Which do you want first?  The good or the bad?

Ok, I’ll give you the good first – We had our third day of orientation today, but today was for the lower school kids. C was so happy seeing his new classroom, meeting his sweet, new teacher and making new friends immediately. I love how kids can just do that. They just run after each other, and say, come on let’s go and the fun begins. By the time we finished our BBQ lunch, I couldn’t get him off the playground without demands for a play date right away and whose house it was gonna be at.  The coolest part was that his new friend is originally from Los Altos, which is the next town over from our home town. Charlie said he was so happy that he could keep his friend forever and that when we’re done in Holland he can still see his friend back home. How sweet is that?  I’m so happy for him, and for me too! Loved his new best friend’s mom, and if she didn’t have company and I didn’t have to run errands again we’d be at each other’s houses already. Ok, maybe tomorrow.

And CJ stayed home while we were at orientation, hanging out with his new friend that lives a couple doors down. He was happy to have someone to watch movies with and play games, and just be a teenager with.

One last part of good news, before the bad… JJ and I went shopping on our bikes to the market place while Jeff waited for another IKEA delivery that we’ve been waiting for, for weeks. I’ll get to that in a minute. Can you see where this leading?  Anyway, it was fun to go on a date with my soon to be middle school daughter, just her and I – trying on new clothes and looking for a new backpack, and shopping for dinner together. We gathered everything in our reusable bags and rode home. It was really fun, and we saw geese and ducks on the canals along the ride home. The air was cooler and it was so pleasant.  When we arrived back home, we were happy to see that the IKEA delivery items arrived and were on the floor of the kitchen.

The bad news is that the IKEA table we ordered on August 8th, was missing parts. We tried to fix the problem, but customer service in the Netherlands isn’t their strong quality. And when you call customer service, it’s a 900 number you have to dial and they charge .15 cents per minute. And they put you on hold. And they don’t give you a reference number. And they don’t solve the problem, but tell you something different than what is reality. So basically, you’re screwed. And we were. And we waited. And we called. And we got the run around. They said they couldn’t redeliver our table for another 3 weeks. And I cried FOUL!  And they said that was the best they could do. And I said BS.  And so yesterday, we drove back to IKEA and ordered a new table (while we wait for them to come pick up the defective table) and scheduled delivery for today (after orientation) – imagine that it could be delivered in less than 3 weeks. AMAZING what happens when you don’t accept no for an answer. But anyway, the table that arrived tonight – you won’t believe this… was missing the same exact parts. 12 of them to be exact!  OMG – can you imagine the frustration?  It’s really not fun not having a table “forever”. So we printed off the crazy letters explaining our case, and highlighted the missing parts on the assembly instructions and went back to IKEA again!  Now we swore we’d never go to IKEA again – yet there we were.  And the guy in customer service looked at us like this couldn’t be possible. And he hadn’t heard of this, and blah blah blah.  But basically, he sent us to another warehouse a half mile away, where we opened up the boxes of the same table and took the missing parts, hoping we could put our table together.

So all that was bad is now almost good. Jeff and I worked for a little over an hour, after putting the kids to bed and we now have a table. And one dead table sitting on the floor, that somehow has to get back to IKEA so that we can get our money back since we’ve paid for two tables. The guy wouldn’t give me credit without the delivery company picking up the old table and having me sign some receipt – that I then have to take back to IKEA again!!  He says that the pickup is scheduled in the system, but I don’t believe it. I think I’ll call a 900 number again tomorrow and pay another 15 cents a minute to help them run their operations. Wish me luck!  Oh, and he threw in two free lunches. Wow – wasn’t that nice? I bet they have a lot of working tables in the lunch room. Anyone want to join me??