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Along the same line – saw this beauty at one of my “Danger!” stores.  You know the “if you walk in, you will purchase something that you didn’t know you needed, but once you saw it you knew it was the answer to a problem you didn’t know you had” store.  (How’s that for a run-on sentence!)  This was at The Container Store.  Holds a 50 pound bag of whatever and has the gamma seal lid!  And its square which would fit much better in our little house than the circle buckets we currently use for our bulk.  But for $50, my $10 buckets with gamma lid are just fine.  Happy to report – for the first time – EVER! – I walked out and did not buy a single thing!!  Yea, I was pretty proud of myself for resisting all the temptation

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Does this even need a caption??

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Yea, we “lub my tabwet”.  But let me tell you a story about what a PITA they have been.

For Christmas, the inlaws got the 3 girls Tabeo’s and Mr. Littlest got a Kurio (the oldest wants a laptop – a Mac to be exact – slightly out of the Christmas budget). 

Word of warning:  DO NOT PURCHASE A TABEO! 

We should have known, after seeing the reviews on Amazon (out of 64 reviews, 43 rated it a 1 star!).  The charger port is the same as an HTC – and FELL OUT within a week – on ALL 3!  WT?!  So we take them back.  But they only have 1.  We exchange that one.  Two days later with only me plugging it in/out, the new one’s port fell out!  That’s what the reviews were all saying – bad battery and charger ports falling out. 

Back to Toys R Us we go.  I thought I was being smart and exchange them for Kurio’s.  Sigh.  They only had 2 in stock (so still down 1).  One of those wouldn’t connect to the internet.  SMH.  Apparently that is a widespread complaint with the Kurio as well.  After talking with Tech Support, they wanted me to send it to the factory.  Nope.  Thanks anyway. 

Thankfully Toys R Us was understanding and gave us back the money.  The big girls will now be getting Refurb’ed Galaxy’s.  I am done with these children’s tablets.  They are a great idea – and the Nabi2 is the best rated one from what we’ve seen.  But at $200 its the same price as the Kindle Fire HD and the Samsung Galaxy.  Granted, the “real” tablets do not come with cases, but small price to pay to not deal with the headache anymore.  The Littles wont be getting online much anyway.  So there’s your word of warning.

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Hey, it worked well last week!  Is it bad that I’m wondering if we can do plywood the same way… they are the same size…  I’m thinking why not.  Apparently some nice guys in the parking lot didn’t think it would fit and offered to deliver them for me.  Ha!  And yes, those are still toys from Christmas in the back.  So not excited to bring out more new toys.  We will slowly add them to the mix.

Water made it into the nail buckets… and froze.  I’ll admit it was pretty cool to lift the ice and pull up a bunch of nails!

Mr. was working so it was just the children and I.  I spent the night before pumping myself up – I can do this – we were so ready!  Gas for the generator, insulation boards, stairs drawn out – we were going to knock it all out this weekend!

Or not.  ARGH!

The generator’s cord decided to not cooperate and wouldnt pull.  I will not be stopped!  Back to the handsaw we go.  I did manage to get one of the stringers cut!!  Ok, so it took all day between helping Bou with the boards, helping the children and having a nursling – and my arms are dead – but who cares!  One down! WHOO HOOO!!  Only 1 to go.

I knew from last time I would be nervous on the ladder, so we did the front first since its not quite as high up… I thought. I still had to talk myself through it all – 3 more rungs, 5 more nails, 2 more minutes…  I have come to the conclusion:  heights + open air = not a fan.  Needless to say, the back did not get done.  And since I’m not sure where the ledger board for the front porch is going to go, I left a bit of wiggle room.

Sides all boarded and taped up!!  #SoClose

 
And shhh – don’t tell, but a couple of those pieces are 3/4 inch instead of 1/2 inch… really, I don’t see how that’s going to matter much when we put the siding up.

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