I Wanna Be a Billionaire...

...so freaking bad. My kids sing this song all the time! Last week, I think they felt like they achieved it. They both had birthday money burning holes in their pockets.

I gotta give Baby Brother props. He saved his money from Pops and Dawn from last year's birthday because he just didn't know what he wanted. This year, he had it all figured out. He wanted an iPad...so freaking bad. I told him I was not buying at 8-year old an iPad, so he decided he would just do it himself. He took last year's birthday money and this year's birthday money from them, added it to the other money he got from his friends, and decided he wanted an iPad. So we took him to the Apple Store to get it.

We expected them to be $499, and he had $550ish. When we got there, they had gone down to $399, but we made him spend the $99 on a two-year warranty that replaces the iPad, no questions asked, for any damange. I mean, really, y'all. He's 8. We're not horrible parents making him spend his hard earned saved money for nothing.

He asked the store clerk if she could just let him hold his money for a minute before he paid for it because he had never had that much money in his hands before. Then he handed it over.
She helped him set it up,
and we now have one more happy Apple user.

I'm pretty sure he's gotten his money's worth from the thing in the week he's had it. He's on it pretty nonstop, unless, of course, he's playing baseball. And he thinks it's pretty funny he got his sister Netflix for her birthday, and he's using it...a lot. He also thinks it's funny to Facetime his sister's friends. She's taking it all pretty well.

Now he's broke, or so he says. He spent some days at the farm with his Daddy during spring break, on the payroll, so he won't be so broke. He pulled weeds and helped the guys with "important" stuff and earned 20 bucks. So at least he has some money to his name, other than the $8 he has left in his piggy bank.

Kylee loves that he's broke. She spent all her money last year on a DSxl or xlDs, whatever it is. She got money from her friends, Pops and Dawn, and Dad Dad and Mom Mom. (Dad Dad and Mom Mom gave Blaine the hockey equipment he had been begging for.) She's so excited to be the one with money now and not Blaine. But there is one thing she's been wanting...so freaking bad. A mini-fridge in her room.

It caused a bit of controversy. I didn't care, really, but I told her the first time I found ants in her room because she had left something from that fridge out, I was throwing the fridge out her second-story bedroom window. Her daddy, on the other hand, was totally opposed to it. "She's a teenager, Stephanie. What is she going to have in there? What is she going to hide in there? She's a teenager, Stephanie!" Ummm...okay. I'm not really sure what happened between the two of them, but they talked, and next thing I knew she had talked him into it. Maybe she told him, like she told me, that we weren't really thinking, that this was an investment and would actually help us because we wouldn't have to buy her one for college, that it was actually very smart and helpful of her. She also informed me that even POPS thought it was a good idea. Yeah, you know, because Pops totally would have gone for it at his house. NOT.

Anyway, next thing I knew, we were on our way to WalMart to get her her mini fridge, that she had so carefully researched on the internet to find the perfect, cheap one so that she would now be the one with leftover money and not her brother. It was all very teenager-esque. Including the pictures I took of her with said fridge.