Hey Catholic Artworks: Where's the Customer Service?

Back in May Catholic Artworks sent out several emails with their 30% off everything promotion.  After having seen many great craft projects, coloring pages and other ideas for celebrating the liturgical year around the blogosphere using their products, I decided that that I'd order their Faith Keepers and More Faith Keepers Holy Card Makers.  I was excited a few weeks later when a package arrived on my doorstep in early June.  The excitement faded when I discovered only half of my order.  Since Catholic Artworks failed to send me an email with my order details and also failed to include a packing slip with the order, I had to call George Nippert and ask if the rest of the order was shipping separately.  I was told, a bit gruffly, that the More Faith Keepers item was on backorder.

I waited over two month before contacting George again to get an order status.  First I emailed him since it says on his website that they respond within 24 hours.  A week went by and I still didn't have a response.  [Isn't 24 hours just 1 day?]  So then I called and left a message in early August [that's two an a half months after placing the order].  George was pretty good about calling me back an hour or so later.  He told me he had my package and it was shipping out later that week.  Ok, great!  I was happy that I was finally going to see the rest of my order.

Let's fast forward to September now, shall we?  It's been nearly six weeks since George told me my package was shipping out that week.  I still don't have the rest of my order.  I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt, but my recent emails and phone call have gone unanswered.  Remember that 24 hour response time?  Yeah, I've been waiting well over a week [nearing two] for a response to my email asking for a status on the rest of the order or a refund for that portion since the order is unfulfilled.     I called and left a message for George early last week and there's been no response.  Something tells me I shouldn't hold my breath.

So let me warn all of you dear readers that if you are interested in the products that Catholic Artworks has to offer you might want to think twice.  If you're like me, you might not get everything you paid for and four months later you may still be wondering if you'll ever see the rest of what you ordered.

While I would have loved to have blogged a glowing review of the products offered by Catholic Artworks, I'm afraid the sketchy experience I had with their order fulfillment and customer service negate the positives of their products.  After this experience and the equally poor customer service the deacon who heads up our parish's religious ed department had in dealing with this company when he  placed an order, I'm afraid I simply couldn't recommend this company to anyone.

{pretty, happy, funny, real} Happy Birthday Madeline!

Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life...

This past Wednesday Madeline turned eleven.  The passage of time truly amazes me.  I still vividly remember the day she was born and the days surrounding her birthday.  Maybe I remember those days so well because she was born less than seventeen hours after the chaos of the September 11th attacks.  Eleven years later and it's still very hard for me to separate her birthday from the day before.  In fact, chances are if you ask me her birthday I'll tell you 9/11 and then have to quickly correct myself.  

{pretty}

The birthday girl just before heading out to catch the bus.

Our snazzy 11 year old posing with her cake and gifts.

Three pretty girls all looking at the camera at the same time!

 {happy}

This has to be one of the better whole family pictures we've managed to get of us recently and that makes me happy.

Madeline was so very happy when she opened the dress she has been wanting for over two months.  My mom and dad were certainly very happy to see how thrilled she was with their gift.

{funny}

Madeline is always asking us to bake with her, and she does the same anytime she spends the night at my parents' house.  So my dad thought it would be a good gag gift to buy her a box of snicker doodle cookie mix.  Madeline LOVED it!  How many eleven year olds get that excited about a box of cookie mix?

{real}

I am so proud of this giant giant cupcake cake.Over the years I have had little to no success at baking cakes for Madeline's birthday.  Something ALWAYS goes wrong and has ever since her very first birthday.  This year, everything came together beautifully.  Sure Bryan had to run out to the store and get me more eggs, and I had to run to Target twice for cake mix (forgot to buy two boxes first time around) and I had to make a last minute run to Wal-Mart for sprinkles, but the baking and decorating went incredibly well.  Best of all, Madeline loved her cake.  Oh, and it was pretty tasty, too!

Happy 11th Birthday Madeline!  We can't wait to see what this next year brings!

Visit Like Mother, Like Daughter for more snapshots of contentment.

Mini-Crisis Averted

This blog post is more for me than it is for you my dear readers.  As I was helping Ellie to prepare for her reading comprehension test for tomorrow I began to hit panic mode as she told me she chose not to bring her reading book home even though the teacher suggested it.  This is the story of my life during the school year.  It's one of the top ten reasons why I want to homeschool  You can't forget your books/homework/lunchbox at school if you're home schooled.  I did some searching for the title of the story on line and found some study aides, but not exactly what I wanted.   Just as I was thinking about driving over to the school to see if I could get the book (one of the perks of me being involved in religious education and knowing what nights and times CCD are held), I clicked on a scribd link that I thought was a review and found Ellie's reading text book in a digital format.  Yay!  I'm so happy that I didn't have to start what will likely become a bad habit of bailing my kids out by snagging their forgotten stuff from school during CCD hours.

