Your Birthday Present Is ........

A) Happy birthday to Tenley (June 26 - 15 years old). Note the tiara and the dressy restaurant setting.. 

B) Happy birthday to Wayne Kevin (July 1 -12years old). Note the decidedly domestic environment.

Here is why Tenley got Andrews 228 and Wayne got Chez Star View Lane (our house) for their respective birthday celebrations. When Tenley had her dance recital on June 11, Wayne Kevin stayed home. Nothing unusual about that. That morning, he had announced that he had a $50 credit on the PlayStation Network. That sounded a little odd to me, but after all of the recent PlayStation Network outages, I thought perhaps it was a bit of compensation. Wayne (husband) mentioned that Wayne Kevin had said that too. Fast forward to me getting home after the recital and checking our online banking, and discovering $223 worth of holds, all from PlayStation Network. 

THIS WAS MOST DEFINITELY NOT IN THE BUDGET.  PERIOD.

Not even my most creative writing skills and heartfelt pleas could get the Sony Entertainment Corporation of America to reverse the charges. The good news is that once the charges all settled out, it was "only" $108.45. The bad news is that it was still $108.45.

Pretty rapidly as everything was unfolding I proposed/decided/proclaimed/demanded that if we couldn't get the charges reversed, the money that had been spent was going to take the place of any birthday celebration. He also has to pay us back.

And that is why July 1 found us having a small, low-key family birthday.

I am still disappointed about the whole thing. If a lesson has been learned, however, $108.45 will end up being a small price to pay.