

This morning while millions??? many people were up before the sun even thought about rising, drinking their supposedly better than Starbucks McDonald's coffee (as if!) I was snuggled warm and cozy in my bed sleeping like a baby. Well, being kicked by a baby anyway.

Julia has been gone all week in Nashville and since she and Jenna sleep together that meant Jenna ended up in my bed. That would be me, Emma and Jenna, the notorious spinner, in my bed. Let's just say the last few nights haven't been my most restful.

Enough whining all ready, back to the story!

I'm not a shopper. Darrell loved to shop with me because I'm a "get in and get out" kind of girl. Since I don't really find shopping enjoyable, with crowds especially, it goes without saying that Black Friday isn't my cup of tea. But 2 years ago the kids and I went to Kentucky to visit my brother Dave and his family for Thanksgiving and I was introduced to a completely unknown world.

My sister-in-law Kaye is always looking for the best deals. She'll spend hours looking on the internet and sale ads looking for the best price. Not me, I'd rather be reading blogs, but 2 years ago I really hadn't been introduced to the blog world and Kaye was doing all the research for me. I must have had my head buried in some really big sand pile because I was completely clueless about Black Friday. But I told Kaye I was in the market for a new video camera since my had broken just that summer. I was also looking for Guitar Hero for Trace. Kaye did some a lot of research and told me I could get both at Best Buy. The key was I had to be there and buy them before 8:00 a.m on Black Friday morning to get the best deal. The store opened at 6:00. After some careful thought, Kaye decided we needed to be there by 5:00. That's A.M. As in After Midnight. As in Absolute Madness. I just didn't know it yet.

We got up and left her house by 4:45. My mother was there too and went with us. Black Friday turned out to be one of the coldest days in a really long time in Louisville, Kentucky and its really, really cold just before the sun comes up. I discovered this as I waited outside for FOREVER waiting to get into the store. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Kaye had just recently had surgery on her foot and was on crutches. When we got to the store the parking lot was completely packed and it was going to be hard for Kaye to walk so somehow it was determined that my mother and Kaye would look for a parking space and hang out in the warm car while I waited in line. Yeah.

So I got dropped off at the front of the store and started following the single line to the back. When I got to the back the line serpentined around several times in the back parking lot and I was at the very end. Sound familiar? Kind of Harry Potterish??? Well, I wasn't last for long. Just a short while later a couple of guys showed up, along with various other people over the next hour.

I must make a confession. I tend to be an eavesdropper while standing in line bored out of my mind. I mean, really, what else am I going to do? Some people were pretty quiet, some people were having very mundane conversations, but the 2 guys behind me, they were a completely different story. It turned out that these 2 guys, who I would guess to be in their early to mid 20's, had been at a bar until it closed, went somewhere else and weren't quite ready to call it a night so they decided to head over to Best Buy and see what was going on. Basically they were drunk, but they were happy drunks and very entertaining.

{Public Service Announcement: I in no way condone nor encourage others to get drunk for my own personal amusement.}

Okay, that's of the way.

The Wii had just come out and was really hard to get because of the short supply. (Not much has changed in 2 years, huh?) So these 2 guys started yelling "We want a Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!"They even took turns running up and down the lines shouting it at the top of their lungs. They weren't so drunk that they didn't know they would lose their place in line if they ran together, although they were so entertaining I would have let them back in line just for my own amusement. As people started coming to stand in line behind us one of them pulled out his cell phone and pretended it was a tape recorder and he told them he was interviewing people for NPR. I have to say, it was pretty humorous and I giggled quite a bit. In between shivering that is. I would have even suffered through a cup of McDonald's coffee at that point. I was that cold.

A little after 6:00 the line slowly started to move. As we finally made it to the side of the building people were starting to come out of the store and get in their cars. My new friends were shouting at the people "Did you get a Wii???" Some people took them seriously and answered "No, they don't have any Wiis." Others looked at them like they were crazy and ignored them. And still others had no idea what a Wii even was. As we rounded the corner of the store and stood on the front sidewalk we got close to a police officer observing the crowd.

One of the guys volunteered to the policeman "We want a Wii!"

The officer did a double take and asked "Son, did you just say that you wanted some Weed?"

At this point, I was laughing so hard I was crying.

The guy put up his hands, shaking his head "No! No! We want a Wii. It's a game system."

The policeman looked him over with a dubious look "OK"

The guys were a bit more subdued after that. But they didn't have to be careful much longer, because we were soon through the magical doors and into The Promised Land. If I thought standing in line in the freezing cold for an hour and a half was bad, I hadn't seen anything yet.

