Monday, March 29, 2010

Tax Time

Are your taxes completed? Mine aren't! Relax... we got time. We're waiting on one little bitty paperwork that lists our charitable contributions from last year. Hopefully we get that soon.

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I got this email from Dave Ramsey (well, his newsletter anyway) last week and we all like laughing at tax jokes kinda like how we like laughing at Bill Cosby cause you know he's right.

The only difference between a taxman and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. — Mark Twain

Worried about an IRS audit? Avoid what's called a red flag. That's something the IRS always looks for. For example, say you have some money left in your bank account after paying taxes. That's a red flag. — 
Jay Leno

America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation. — 
Dr. Laurence J. Peter

The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. — 
Will Rogers

There's nothing wrong with the younger generation that becoming taxpayers won't cure. — 
Dan Bennett

Isn't it appropriate that the month of the tax begins with 
April Fool's Day and ends with cries of "May Day!" — Rob Knauerhase

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. — 
Ronald Reagan

[The 
Internal Revenue Code is] about 10 times the size of the Bible and, unlike the Bible, contains no good news. — Don Nickles

I just filled out my 
income tax forms. Who says you can't get killed by a blank? — Milton Berle

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Complete with some fun trivia facts (there was a graph which I didn't care to deal with putting that in here):

Highest rate – 94% (1944 and 1945)
Biggest one-year jump – 52% (from 15% in 1916 to 67% in 1917)
Worst rate-per-income year – 1944–1945 (the tax rate on a $200,000 income was 94%)
Worst stretch – from 1951 to 1963 (91% in 1951, 92% from 1952 to 1953, 91% from 1954 to 1963)
Biggest income-year drop (what you were taxed on; it makes a huge difference!) – 1942 ($5 million to $200,000)

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Till next time!

Thursday, March 25, 2010

We are OFFICIAL!

We finally closed on our house on Monday. I'll spare you the details, but we were still providing the lender with information as we were walking out the door to go to the title company to close. And that was AFTER closing was delayed an hour.

The seller's agent (they were unavailable) handed over the keys despite the fact that the lender was slow in wiring the loan and we wasted no time in getting over to our home. Jared's first official act of home ownership was to raise the thermostat. Our first meal in our house was Wendy's.

We also wasted no time in living in our home. We're pretty much in the one carpeted room in the house. We moved our cats over here last night. Between Jared (who kept talking about kilobytes in his sleep), Kaelyn (who woke up frequently), and the cats (who thought they needed to be up every time Kaelyn was up), I didn't sleep very well. Kara is still skulking around.

Yesterday we purchased a washer and dryer which will be delivered tomorrow afternoon. Today we are purchasing a color paint wheel thing and a measuring tape. I am EXCITED. :D

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Oh. My. Goodness.

The bank has finally cleared us to close! I was beginning to think I would never hear that. We settled on Monday, March 22, at 10 a.m. to close. Hopefully that works out for the seller. (If I had my way, Jared would take work off for a few hours tomorrow so we could close, but he couldn't.)

Let's give a quick recap of this journey.

October - December 2009: Jared is approached for an interview. He has a total of three interviews before an offer letter comes through (and from hearing "it's coming" to its actual arrival .... via email .... took about 2 weeks). The letter came three days after Kaelyn was born.

January 2010: The apartment is packed. Everyone and everything goes where it needs to go. Jared starts his new job. Kaelyn is 4 weeks old. We look at houses the day after we land in Ohio.

January 18, 2010: All parties sign a contract for our house. When we went to see it on that first day, our realtor said she knew when someone liked a house when they were already placing furniture (I was picking one of two locations for my piano).

January - March 2010: We get a house inspection, a chimney inspection, a structural inspection, another structural inspection, extend our contract twice, get basement work done, a city inspection, a final structural inspection. And then we wait. And give lots of paperwork to our mortgage broker (who got to deal with the underwriter). And we wait some more.

March 18, 2010: Exactly two months after entering contract, we get the word that we are CLEAR TO CLOSE.

YIPPEEE!!!!

Oh, and this whole time we're staying at the Farm, the grandparents, or ValeReed's. Sometimes together, sometimes apart. I want my pillow top mattress. I want my glider I never took out of the box. I want Kaelyn's clothes because she's growing out of all the ones I have here. I want pants other than these maternity ones.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Praying

Here is an excerpt from prayer at dinner this evening:

Val (who was helping Lara): Please bless...
Lara: Kimmi
Val: And...
Lara: Kimmi
Val: And...
Lara: Joshy
Val: And...
Lara: Kimmi
Pause.
Val: In the name of Jesus Christ...