So now that you know the whys, you won't think it's so odd that I not only bookmarked the link to the text book but also embedded it on the blog.  I like to make sure I don't lose things like this.

Treasures Grade 2 Unit 1-2-3

Quick Takes Volume 45

~1~

Bryan's safely back from his business trip to Nashville.  Praise God!  I hate flying and so I worry about him getting to and from his destination safely every time he flies.  I was delighted yesterday afternoon when he sent me a text letting me know that he managed to hop on an earlier flight.  The flight he got on had been delayed so he caught it just in the nick of time.  I can't help but wonder if the fiasco with the airline hoax had something to do with the delay of that flight he took home being that it was headed to Philly.  If it was, at least something good came out of it.  The girls were thrilled that Bryan made it home before bedtime.

~2~

Since Bryan was away earlier this week, he missed the girls' first day of school.  I'm so happy that everything went smoothly for them the first two days since we usually have some sort of glitch or issue with the first few days.  I made a morning routine page for the girls that lists all of the steps they need to complete each morning (in order).  I'm hoping this will teach them to be organized and manage their time wisely.  Oh, and can I just say that I'm loving this whole uniform thing?  It would have been well worth the tuition for the past six years for this awesome feature alone!  No arguing about what to wear or why they're not allowed to wear the clown outfit d'jour to school today or ever for that matter.  Three days in and uniforms have already made the morning routine easier.

~3~

On Monday night it hit me that I was about to get slammed with a jam packed calendar for the next two and a half months.  So I spent most of this week making sure the schedules were all in sync between my iCalendar, my planning book(I LOVE this thing!) and the family wall calendar. Would you believe I didn't have Madeline or Katie's birthday's marked on the calendars or my planner.  Oops!  

~4~

I had a few days of minor freaking out/worrying over the fact that the day and time of Madeline's appointment to get the required immunizations for 6th grade was in direct conflict with the first school Mass of the year.  Fortunately calling the doctors office almost everyday checking for an open appointment time during the month of September but after 9/12 resulted in an appointment that won't cause a problem.  So as of yesterday morning, I've been able to relax about that.

~5~

I love having a school bus for both kids.  In fact, I love that Madeline and Ellie are going to the same school.  Since my girls are the only ones getting on the bus at this stop and our street is part of the route the driver takes to the school the girls are now getting picked up and dropped off right in front of our house.  How great is that?  Also, our very friendly bus driver adjusted the pick up time to be about 15 minutes earlier than what is on the pass so the kids will make it to school a few minutes early.  This means that I actually have a fighting chance at making it to the 8am daily Mass.  I just need to work on getting up early enough to get myself and Katie ready to pull out of the driveway as soon as the bus pulls away.  I don't know that I'll be able to make it to Mass every day, but I plan to get there at least a once or twice a week provided Katie doesn't act like a wild animal.

~6~

I've had to cover the girls' workbooks with clear contact paper for school these past two nights, so that has given me a glimpse at the curriculum.  I'm so thrilled with what I have seen so far.  Ellie actually has a grammar workbook!  And Madeline has an awesome grammar book that looks like what I used back in 6th, 7th and 8th grades.  She even has a great vocabulary book.  I can't tell you how happy I am to see curriculum coming home that so closely mirrors what I wanted for them if we had decided to pursue homeschooling.  In fact, Madeline's math book reminds me a lot of the Saxon Math bookwe use at home, and the grammar book is pretty close to what we have in the CHC Language of God series we use.

~7~

I've managed to kill two hairdryers in roughly two weeks time.  The first onehad to be tossed when I saw sparks coming out of the cord (Awesome, right?).  The second one was my old one that was demoted to being the dog hair dryer.  Ten seconds into drying my hair this morning it died.  So as much as I was hoping to wait on buying a new dryer I had no choice but to run to Target with crazy damp hair and buy a new one this morning.

{pretty, happy, funny, real} Katie's First Beach Trip

{pretty}

Katie looks very serious in this picture but I think the picture is so pretty.

I love this picture of Ellie.  Look at the sand on her toes.

Madeline set right to work making a sandcastle.  Unfortunately I failed to snap a picture of it.

{happy}

With less than a week before school starts the girls were very happy to finally go to the beach on our annual "You can't say I didn't take you to the beach this year trip."  Mind you, they do get to go to the beach in the fall for Christmas card pictures, too.  It's just not the same as going there when it's summer.

Ignore the seagull in the foreground and take a look at the cute little Piping Plovers.  I used to love watching large groups of them scurry along the beach when I lived on the island.  I pointed these endangered birds out to the girls but they weren't terribly interested.

