The strangest grocery-shopping experience ever!

**Slightly controversial...don't read if you're easily offended!**

So, I was at Whole Foods yesterday...had to buy a cake, some milk, and was hungry for their bagels (delicious, by the way)...and there was this woman in front of me in the check-out line. Anyway, she seemed a little *off* but whatever...

I'm standing there, trying to mind my own business, and keep Maddie from accidentally dumping the container of blueberries she's insisting on holding on the floor... This woman is taking forever, and now there is a line forming behind us. Something is not going right with her method of payment... I look up at the little screen and see that she's paying for her groceries using foodstamps! Anyway, I'm not really familiar with how electronic foodstamps work, but she literally paid for $65 worth of groceries using foodstamps, and had an outstanding balance of $3-something that she was getting all worked up about.

Now, I didn't really pay close attention to what she bought, but I did notice that she had cookies from the bakery, organic sugar, and wild rice (the kind you buy by the pound from those bins). First, tell me how electronic foodstamps are paying for groceries at Whole Foods!? In other words, why are my taxpayer dollars paying for food items that I consider totally unnecessary and most of all, overpriced?!

Not to sound insensitive or anything, but I feel totally lucky to be able to shop at Whole Foods and buy my kids organic eggs, milk, cheese and other dairy products, along with grass-fed beef. Do I buy a lot of the other organic items like wild rice by the pound or organic sugar? No way. I look for the cheapest 20-lb bag of rice at the Korean market and buy that one cuz I figure they're all about the same.

Anyway, I was totally befuddled by this woman and how she was able to buy all these things using foodstamps. Then she was all annoyed cuz she had to pay $3.xx out of pocket, which she ended up doing after 15 minutes of arguing about how the foodstamps should've covered the entire bill. Needless to say, a bunch of us were not happy (obviously we picked the wrong line). Unfortunately, the guy behind me and I were pretty much stuck cuz we had already placed all our groceries on the little conveyer belt thingy.

After all was said and done, and I was packing up my car, the guy behind me came up to ask me what the hold-up was. I told him that the woman was trying to pay with foodstamps and that $3 wasn't covered. He commented that she shouldn't have been shopping there, which I completely agreed with (once again, not to be totally insensitive, but that's how I feel).

Our government and its welfare system is completely broken in my opinion. I am not a big supporter of freebie type programs to begin with -- they don't really help in the long run, and there are always too many people who cheat and take advantage of the system. It's that whole idea of teaching a man to fish versus just giving him a fish.

I dunno, the next time our government wants to expand social welfare and raise taxes, maybe we should look at how our money is currently being spent. Just food for thought (pun intended).

Writers' Strike

So, no new TV for the past couple of weeks...and no end in sight to the writers' strike. It's killing me! Literally, the highlight of my last week was Clash of the Choirs (go Team Lachey!) and Laguna Harbor. How sad is that?!

Clash of the Choirs - Interesting concept. I actually missed the first episode cuz I forgot to set the DVR (the whole family's been sick for the past 2+ weeks). However, I was impressed that they were able to take random people off the street and turn them into pretty decent choirs. Some of those people have some really good voices! Personally, I thought Team LaBelle should've won, especially after her Somewhere Over the Rainbow solo, but I guess Nick had more voters out there (not that I'm complaining since I like Nick). I do have to admit that some of the personal stories were super-cheesy. I mean, c'mon, the people looked like they were forcing themselves to cry (and not very well at that).

Laguna Harbor - I'm assuming that they only have a few episodes to show, since this series was taped over a 4 week period. Can I ask what happened to Chrissy? She went from "I've never had a serious boyfriend before" to hooking up and lying about it? And her dad, he went from super-overprotective, I'm going to call you every 5 minutes to you can have a party at the house and go ahead and kiss new boy from college while you're at it...?! Hmmm, something about Clay always kind of bothered me, but Chrissy screwed him over, so as far as I'm concerned, he has free reign to hook up with Taylor or Allie or both. Besides, not sure what the big deal is with Chase. He seems like a mimbo.

Laguna Harbor is *much* better than Laguna Beach was, in its last season. Of course, I was a big fan of the original LB cast (with LC, Stephen and Kristin). This brings me to The Hills. I don't see why everyone is making such a big deal out of the fact that The Hills is semi-fictitious. Who cares, we're all still addicted anyway. Real life, fake life, staged life...whatever! It's all about the drama! I can't wait for The Hills to come back with new episodes from Paris. I'm a little annoyed that Lauren is going around with that ugly Parisian guy, since I'm rooting for Lauren and Brody to get together, but oh well. They're saying that MTV hired that guy to show Lauren around Paris (and unfortunately, she doesn't use her better judgment and is going to hook up with him to supposedly get back at Brody for dating someone else).

*sigh* What's really sad is that I'm this obsessed with TV. Rich makes fun of me cuz I act like these people are real.