Note: Josh and Kimmi were not present.



Here is prayer from Saturday:

Josh: Please bless that it doesn't flood. No wait, flood so that we don't have to sing tomorrow.
Suki: And miss Jonathan and Lindey's thing... and the birthday thing...
Josh: Bless that it goes down in time to go.
Lindey: Don't say that!
Jared: Just finish...

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

8 Learnings from Yours Truly

I've learned a few things recently. I'm thinkin' most of it's good. :)

1. My family rocks. Seriously. Maybe every family lets a family member bum around their place and randomly leave or stay a night without short notice. Mine has been doing that for 2 months now. I've tried to be helpful where I can, but I feel lost without a place to call my own and I'm afraid that puts a shadow on things.

2. I can be really lazy. Like I said, I'm feeling lost and so my thought process goes something like this -- What should I do today? .... Well, what CAN I do today? Check email... read status updates on Facebook... feed my people on Restaurant City... check my crops and trees on Country Story... breed some animals in Zoo World... help defeat monsters in Castle Age... plant some crops in Farmville... okay, yes. So I spend way too much time on Facebook. What else can I do? Read cookbooks. (Random story that isn't in my usual thought process: Jared thinks it's funny and Nana thinks it's cute that Jamie and I read cookbooks like novels.) Sew more of that last wiseman (who is wearing, by far, the least favorable clothing out of the three wiseman). Care for Kaelyn. And then back to Facebook...

3. I can also remember to study my scriptures daily at the same time. I've been reading a PDF I found for free somehow at some point last year. It's a book called Pass the Scriptures. I'm not good at studying my scriptures. I'm not even good at reading them. And to be even more honest, I'm not very good at reading very many books with substance to them. Give me a Robin McKinley or Tamora Pierce and it'll be read in no time. Give me Robert Jordan or Leo Tolstoy and I hope you have a lot of patience because I'll be a while. So I want to help cultivate my mind to better comprehend things like poetry and Charles Dickens. And I'll start with the scriptures.

4. I love being a mom. Even when I'm crying at 5 am because I wake at every movement and sound that Kaelyn wakes (it's a good thing, I know, but not when she starts 30 minutes after I just fed her) or because Jemima was losing her footing on the duct work (or whatever the heck it is that's metal-ish between the ceiling of the basement and floor of the main floor) or because Kara had to check out what Jemima was doing which always results in some hissing fits or because Jaeden was being very needy because they were out of food or because Jemima tried to come back downstairs after being taken upstairs after the Kara incident and Jemima and Jaeden had a little spat (which resulted in Kara and Jaeden being shut into the other half of the basement without Jemima or Murphy) or because lack of any substantial sleep was giving me a headache. (Oh yeah, it all happened last night.) Despite moments like that, Kaelyn is awesome.

5. Kaelyn really is awesome. When she's fussy, she wants to go to sleep. When she wakes up, she wants to eat. When she's awake, she's happy. She has figured out how to suck her finger (sometimes two) and does so quite noisily. She knows what the camera is and when it's pointing at her, she takes her finger out of her mouth (which actually defeated the purpose of why the camera was pointing at her). She has been giving off a few wonderful laughs lately. None with Jared around yet, but it will happen.

6. "Patience is a virtue." After the bank denied our loan three times, we're hoping this is the final icing on the cake. The long and short of it is that they didn't like hearing that our basement had ANY potential problem. The seller decided to pay for the beams to get put into place. The city passed inspection on Monday. Yesterday we shelled out more money for a second inspection by the structural engineers (but at least we didn't have to pay for the basement). The result was "your basement was structurally sound before and now it is very VERY structurally sound". The people who worked on the basement went above and beyond what needed to be done. I don't know in what ways, but in truth, I don't really care.

7. What I do care about is where I'm going to place all my stuff when I have it again and how I'm going to decorate. I haven't breathed too much to Jared yet. A little bit at a time will be better for him. I just now told him (in passing so I don't know his response) that even though the walls are already painted, I was thinking of repainting. Some of those colors are a little too taste-specific and it's not my taste and I don't have any decorating ideas to go along with them. I also want a sander.

8. Squirrels make surprisingly loud noises for such little creatures.