How To Spend $46 Million In Thirty Minutes

Or try to anyways.

The Lotto 6/49 draw for tonight is $46 million. Mike bought us $12 in tickets. Since we're so confident that we will win, we sat down tonight and started to divy up the money. In a half hour session, here is what we came up with:

> we would give each of our siblings an amount totalling whoever has the highest mortgage (we guessed roughly $200,000). For each sibling, we would pay off their mortgage and then give them any difference left over. For the siblings without mortgages, they would just get the cash. They would actually be getting the raw end of the deal because for the siblings who would be mortgage-free, it would be like giving them $1000 a month for the next 25 years.

> we chose seven of our closest friends and decided they would get the same thing ($200,000 each). I'm not revealing who we chose, but if you happen to get a phone call tomorrow and it's just gibberish and screaming and something about Louis Vuitton and diamonds, you'll know you're one of the lucky seven.

> we would build a house in Cranberry Flats outside of Saskatoon. We talked about buying a mansion on Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles, but we want to stay close to our family and friends. So, Saskatoon it is. We set aside a measly $5,000,000 for our house. This has to include the house, its furnishings, landscaping and security equipment. It would have an elevator for Joel, an indoor swimming pool, nanny's quarters, a personal gym (you know, so the dust has somewhere to collect), a five car garage, a quanset for our quads and ski-doos and at least eight bedrooms. I think by the time we finished designing the house, it was somewhere in the 10,000 square foot range. It had to be that big because the master bedroom would be at least the size that our house is now (1200 sq. feet).

> we set aside $200,000 for our vehicles...one car for me (an Eddie Bauer Ford Explorer!), one for Mike (he hasn't decided what he would want yet), a family vehicle outfitted with a lift for Joel (a Cadillac Escalade) and a vehicle for Colby.

> we also set aside $100,000 for the quads and ski-doos (we figured we would need at least four of each)

> we would need $1,000,000 for our condo in Vegas plus $70,000 for the Cadillac Escalade we would keep parked in the condo's garage (you know, so we can drive to L.A., Area 51 and so on).

> we figured we would need roughly $500,000 to go towards buying the neighbouring property at the lake, tearing down the current owner's cabin and building a new one (plus finishing off my parents' cabin). This way, we would have side by side cabins and eliminate the need for family having to rent hotel rooms when we get together in the summer.

> Joel's full-time nanny would be paid approximately $60,000/year. I won't go into all the details of her job, but it would be pretty cushy.

> lastly, we would keep our house in P.A., but we would put another $300,000 into it...we would redo the kitchen, put on an addition (so Joel can have a private bathroom that is outfitted to his needs), finish the fence, re-pave the driveway, re-sod the yard, put new shingles on the house and garage etc. We figured we would need to keep this house so we have somewhere to live when we go tits up.

So, the grand total of all of this is only $10,000,000. I told Mike to add on another million because this chickie would be buying up all the Louis Vuitton bags and Christian Louboutin shoes she could handle. I would also be paying Versace and Vera Wang to make me a few outfits in Size Fat. Mike said he would buy some Armani suits, but he would use them as pajamas.

Ahhh, they say money doesn't change people....we haven't even won and we're already arguing about what we would buy. The drawing for the lottery is tonight at 11:00. I'm going to have Manolo Blahnik on stand by, just in case :-)