{funny}

I love how she looks disgusted that she has sand on her hands.  She's certainly fits right in with Bryan and I.

{real}

This is what Katie looks like before she attacks.  Funny. Scary. Real.  Look at those cute little chubby baby fingers.

First Day of School!

I am sitting in a completely quite house.  Katie is napping and Madeline and Ellie are decked out in blue plaid in their new school.  It's been a while since the house has been this silent.

We woke up bright and early this morning to start a new school year.  When I got out of bed this morning at 6:50 I was greeted by a fully washed and dressed Ellie.  Wow!  This is the kid who doesn't like to get up in the morning but she was certainly eager to start a new year of school.

I had disliked the ugly blue jumper for Ellie since I first saw it, but I have to say I think she looked pretty cute in it when I saw her all set for school this morning.  I guess it has grown on me.

Madeline was very happy with how her uniform looks.  Since our school has a summer uniform that can be worn for nearly half of the school year, I suspect she'll be taking advantage of this nice simple combination a lot.

I think it was either last year or the year before that I started spelling out the grade with our Leap Frog magnets.This year we have a second grader and a sixth grader.  It's harder for me to believe that Madeline is in sixth than it is for me to believe that Ellie is in second.

  

We're one of the very last stops on the bus route so we did a lot of waiting out front.  The bus arrived nearly five minutes after the start of school.  Eeek!

While we waited I snapped a few more pictures of them.  Madeline was very anxious that they were going to miss the bus and didn't want me taking pictures of them on the law.

Finally I told them we could walk closer to the bus stop.

After I got just one more picture on the lawn, that is.

And just like that, the bus finally showed up and the girls had to run to bus!

I can't wait to hear about their day.  I know they got there in once piece since one of our parish priests told me he saw Madeline when he was at the school this morning.

Would you believe that Katie slept through the entire morning routine?  I think she was a bit upset to discover that her big sisters and her Daddy were all missing this morning.  But I made it better by taking a trip over to the parish office to make copies for my class.  She had plenty of people of there wanting to hold her and make a big fuss over her.

Madeline-isms

Madeline never ceases to amuse us with some of her little sound bytes.  She comes out with some statements that make us laugh and wonder what's going on in her head.  I figured I'd share some of her more recent ones with you before they're forgotten.

We had a birthday party for her on Wednesday last week since her actual birthday and the weekends surrounding it were jam packed with activities and what not.  A friend gave her a cute little Webkinz puppy and she pondered what to name it.  After much thought she declared that the dog was a girl and she knew this for a fact.  Ellie told her she couldn't know that and I stupidly stepped in and asked how exactly she came to this conclusion.  She explained that she knew this because when she flipped it over "there was nothing hanging from the undercarriage."  Yep, she lives in a female dominated house with a short-haired male dog.  Maybe I should stop referring to the underside of the dog as an undercarriage.

Last Thursday on our way to the beach Madeline was in the third row of the van chattering away about this and that.  The subject turned to altar serving and one of her many stories from the sacristy.  I could seriously start a blog based solely on her behind the scenes altar serving stories.  So she's going on about the most recent funeral she had served and then says, "Sometimes Father M---------- doesn't always wear pants.  I wonder why."  I insisted that he did wear pants, but she insisted that lots of times he doesn't wear pants to say Mass.  Bryan and I were both laughing and trying very hard to correct her.  You see, Father frequently wears a cassock when we see him at Mass.  Ellie had chimed in that he must like wearing dresses. [Face:Palm] I had to insist over and over that Father does, indeed, wear pants under his cassock and that he wouldn't say Mass with no pants.  And, no, he doesn't wear dresses.   I also needed to explain that cassocks aren't the long version of a kilt.  Madeline didn't like it when I told her that the next time I saw him I was going to tell him that she thinks he goes around saying Mass sans pants.  She wasn't too thrilled with that idea.

I happened to run into Father at the parish office this morning and told him I heard from Madeline that he doesn't always wear pants.  I think he was a bit surprised when I told him.  We had a good laugh and he told me next time he sees Madeline when he's in his cassock that he's going to lift it up a bit and prove that he's wearing pants.  I told him that the girls were opining that maybe a cassock is a bit like a kilt.  Oh my!

On Sunday I was talking to Bryan about something regarding Ellie and one of us mentioned her by her first and last name.  Madeline immediately quips "Who's Elisabeth G****?"  Ellie was offended and Bryan and I were astounded that she didn't recognize her sister's first or last name.  Honestly, it's not like we never call Ellie by her given name.  In fact, I call her Elisabeth at least several times a day.

Our days are certainly filled with many memorable little quotes.  You just never know what they'll say next.