Merry Christmas!

Love, Maddie and Nathan

Christmas Shopping '07

This used to be my most favorite time of year... I used to *love* Christmas shopping! Malls lit up with Christmas decorations, Christmas carols playing nonstop... However, since having kids, it's become much less enjoyable. Malls overcrowded with people = difficulty maneuvering with a stroller (and even worse now that we're double-wide).

Anyway, for the past couple of years, Christmas shopping has become painfully unenjoyable, even stressful. However, this year, I pretty much bought everything online, and it was so, so easy! All we have left are Rich's parents and my sister (gift card). Amazon is literally a godsend. Free Super Saver Shipping and no tax -- how can you beat that?!

Right now, our house looks like the place where all the Amazon packages have come to die. We have stacks of boxes, just delivered over the past couple of days, all containing gifts ready to be wrapped. Incidentally, I *love* wrapping gifts..and am very much looking forward to doing so once again this year. I even considered taking a part-time job at Williams-Sonoma so that I could be that person who wraps gifts in the back. Okay, I know that's weird, but really, that's how much I *love* wrapping gifts.

Oh, by the way, the other thing I love is being able to buy gift cards to pretty much anywhere at the supermarket. How ingenious is that?! It's like one-stop shopping while you're out getting groceries anyway. I do still have to get Maddie's teachers' gifts, so I'll do that the next time I'm at the supermarket. Gift cards, another ingenious invention by retailers. I read somewhere that less than 50% of gift cards purchased are ever redeemed. Isn't that insane?! But I guess most people forget about them or lose them before ever using them. Sad.

We still haven't put up our Christmas tree. We're undecided about whether we're going to do it at all this year. It's so much work bringing everything down from the attic (and worse, when we have to put it all back up). The sad thing is that Maddie might actually enjoy the tree this year. We keep waffling back and forth...but if it doesn't happen this weekend, it won't really make sense to do it at all. Ugh, we're just being lazy. It would be cute to take pictures of the kids in front of the tree though, so maybe we'll do it.

Maddie's 3rd Birthday Party

Maddie had the best time at her birthday party! She was surrounded by her friends, got to bounce and slide to her heart's desire, and had a *fabulous* Spongebob birthday cake. What more could a little girl ask for, right?

Anyway, the party went off without a hitch. Someone actually commented that it was the calmest Pump It Up party they had ever been to. And if you've ever been to PIU, you know that they are anything but calm. I was actually expecting to have a splitting headache afterwards (combination of loud music, a bunch of kids running around, and the stress of hosting a party), but surprisingly, not this time.

Maddie's Spongebob cake was a *huge* hit. In fact, the receptionist at PIU commented that she sees thousands of cakes come through, but this was, by far, the best cake she'd ever seen. One of the parents even took a 360-degree video of the cake using their cameraphone cuz a regular picture wasn't going to do it justice.

Thanks Traci!

Nate's 1st Haircut

On Saturday, Rich took Nathan to the hospital with him on rounds cuz I took Maddie to a pink / princess / tea party / birthday party for one of her classmates (the nurses *love* holding him, so it's not like he's going into the patients' rooms). I guess everyone was asking, "how old is SHE?" "what's HER name?" etc. So, that evening, Rich decided it was finally time for Nathan's first haircut.

BEFORE:And AFTER:
A part of me was sad to see his long, feathery baby hair go...but he looks much more clean-cut now (and so grown up!). It's crazy to me that he's going to need a haircut every 3 weeks from now on, especially since we've only slightly trimmed Maddie's hair once in the nearly 3 years of her life. Also, Nathan looks so much more like Rich now...I'll have to upload one of Rich's baby pics for comparison.

DWTS Relationships

Okay, I was trying to figure out if there was some kind of compensation pyramid for the celebrities / professionals on Wikipedia and saw the section on "Relationships."

- Season three star Willa Ford dated her partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy. They went on the DWTS tour together but eventually ended their time on the tour together. [Knew this, thought they were a cute couple, but it didn't last long...seeing that Willa married her on again-off again boyfriend shortly after her time on DWTS -- saw them together on MTV Cribs]
- Mario Lopez, also a season three star, is dating his professional partner Karina Smirnoff and they now reside together in California. [Everyone knows this one.]
- Season four star, Apollo Anton Ohno has been rumored to be dating his professional partner Julianne Hough. [Eek! Totally news to me...and can I say EW!?]
- Cheryl Burke dates former competitor, Joey Lawarence`s younger brother, Matthew Lawrence. [Once again, everyone knows this one.]
- Season 5 star Sabrina Bryan and Mark Ballas Jr. are rumored to be dating. [Thought I saw something there, especially on the last show when she was voted off...but another surprise!]

Not sure why I even care about this...and NO, I have not figured out how they are compensated and whether they are "rewarded" for lasting longer (or winning) the show.