Rant on a broken system

While Wayne was in school we faced a dilemma with our health insurance. Premiums increased tremendously each year and the fact that the full year's premium was due at the beginning of the school year combined with the fact that student loans were dispersed in equal amounts each quarter created a difficult situation. We opted out of what was a pretty good insurance plan to go to a high deductable plan offered through Blue Cross (the Individual Blue plan if any of you are familiar with it). We are a generally healthy family and we typically only make a few doctors visits each year (usually for the kid's check-ups and general stuff like that) so crunching the numbers we found that even if we had to meet the individual full deductible of $2500 in a year, we would still have spent less money overall based on the lower monthly premiums. It only got better when we moved here because our premiums went down a pretty good bit (the county is fairly poor so rates are lower). Well, so we got a letter today informing us that our deductible is getting a 320% increase to $8000 per person. Holy cow! Our plan didn't go up as much as some of the other deductible plans...others went up 400%. I don't get why it went up so high in the first place. Healthcare costs haven't gone up THAT much. There is a high deductible plan (which can be reasonable) and then there is a ridiculously high deductible that makes this insurance plan unreasonable. Why don't the insurers just tell me that they only want my money and don't want to pay for a single thing? It might be easier to swallow. The system is so broken...UGG!

Darth Vader on a Razor

Ian had a day off from school and had to celebrate by donning his Darth Vader costume (which is the costume he picked out for next year). I can only imagine what the neighbors were thinking when they saw both of my kids wearing star wars costumes running around outside and Ian riding on his scooter with flip-flops on. I know that Wayne mentioned earlier that since we forced the Princess Leia costume on Cali she loves dressing up in it.

Fish snacks...Taiwan style

My brother and sister-in-law recently traveled to Taiwan. Among the souvenirs they brought back was this little snack mix. Most everything in it was unremarkable with the exception of the little dried fish. Fauna and I both agreed that it didn't really make for a pleasant addition to the snack. I believe Cali felt the same way based on the face she made after crunching one down.

Leaves

I've heard that for those who live in snowy climates the first snow of the year is kind of exciting and anticipated. After that, it outlives its welcome and is loathed for the rest of winter. I kind of feel that way about leaves and Autumn. I love seeing a nice layer of leaves covering the yard and the crackling noise it makes when you shuffle through them. Even more fun is making a huge pile of leaves for the kids to play in. Alas, the never-ending barrage of leaves soon becomes too much and I believe it was January the last of them fell and were begrudgingly swept to the road for pickup. Anyhow, we haven't hardly had any leaves fall in our yard so far. I have been waiting to get a big pile raked up and based on our pictures from last year, there should be plenty there. This picture is from our neighbors yard and I am tempted to go rake her leaves just so we can play in them. If I had a wheel barrel or something reasonable to transport them to the curb in then I would totally do it (it would be a nice service project and would provide some fun for the kids and some good Fall pictures). I'm guessing it must have been much windier last year and we just got most of those leaves blown over into our yard. We may end up having to rake them up anyways.

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth

When I was a child I loved to sing the song "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth", well now I have a child that can actually sing it and it be true. I never thought that everything would sync up like this, but I think it is kind of fun. I feel like that will be a favorite song once we start busting out the Christmas music.

Please insert 25 cents

A little more than a week ago we went to Ian's last two soccer games. It was a cold morning so I opted to stay in the van with Cali to watch. At one point she started playing with the the collection of change in the coin holders and figured it would be a good idea to slip the coins into the CD player. By the time I noticed her inserting a nickel there were a lot of missing coins (2 nickels, 3 quarters, a dime, and 12 pennies to be exact). The CD player would make bad clicking noises whenever we would start the van and refused to eject the CD that was in it. This morning Fauna got around to taking everything apart and I am happy to say that she was able to get all the change out and it seems to be working just fine now.

I'm glad that this little mishap was able to have a happy ending, but I do worry about Cali deciding that random objects need to go into other CD-accepting slots (like on the Wii). That might be a little harder to fix (and definitely more expensive to replace).

Way to go Sauna!

I will be the first to say that my name is unique. Up until the middle of high school I didn't really like it at all and wanted to change my name. I finally appreciated the uniqueness of my name and I'm VERY proud of it. At Ian's end-of-year soccer party the coach gave me this plaque for helping out with the team. I graciously accepted the plaque, but the engravers' struggle to get the name right makes me think of the many veriations of my name that I have heard/seen throughout my lifetime....

Fanna
Fiona
Faunana
Faunna
Fawna
Fawnya
Sauna
Flora
and my personal favorite Furina

I know there are a couple more that aren't coming to me at the moment, but you get the picture.