Tomorrow morning, bright and early – I think around seen or eight AM, Micah and i will be getting into the car and driving for nine and a half hours to Snow lake Manitoba. My grandfather passed away , suddenly, on Thanksgiving Monday. I am SO SO SO glad we got down there this past august and were able to spend some time with him. SO Glad.

Ive got the suitcase and garment bag packed and ready. The boys are packed too.The only thing left to pack is my pillow and our toothbrushes. Which reminds me, i packed the boys toothbrushes, but I will have to unpack them, LOL, as they will need them tonight still.

My blogs all have managed hosting, so they can take care of themselves, but i am still trying to find someone on FaceBook to help me out with one of my games.

Samantha is heading to a friends house to be watched, But smokey is staying home. My house is safer than Fort Knox with that dog standing guard LOL.

In the next 3 days, we will be spending 26 hours driving. Fun times, fun times

We bought a facucet for the kitchen – one with a retractable spray thingy – two months ago for 87 dollars and i have to say I am pleased as punch with it. I was super worried it would be hard to keep clean cus of the finish, but that is not so. And the retractable spray thingy? *SWOON* OH! I am in LOVE with it! i recommend every one have one!

I kinda want to get a retractable shower head now for the main bathroom – not becuase we take showers there, becuase we don;t , we use the master bath and the boys shower downstairs, but becuase if I had a shower head I could bring down and spray with, It would be sooooo much easier to clean the tub! Maybe if I got new bathroom faucets, I could find one with a spray hose, a loooong spray hose, and spray from there? I highly doubt that bathroom faucets come equipped with retractable sprayers though…and if they did, I bet my boys would be using it to spray each other more than they would use to for anything else!

But in the kitchen? HELL YES! Come to Mama!

Yesterday i opened the mail and found a 300.12 power bill.

Considering that our power bill is usually around 130, that amount was rather shocking. I got on the phone immediately and asked the company what was up with that bill. I mean, My inlaws pay less for rv insurance than SaskPower wanted for one months use of wattage!

They ahd us go out to the meter and take a peak and do some tests – like shutting down the main breaker to make sure the dial stopped moving (If it kept moving, that would have meant that someone had tied into our power and we were paying for them to do.. whatever it would have been) the dial stopped though (bad news, LOL, Stopping means WE have to pay the bill, OMG)

Once it was determined that we were responsible for the bill, the lady on the phone gave us some clues to look for to see why we had a 1406 watt spike in use from last year at this time to now (Over a three month period)

Micah figured it may be our central vac sucking up the power, as The way our power is done is two months of estimate bills, one month of an actual reading. This month, the 300.12 bill was an actual reading, so , three months ago we got the central vac hooked up and Micah figures that is the cause. I am hoping not becuase I love my vacuum but not 150$ worth!

I am wondering if it is the two times that the freezer was left open overnight in the past 6weeks. (I know, OMG, right! At least the second time we had hardly any food in it to spoil!)

The boys are doing a great job turning off lights and I am watching my usage of the dryer, which I understand is a huge power hog.

ANY ideas from you guys on how to conserve power would be great!

I got outbid on a halloween costume for my son (obi wan kaobie) on ebay. I would bid more, but my paypal account is a wee bit drained!

I haven’t been buying Baldwin hardware, but I did buy some Tiger Eye stones for my rock obsessed son, a new shirt, a pokemon hat (lol) and a necklace. Had I knows that some ninny would outbid me right at the end of the auction, i would have saved money to bid higher!

Oh well. I will take my eldest in to the city this afternoon and have a looksee at the stores