Well, we finished getting Titus’ room all together in October. We hung pictures, shelves and letters. It feels really good to be all done with at least one room. Only a few more to go.

I think I posted this on Facebook, but on on kennyandsara.com. In case you missed it, here it is. A few weeks ago Titus was so tired he fell asleep while eating, something I don’t think I could ever do.

Eating is boring! from Kenny Conley on Vimeo.

The weather was perfect and we had 30 minutes to spare, so we decided to take Titus up to the main park in our neighborhood. We’re so glad we did. There is a playground right down the street from our house, but it’s really designed for kids older than Titus. He likes to play and climb and we have to continually “spot him” everywhere he goes. This new playground has a huge play area that is perfectly safe for a wobbly toddler. We’ll defiantly be back to this one.

Driving comes naturally. Gotta check those blind spots when backing up.

Getting out of these things are a lot harder than it looks.

Looks big from his perspective, huh?

Having a blast!

Not sure what he’s thinking here.

Static electricity is a beautiful thing.

But wait, there’s even more. Watch the video below to watch Titus in action.

Titus at the playground from Kenny Conley on Vimeo.

It’s so funny watching Titus learn to do things. He started learning to climb and pull himself up on things right after learning to walk. He’s also very good and getting down from things he’s on. However, he’s absolutely no good at going down steps. Not at all. We have a very small step in the garage (only an inch or two tall) that Titus can’t step down unless he is holding on to something. Just a few weeks ago, he’d get down on his hands and knees and ease himself down. He still does this coming down our front steps. I decided that it would be good to get this on video before he learned how to do it standing up. Is this cute or what?

I guess since I referenced this so much in my last post, I figured I’d say why.

I love movies. Love them. One of my favorite things to do is watch movies. For the last decade, just about the only place to rent movies has been Blockbuster.

Well, about 8-9 years ago they changed their return policy. Remember, they changed the return from Midnight to noon the next day. They claimed it was to give me another 12 hours of movie enjoyment, but I was on to their scheme. I’d never had a late fee before. With this new policy, I was always late. I remember talking to a clerk and said, “you guys must be raking it in with the late fees.” The clerk said, “no, by having a noon return time, people can drop off their videos on the way to work.”

I wasn’t buying it. I talked to a friend who worked at Blockbuster. He said that “everyone” was late with the new policy. Blockbuster eventually got sued for this among other things.

It was at this time I moved to Texas. I was done with Blockbuster. I had some friends come visit us and they wanted some movies, so we got 3 or 4 to watch. We paid almost $20. Yeah, I was done with them. However, something happened.

Blockbuster launched “Blockbuster Online.” For $20 a month, I could get 3 movies at a time through the mail. Yeah, I had to give this a try. I knew Netflix was doing this too, but Blockbuster gave me 2 coupons a month for in-store rentals. It was a no-brainer. I did this for almost 4 years. In order to make an even bigger impact on their market share, they released their “Total Access” plan. This was where I could return my “mail-in” DVD’s to the store for an exchange for an “in-store” DVD. As soon as I turned in my “mail-in” DVD to the store they shipped my next movie from my que. It was amazing. I actually had way more movies than I had time to watch. I think I actually got to the point that I had seen every movie I cared to see. My que was filled with documentaries and such.

Then they changed their policy, something they are so good at. No more monthly coupons and I could only return my “mail-in” DVDs for an “in-store” DVD 2 times a month. Oh, and the price had gone up, again. I moved to Georgia where they don’t have a Blockbuster, (they couldn’t compete with the other video stores in town) so I canceled my membership and switched to Netflix.

So here’s the deal. I use Netflix and I pay $10 a month for 1 movie at a time. I’m probably going to increase this to 2 movies at time soon. I also use Red Box. I pay $1 for a movie a night. So, going into Blockbuster and paying almost $5 for a movie that’s been out for almost 2 years is infuriating.

Okay, I know that was a totally silly post and no one probably cares, but I just felt like writing it.

The title really says it all.

I subscribe to Netflix. Mostly because I hate Blockbuster. So, Sara and I sat down to watch a DVD last night (I’m not telling you which one because you’ll totally make fun of me). It was not a stellar movie by any means, but we were enjoying it. Then at about half way through, the movie started skipping. I cleaned the DVD and it still didn’t work. I even tried to play it in my computer. It had bad sectors. It was 11:15. We totally wanted to finish the movie. I didn’t want to have to send the movie back and wait for them to send a new one. We wanted it NOW. So, I Googled Hollywood Video because I hate Blockbuster. I found one and called the number. Guess who answered? Blockbuster. Yeah, I don’t know how they did that, but I hate them for it. They said they were open until midnight, so I figured I’d go by the Hollywood video first and Blockbuster would be my last resort.

I got to Hollywood Video and the only copy they had was never returned. Shoot! So, I call Blockbuster to find out where they are. They explain to me that they are on the corner of Cypress Creek and Lakeline. I was on 183 and coming up to Cypress Creek. I say, “I’m on 183 and about to get to Cypres Creek, which way do I turn?”

