Our New Year's Eve

Happy New Year! It was so nice to spend New Year's day home with my family instead of a lonely hospital room. I guess I would have been fine. I would have watched the ball drop on tv there just like I did here. We had so much fun last night. Rob got out of work around 5 and went and picked up the boys from the sitter. Then he swung by the hospital and sprung us outta there! We had to stop and take Brandon to go potty at a nearby McDonalds so he wouldn't flood our van, then we were off to find some dinner. After a quick pass through the drive thru, we went to a huge holiday lights display here that the boys have been wanting to go through all season. We go every year. It was nice to see a few new displays.

After we drove through the lights, we headed to the first of 3 local Walmarts. Our router that we use for our phone gave out on us the night before. We needed a specific type of router that we could have picked up at any Best Buy, but they were closed for New Year's Eve. We eventually found what we were looking for, and it was about $30 cheaper than I expected. We also picked up lots of goodies and soft drinks. I even sprung for two bottles of sparkling cider. The kids were so impressed with the pretty bottle and the bubbles in their juice!

I spent about 10 minutes on the phone with our internet service provider setting up the new IP address and cloning it to our modem. Then it was all about tweaking the software. After an hour (and toasting the new year) we were online! A quick check of the phone line proved to be disappointing. A prompt told us that there was something wrong with our service. It took a while to find a phone number for Vonage. What a pain in the neck! The first person I talked to kept going through a trouble shooting menu and basically undid everything I had set up with our ISP. I was flaming mad. For some reason, my cell died and she was gone. She didn't even try to call me back!

I called and got a new person and when I explained what was going on, he was just appalled! He said all that needed to be done was to register our new router! There was nothing wrong with it and all of the stuff the crazy woman I got the first time was doing nothing but making a bigger mess! He had our internet fixed and our phone lines humming in less than 10 minutes! Now I have a brand new wireless connection for my computer and my phone line! No more cables snaking across the floor, no more stressing out because we've been booted offline again. Hooray!!!!

I never thought I would spend New Year's Eve in Walmart looking for a router, and then the next several hours being tortured to set it up! All's well that ends well. Happy New Year, everyone!