school sucks.....the money right out of me!

Spring Casual Pictures? HUH? What the heck! As if school picture day in the fall isn't hell enough, now we get spring pictures too. Of course they TOOK the pictures unless you sent back the notice saying you didn't want your child photographed. I must have overlooked that part (it was on the BACK of the paper) and since only one child actually brought the paper home I would have ended up with one set of pics anyway - the high school did not partake in this little venture so I guess I should be lucky I don't have four sets right. Now the pictures are beautiful and I'm completely impressed that both Emily and Owen were a) clean, b) well groomed and c) almost appropriately dressed.....Emily's wearing one of her fav t'shirts that says "I wanna drive the zamboni" which made me laugh in a 'really....THAT's what you were wearing' kind of way. Owen is wearing a shirt that I have him photographed in a zillion times (I think he was wearing it for Kindergarden picture day actually) but WOW has he ever grown up.



So now I'm holding 12 sheets of pictures in my hands valued at $80 and I'm thinking I should just revolt and return them all.....but they are sooooo good. Genius marketing plan Lifetouch. Take cute pics and THEN ask for money. Ugh! So I've picked out 3 sheets of each kid and I will bite my tongue and pay $48 for them(out of my photo budget for the month)......because I'm a scrapbooker and there's nothing more tempting to me than dang cute pictures.

It's not just these pictures either. Every week it's something. School is sucking the money right out of me. Yesterday Emily wanted $10 to buy daffodils at school. Request denied. Granted this is a fundraiser (I believe for CancerCare) but jimmineycrickets. Today it was money for pizza lunch - the kids get one hot ? meal served a month at school - also a fundraiser for the parent council. Again- request denied. I'm tapped out people. Tapped out!

Too bad I'm not going to be able to deny a couple other recent requests....for things like shoes or jeans. Who needs the government to stimulate the economy.....my growning kids are doing a darn fine job of it all on their own. Next thing you know they are going to want to eat too.

Somehow I managed to trim the food budget enough to actually make the first payment on our van this week. The extra $290 I didn't spend in groceries on the first Tuesday of the month has been missed though. We are scraping the bottom of the pantry for anything edible. It's a good thing I can go shopping tomorrow for groceries because if there isn't a box of granola bars in the house soon there might be a coup.






~K