I wanted to share these pictures and video with all of you from Gage's music program Monday night, so figured I best get them posted before it's old news!

Another cold day out there. My friend Emily had a funny comment posted on her blog. Her husband Jody came into the house the other day and said, "Nobody's talking about Global warming out there today!" Ha ha! I'm sure that's the truth! They aren't talking about it today either!

Emma and I went to hockey today, despite the freezing cold temperatures. My fingers were so cold when I was trying to get her hockey gear on that they hurt. I sure would hate to have a job that requires you to be out in weather like this. Although, I'm sure if I did, I would wear gloves! I forgot them when I was walking out the door and certainly regretted that!

Yesterday I went online to pay a credit card bill and discovered that I forgot to pay it in December. I think I am losing my mind. Anyway, when I was looking I saw that it was due Dec 26, and figured I must have just gotten busy with our trip to Iowa and making all of those Christmas cookies that I just spaced it off. Another reason is because I get paperless statements, so every month I get an email telling me my bill is due. Well, apparently I didn't pay that much attention to the email. Anyway, I have had this happen before. Last month, in fact, I had gone online to pay my other credit card off and apparently forgot to change the default payment of the minimum amount due, and got charged a late fee, finance charge AND an over limit fee (we don't have a very high limit on this card). (This sounds terrible, I know. But, we don't abuse our credit cards. We pay them off in full each month). Anyway, yesterday I called up the credit card company to see if I could get them to remove the $29 late fee and the $1.29 finance charge (with that low of a finance charge, it's obvious the bill wasn't very high.) Anyway, I call the place up and ask if there's any way they could remove that charge. The guy told me that he couldn't do that until I paid it. I knew that wasn't true, because my other credit card company took the charges right off. I had scheduled a payment online to occur on the next due date. I asked him if I re-scheduled the payment to occur today, could he then take the charge off. (And, by the way, he wasn't American so I was having a hard time understanding him). He told me I would have to pay it first, and then I could call back later and they would credit my account. Well, I didn't want to call back later, because I wanted to deal with it now, otherwise I would forget, which is why I have this problem in the first place. Then he asks, "Do you mind if I ask why you didn't pay it on time?" I said, "Sure! I guess I got busy over the holiday season and since it was due on Dec 26, and we were out of town, I just plain screwed up and forgot!" He would just not do it and he was making me mad. I then told him I just wanted to cancel the credit card then. (We've had this card for nearly 10 years, so they usually don't want to get rid of good customers.) I couldn't understand a lot of what he was saying, and I really did NOT want to cancel this credit card because we earn college savings for the kids with the use of this card. Then, he told me since I wasn't the primary card holder, I couldn't cancel the card. I got mad and told him I would have my husband call later to cancel the card and I hung up the phone. So, last night I had Scott call them. They took the charge right off and had no problems doing so. UGH! I'll bet the guy I talked to must have left a note on our account saying that I threatened to cancel the card and they didn't want that to happen? Anyway, they removed the charges and all is well. Why do they have to be so difficult?