Money and Movie

The latest update on our money is that WE GOT IT ALL BACK! Paypal completed their investigation and we got a full refund. Yahoo!! The thing that I'm dying to know are all the details!! I have no idea if they found the jeweler to be a part of the whole case, or if they got a credit for the cost of the diamond. It just grates on my nerves when I don't have details!! I'll get past it though, since I have my moolah back!

Speaking of money, last night I dropped a nice chunk of change on my daughter's birthday party. I try not to spend tons of money on birthday parties, I don't rent out the jumpy houses for $400, we don't hire zoos, mascots, etc. But I do like to have a fun party. Our ill-planned party (due to my lack of planning ahead) went off really well......it just cost more than I ever thought it would. We met at Chick Fil A where I purchased a nugget tray and fruit cups - instead of getting everyone a single meal. This turned out to be about the same price, but at least we were able to forgo the french fries. While I knew the kids were going to eat a lot of candy, I tried to sneak in some better choices...i.e. fruit cups. After dinner we walked over to the candy store and I allowed each of them to get the equivalent of one scoop of candy. Silly me, I thought this would amount to about $3 per child, but since I could not police them - they were going batshit crazy - some of them filled their bags with more than the allotted amount. I gave too much credit to other people's kids, I fully expect my kids to follow direction and not act like an animal in public. Other people, apparently, do not teach their children these policies. Not to mention that these girls were all 11 or 12 years old, they SHOULD have some level of responsibility and grace. Eh. What I expected to cost $30 ended up being $60! Yes, I purchased $60 worth of CANDY. That makes me want to hurl. But once you scoop it out, you can't really put it back, so we were kind of stuck with it. I definately learned NOT to turn a kid loose in a candy store......heh.

Our next stop was to see Race to Witch Mountain. I have fond memories of watching Witch Mountain movies when I was a kid, so I was excited for my kids to share the fun. It was okay, but it was not as much about the kids having powers as it was about car chases/crashes. My 7 year old was not impressed with it at all - she got in my lap and tried to sleep. It was shaky filming which I can not stand and it just wasn't all that interesting. The older girls seemed to like it, but I thought the kid actors were weird. Maybe my memory is all messed up, but Tia didn't act like a frickin' robot in Escape to Witch Mountain. The classic movies featured the kids having fun, but this release gave them virtually no personality whatsoever. They were all sad in the end when leaving "The Rock" (Dwayne), and don't get me wrong, I would be sad to leave that man behind, but as the movie went, I didn't really see them make a familial connection to him since they had really no emotion at all. So, either the movie was just okay, or I'm just ass old. Probably a little bit of both! By the way, both of the child actors from the original movies had small parts in this release - I thought that was cool.

One last thing about money is that when one of the mom's dropped off her daughter (I do not know this family), the mom pulled me aside and stated that her child had picked out the gift on her own. The mom thought that the daughter did not spend enough money on the gift, so she wanted me to know that she dropped a $20 down in the gift bag so her daughter wouldn't look cheap. HUH? First of all, how did the daughter go shopping without an adult? Second of all, the little girl gave my daughter 2 new tops, both of which were very cute. ?? I'm not sure where this mom was coming from and how much she feels you should spend on a gift for a kid's birthday - a kid that is just a casual friend from school. Unless it is a really special occasion I see birthday gifts as gestures of kindness, not to be measured by worth. Maybe I am the cheap one? The funny thing is that my daughter just went to this girl's birthday a few weeks ago - I suppose she thought we sent a cheap gift because I let my child pick out the gift. She chose to give the girl a set of colored art pencils because the girl really loves to draw. The set was $9.99, we threw in a cheap sketch book and that was it! She chose something she thought the girl would really love based on her interests, not by price! I wasn't sure how to take that comment! How do you measure what is appropriate to spend on a birthday gift?