new years update

now that i'm somewhat rested and not so angry, i'll elaborate on our new years gone bad. we had a sitter for the first time and planned to have a wonderful date. dinner, a movie, lots of time without kids! we've had a gift card to a really nice restaurant 40 mins from our house for several months. we'd been saving it for a special occasion. it was a restaurant we'd never been to that was out of our normal price range. so the first glitch in our plans was that the restaurant only had a reservation for 8:30 which meant a movie was out. there was not a single theater in the area that had a movie time that would work for that. so we decided to go to a nearby mall, about twenty minutes away, and just walk around and look at stuff. so as we're getting ready to head out of town, themr asks if i'm sure that mall is open. i call and they are not. so now we have two hours to kill. we ended up stopping at a friend's party which was fun. we head to the restaurant, arrive, and realize this place is alot nicer than we thought. everyone there is dressed very nice and we have on jeans and sweatshirts! the menu is much more expensive than anywhere we go but that's ok since we have a $75 gift card. we order steak and crab legs and dig in! the bill comes and we produce the gift card. a few minutes later the manager shows up and tells us that the gift card is no good. he informs us that the restaurant used to be a part of a chain that has gone bankrupt so gift cards are no longer good. now for many families, finding out you have to pay for a $70 meal wouldn't be a huge deal, but for us, that was our grocery money for this week. my husband argued with the guy to no avail. we had to pay for it. in my mind i'm trying not cry as i wonder how we will buy food this week. we couldn't believe this was happening. for one, we never would have gone so far away for dinner in the first place if we hadn't had a gift card. secondly, we never would have gone to such an expensive place. the whole reason we went there was because it was the only way we could afford a date. so we ended up spending our weekly grocery budget to pay for dinner. i was so upset. as i start the first day of the new year, i am trying to focus on all the good and not how i will feed the family this week. there is literally no more money. that was it. but i'm sure something will come up, i just don't know what. as i said yesterday, i'm going to take this as a sign that this will be a good year, since it started out so bad! keep your fingers crossed :)