It was absolute mass chaos. Items flying off the shelves, people practically running each other down. I got Trace's Guitar Hero but I couldn't get anywhere near the video cameras, let alone get a salesperson to get one out of the case for me. I decided it just wasn't worth the effort and went to find the check out line. After standing in another long line, although shorter than my previous one, I finally checked out. While waiting in the check out line I saw my new friends leaving the store empty handed.

"You decided not to get anything?" I asked them. (Yeah, I'll talk to anybody. Just ask my sister-in-law Janne' who laughed at the conversation I had with the guy at Starbucks at the drive thru speaker this past week.)

"No, they didn't have any Wiis. Besides, we just wanted to see the crazy people waiting to get in."

All righty then. Hope they weren't too disappointed. I know I wasn't.

Best Buy-- best buy?

When we moved in I knew I needed a new refrigerator and I decided to get a new dishwasher too. I had gotten used to the really quiet one I had an rumor had it my newly inherited dishwasher was quite noisy. It was hard to face going back to the sound of the "swish, swish, clonk, clonk, swish"multiple times a day.

When I got into KC one of the very first things I did was look for new appliances. I went to Best Buy first and never went anywhere else. I knew I wanted Stainless Steel and if you've shopped for appliances lately then you know if the appliance has the words "stainless steel" attached to it in any combination you can automatically add a hefty percentage to the price. But Best Buy had a stainless steel LG refrigerator with French doors, ice and water in the door and a bottom freezer with a tilt down freezer door.

I was in lust.

It had been returned because it had 3 dents in the door and was marked down $900 to reflect the damage.

No, this wasn't lust, it was love.

Anyone with kids knows that with 6 kids in my house dents in the doors are inevitable. My doors now had a head start on the dentage to come. The refrigerator was mine.

Of course the dishwasher had to match brands and it just so happened that they had a floor model they were discontinuing that was Stainless Steel and had the controls on the top of the door. It didn't have a manual so it was marked down $200. Could this get any better????

It did-- 0% interest for 18 months! Oh happy day!

The following Thursday my new dishwasher is installed by Mike the Plumber. Mike is eager to finish my install because he has just finished a job at a local winery and was given 2 bottles of wine. Mike can't wait to get home to open his new wine! In fact, Mike wishes he had a cork screw so that he could open his bottles now. But he stays long enough to pontificate on the inferiority of other big chain stores that hire trained monkeys to install their dishwashers and that is why the big chain stores are often stuck with multi thousand dollar bills when the dishwasher floods.

Obviously Mike the Plumber has never read my blog and learned that we NEVER put ourselves in a position to regret what we have said.

Thursday night I used my new dishwasher with great joy and to my amazement it was even quieter than my old one!

Friday morning I woke up and and there was a large puddle of water on my kitchen floor. The inside of my sink cabinet was soaked with water. Water was dripping through the sub floor onto my unfinished basement floor. After I had the sense to turn the water off at the dishwasher valve (water was dripping from the connection at a steady drip) I spent the day dealing with Best Buy, who re-sent Mike the Plumber to fix the leak, and water extraction companies who were all to busy from recent storms to come look at my house.

Mike the Plumber shows up and tells me there is calcification build up. He extracts it and goes on his merry way. I refrained from inquiring about his wine.

Later that day my wood floor around the sink cabinet begins to buckle and become warped. I ask Best Buy how they plan to handle this. Their solution is to send someone to look at the damage because Mike the Plumber said there wasn't any damage. My reply to them? "Yeah, I bet that's what he said. Of course that's what he said. He doesn't want to be held responsible for this."

Fast forward a couple of days and I get a call from Mike the Contractor. Mike the Contractor, who is actually Mike the Plumber, is on his way to see my floor. (I guess he became a contractor over the weekend -- good for him! Its always good to improve oneself!) I tell him fine but I'm at the post office so my son can let him in.

{I'm at the post office because living with a water leak and damage isn't enough to deal with. No I'm also dealing with an adoption and its accompanying paperwork that needs to be done NOW. Oh, and did I forget to mention that I had just moved in???}

Mike the Contractor calls when when he leaves my house and tells me that my wood floor is warped but that it should settle down in a few months. What he told my son is that its not Mike the Plumber's fault because it wasn't from the installation or the dishwasher, it was from OUR line.

Its times like this I wish I had a man to deal with these kinds of things. I just get tired of fighting so many battles.

But I don't have a man and you know what, I'm not doing so bad without one. So my plan is to have a flooring company give me an estimate to fix the floor and present the estimate to Best Buy.

I wonder if Mike the Contractor will become Mike the Claims Adjuster?