The guy replies, “I don’t know which way you’re coming from.”

I said, “I’ll make it easy for you, are you guys East or West of 183?”

“Let me ask my manager.”

I wait.

“Uh, she’s not very good with directions either.”

Pause….

“Okay, then I guess I’ll have to try both ways. how far are you from 183?”

“I don’t know.”

“5 minutes? 10 minutes? Help me out here.”

“5 minutes I think.”

“Thanks”

So, I go to the comedy section in the middle of the store and can’t seem to find it. I ask the directionally challenged guy if they have any copies. “Yeah, it’s on the new release wall.”

“New release?” The movie came out over a year ago… maybe longer.

They had about 10 copies, but they were all stacked behind one another (not spread out like the popular movies). I paid almost $5. It was 11:55. And on my way home I added this little adventure onto my long list of reasons why I hate Blockbuster.

Most days Titus will make his rounds of things to play with in all the rooms in the house. His toys in the living room, the scale in the bathroom, the pillows in our bedroom, a can of refried beans in the kitchen pantry, the doors leading to the bathroom and his bedroom and most importantly, the piano in the front room. When he first started walking, he’d just reach up and play a few keys. Now that he’s a climber, he gets on the piano bench, sits down and plays for a little while. He’s not very good yet, but he’s practicing a little each day.

He’s showing off a little; playing without looking.

Now maestro is really getting into it!

Last week Titus experienced his second Halloween. Last year we bought him a hot dog costume which he only wore for about 10 minutes. This year Titus was loaned a costume and he got to be a turtle. Surprisingly, he wore his costume for a few hours. Oh, but he refused to wear the part of the costume that went over his head. We were invited over to a friends house for a party for the first part of the night and trick or treating afterwards. It was a fun night.

Not a happy kid. That’s okay Titus, I don’t like hats either!

What’s cooler than a turtle? A turtle in a truck!

Titus enjoyed a Halloween wagon ride.

We did stop at one house with our nifty plastic bag for family. After this house, Titus spent the rest of the time in the wagon.

I’m posting this on both my personal blog and ministry blog as I do write to two different audiences and thought that this information might be helpful. This weekend it was my mission to track down and close any credit account I had tagged to my name. I had a few that I knew of and I was sure there would be a few I didn’t know about.

I’ll be honest. I’m a sucker for a deal. Sara and I try to live in a pretty tight budget, so when I see that I can get 15% off a purchase at Amazon if I sign up for a credit card, I’m seriously going to think about doing it. Actually I’ve opened cards at Target, Amazon, some place at the mall and even a Planet Hollywood card because I wanted the free CD that they were giving away (Sara and I enjoyed that CD for many years). I came to realize that getting these cards (even if I planned to cut them up and never use them) reduced my credit score.

I knew I needed to clean up some of these accounts, so I went looking for one of those free credit report sites. Most of them are scams. Actually, they aren’t scams, they’re just giving you a free credit report if you sign up for a 10 day trial of credit monitoring (which will be billed to your credit card if you don’t cancel at the end of the trial). Then I found this site. No scam, just a site (I think it’s the only one sanctioned by the three credit bureaus) that lets you run a report from each of the three bureaus every year. I figured I’d run the report every 4 months, hitting a different bureau each time. This way I could see any suspicious activity more often than once a year.

So, I found two or three open accounts that needed closing. One I knew about, the other two I thought had been closed. The report provided the contact information of the companies I had accounts with, so closing them were easy. Again, I was able to do all of this for free. I used Equifax this time around and had no problems other than Equifax wanting to sell me credit monitoring or offering my “credit score” for a little money.

So, if you want to check out your credit report to clean up some of those account or just curious about what is on there, check out www.annualcreditreport.com.

On Halloween we went to a friends house for a party. In their backyard we ate dinner while all the kids (and there were a lot of them) played on the playscape, moon bounce or various toys. Titus is still not at the development level where he "plays with others" but he’s always looking for a good toy and on this night he found one. Titus found a Little Tikes truck. Normally you’d see one of the red and yellow Little Tikes cars (what family of a toddler or church nursery doesn’t have one of these). Well, the truck was totally cool and eve though there were at least 20 kids running around that yard, Titus we focused on his truck. The funny thing was that he didn’t know how to get in at first, so he figured he’d crawl in the bed and squeeze in through the back window. Not a bad idea, especially for a boy… that is until he got stuck.

Hey, what do you expect. He’s never climbed into a truck by himself.

Much more comfortable in the cab. I got a feeling Titus is going to like his trucks.

Just when he thought everything was okay, a sweet little girl opened the door and crawled in with Titus. Remember how I said that Titus doesn’t play with other? Well that includes that he prefers not to share with others either. He cried and the mom of the girl got her out and took her to find something else to play with. Titus, you better get used to it, you’re going to be sharing your car with a girl for most of your life.

Enjoy the video of Titus and his car: