The Mane Event

Every year in early November the kids' school has a big fundraiser, usually at a hotel, with a silent auction, dinner, and a live auction.  The last couple years we've stayed at a hotel and The Girl has been in charge of her brother and a couple of his friends for the evening.

This year the event was at the Brown Palace Hotel, in downtown Denver, instead of at a chain in the suburbs.  I was (am?) actually in a bit of trouble, because when I tried to make reservations at the Brown, I found out that there was no way to have adjoining rooms or to guarantee rooms on the same floor to make The Girl's babysitting task easier...however, the Brown is connected to the Comfort Suites, which, amazingly, have suites. With some reluctance (tempered by the fact that a two bedroom two bathroom suite at the "other" hotel was only slightly more than a "Queen bed room" at the Brown) I booked a suite and was assured that the two hotels were connected by the "heated skybridge" so we could easily "run over" and back.  In a long-ish saga, that I'm not even going to try to explain here, we ended up not in the two bedroom suite, but in two one-bedroom suites on the same floor--no worries!  After finally getting into our fancy clothes, we four adults hopped in the elevator and headed for the 2nd floor to traipse across the street via the heated sky bridge.  But, lo and behold...when the elevator doors opened, we discovered that our event was actually on the Comfort Suites side of and on the bridge (yay!). In fact, the elevator was right in the middle of the festivities. Huh, aren't I amazing? Ok, I'm still in trouble because we didn't have the opportunity to stay in a potentially haunted Brown Palace room.  But seriously, a room at the CS could be haunted, too! It took so long to clean so we could get into the second room that we wondered if they were cleaning up after a murder or something...eesh.

The event appears to have been a success--we came home with several silent auction items and a live auction win to this cabin for spring break. We actually "won" it a few years ago, too and spent a week there with Mr IM's Dad, sister, and brother in law.  This time we'll be joined by some families from the kids school and potentially Grandude.

Sunday morning we enjoyed our "free" breakfast (mmm....complimentary continental breakfast), did a little sightseeing of the Brown and headed home to get ready for the week.

As we were leaving we chatted and decided that while the event was awesome and it was really fun to have in a historic venue...that next year we kind of hope they return to the land of suburbia and bigger rooms--it was pretty crowded while we all browsed the silent auction goodies in the hallway and waited for dinner!

I love technology, no really...

The scene:
My bedroom, Saturday, 6:57 am

Me, snuggled up under my fluffy comforter, thinking that I should wake up and get up...but why?
Mr. Ranch, downstairs eating breakfast, getting ready to go to triathlon practice.
The Girl, sound asleep in her room
Liberty downstairs, aggravating Mr. Ranch, Indy sleeping in "her" chair in our room, Tigger standing in the bathroom crying for his water dish to be refilled, Alice?  Well, who knows, probably somewhere nearby, plotting our deaths.

Enter The Boy, semi-hysterical, with Kindle in hand

The Boy:  "MOM!!!MOM!!!"
Me:  "Mmmm Blah?"
The Boy:  "MY KINDLE ISN'T WORKING!!!!"
Me:  "MmmmmBlah?"

After several minutes of this, I opened my eyes.  The Boy explained that he was trying to input the parental controls password (um, what?) so that he could buy something or do something (I'm still a little unclear on the details here) and his Kindle "locked". Yep...it was "locked" on a screen that said something like "reset to factory defaults or else".

Sooo.  I sat up, opened my Kindle (luckily it was on the night side stand, since I was reading a book way too late last night), contacted tech support, typed out a long message, hit send, saw that the tech had connected...and The Boy bounced on my bed, causing my finger to slip and the whole thing to disappear.  Ackgrrr.

Ok, fine it is now 7:05...I should get up.  The Boy and I proceed downstairs, I plug his Kindle into a charger and connect to Amazon again, using the laptop.  After 40 minutes of explaining, transfers, etc., I come to the conclusion that I know more at this point than Amazon. I say I'll call them back later, after I've had coffee, to see if anyone has a better idea. (At this point, the "best" idea is that we need to deregister the Kindle and start over, which I agree is the best choice right now, but was really hoping for another choice because I"m tired of "losing" movie downloads...but whatever).

Now, at 8:40, I have consumed two cups of coffee, started the washer and dryer and the Kindle is still showing the "Reset or else!" message...and still isn't giving me a way to do anything other than look at it.  Good times.

In other news, while I was dealing with Amazon online, I read some of the blogs I subscribe to and found this great article by Andrea Mowery on Mamalode about suddenly realizing she was the mom of "big kids"--I've had that feeling a lot lately, so I went to her blogs, About 100%  and  Stumbling Everyday.  Her writing really connected with my life this morning--enjoyed her writing and viewpoint.

On the agenda for today...get ready, it is especially ambitious...Hard boil and let the kids color eggs (ok, not bad), pay bills and balance the checkbook (blech), supervise homework (including tracing The Boy for some project he needs a life size tracing of himself for), laundry and dishes (duh, that's every day), buy a giant trash can and a screen door (trash can for potatoes in a bucket, screen door because Alice and Liberty have shredded the old one, including the frame), some other random gardening before it thunderstorms, and somehow make all the Easter Bunny magic happen, despite the children lurking everywhere. Questions of the day...do they really still believe in the Easter Bunny, and does it matter to how much "magic" must be created?

 Not too bad, now that I write, it, right?  No birthday parties...yay!  The Girl is begging to go see Divergent, so perhaps that will be our late afternoon activity...we'll see.  In the meantime, if you have any great ideas on fixing the dumb Kindle..let me know.  Happy Saturday!