Wow, it's been 18 days!

So wow, life is flying. Tax season ended in a rush, as it always seems to and then I expected a bored lull. Instead one of my co-workers accepted a job offer and so a lot of his workload was shifted to me. It's fun. . . and it's not. I have a general idea of what' necessary, but one of the biggest problems that we accountants have is leaving a trail someone else can follow. I find, as I go through files, that the person before me has often done it for several years in a row and knows exactly what needs to be done, so there aren't as many notes and helpful hints as I would like. It usually takes me several hours to figure out what a specific spreadsheet was for and where the numbers came from. The worst is when I come to a piece of information that wasn't there last year. I have to search back through the past records and hope I can find something similar, (even when I have a pretty strong hunch of how it should be taken care of) because many times my hunches are incorrect and I end up getting reamed by my boss.All in all it's been enjoyable. I'm learning.I also have the joy of giving a "training" session on Monday morning. Yes that's right, it's my turn in the

rotation, but as the most junior member of the office I am daunted by the task. What could apply to an office of half audit, half tax that they don't already know, which I can research enough in three days? This should be interesting.

Jason is doing well too. He's started his classes, and despite being a little overwhelmed with the amount of homework that was immediately and continuously assigned he is staying strong and pushing through. He has already found the value of some of the assignments which, at first, seemed worthless. He's enjoying his networking class the most right now, but his computer fundamentals class is also interesting enough that

he'll spend an hour or so explaining the conversion between Hexidecimal and Binary and Decimal systems. :)

The only other minorly exciting thing is that we're house shopping :) We've been at it since shortly after the last post, which doesn't seem like a lot of time now that I count the days. In that time we have looked at about 250 houses through various websites, have physically driven by or entered over 52 homes, and have revisited 1. We have budgeted, re-budgeted, and stared at it with disbelief. I have sent and received more than 200 emails from various banks and from our real estate agent. We have also spent about 50 hoursAlisabeth is struggling with the changes. She's been a lot more whiny this week and pretty much every 35 minute trip from home to preschool is filled with "I don't wanna go to preschool." Once we get there she screams and cries and won't let go of me and the teacher eventually steps in and pries her off of me and then holds her until I drive away. I am assured that as soon as I am out of sight she is fine and happy. I believe it too, because this is what she used to do when we would leave her with a babysitter, but it doesn't make it any easier. It's amazing how well kids can pull at your heartstrings. The preschool is fully equipped with tons of different rooms, playgrounds, toys and fun. They have a great structure and she seems to be really liking her teacher, but I can tell it's hard on her because as soon as she sees me she runs into my arms. Luckily it's only for the three days a week that Jason has class/study.

reviewing, researching, and filling out random paperwork. It's been an eye opening process.

Finally we have exhausted the possibilities within our comfort zone (payment wise) and we've narrowed the search down to 4 homes.

All of them have their good and their bad, but as many of our readers know, that's what makes this decision so important. :)

If you want to look up the details you can always look them up on www.snakerivermls.com using the MLS numbers below.

15th - 1959

MLS 173352

Bed/Bath: 5/1.75

Price: 115K

Sq Ft: 1914

Good: Totally updated, huge backyard, great location

Bad: Only one car garage

Ronglyn - 1955

MLS 170334

Bed/Bath: 4/2.5

Price: 110K

Sq Ft: 2848

Good: Nice backyard, huge garage, good location, custom created in it's day, so the quality is good.

Bad: Never upgraded again.

Ririe - 1917 (with additions later)

MLS 171344

Bed/Bath: 3/2

Price: 95K

Sq Ft: 1284

Good: HUGE backyard, Everything appeared in good repair.

Bad: no garage, long distance from work. Passthrough bedroom.

Lincoln - 1920

MLS 173033

Bed/Bath: 3/1

Price: 90K

Sq Ft: 1957

Good: Large Yards, HUGE garage, nice feel inside.

Bad: Unattached garage, needs work on outside, small bedrooms, no bath upstairs.

Have a favorite?

We're going to visit all of them the same day and see what we see. We can't decide whether the price difference will make up for the additional work that would need(could be) done to the older two homes. Any way we work it we're in a place that will probably do us well for the next phase of our lives.

That's this week's excitement. What have you been up to?

Fast

I asked Jason, as I prepared to update this, what we had done this week. . . I really can't remember it went by so fast.
Tax season is coming to an end. I'm not really all that stressed, so that's not as big of a deal to me as it usually is.
Mixed in with that is the beginning of Jason's first semester as a CIT student. He's got statistics, 2 computer classes and something else. He's excited. Alisabeth too will be shifting focus as she starts her first formal pre-school. . . speaking of, I need to get her shot records over there!

Anyway, we're all excited for the upcoming changes.

I do remember one exciting thing this week. I got to spend a total of nearly 3 hours on the phone with the IRS this week and last. I did a friend's taxes and the IRS came back saying they had changed the refund by almost 3K not in my friend's favor. Needless to say I was outraged! As I got to looking at it and trying to figure out what had happened (because of course they didn't send out the response letter until almost 2 weeks later) I just couldn't figure it out. I tried everything from taking off a kid to reducing income. Nothing could even come close to matching the changes.
So I put it aside and we waited to see what their reasons were. When it came I was even more frustrated and irritated. It's no wonder people have such a hard time with taxes. The description of the "possible" reasons for the changes were completely generic and had absolutely nothing to do with my friend's situation (especially due to the fact that they mentioned Social Security received and my friends are in their 20's).
Anyway I got on the phone with them and after almost 2 painful hours and one hang up I was able to figure out exactly what numbers had changed and by how much. Then the lady "accidentally" hung up on me.
A few days later I finally had the time to call again, this time I used the practitioner's hotline just for us tax folks and my wait time went from 45 minutes to 5 minutes. In no time I was talking to a guy and working on the problem. I think it would have taken a lot less than the 1.5 hrs it did had the gentleman in question ever actually done taxes, but after walking him through the same calculation three times we finally got it figured out. (Yes I had to walk him through his own software after he incorrectly calculated the numbers several times in a row).
And finally in the end he could see exactly what I could see and made the corrections on their side so that my friends will get the rest of their refund.
It was a painful process, but also kind of interesting.
I don't exactly know what flagged the return in the first place, but it was strange indeed. All three credits that my friends qualified for were based on "earned" income which is wages and self-employment and military pay and all of those things, yet for two of the three credits the earned income was changed to be greater than I had claimed and for the last credit it was recalculated to be zero.
For those of you who didn't understand a word of that, I'm sorry, but it was the most fascinatingly frustrating event of the week so I had to share it.

Jason on the other hand hasn't dealt with anything super complicated this week. He broke his new RC car for the fiftieth time and this time it won't drive right so he actually has to wait for the replacement parts he ordered. oooooh, poor boy.

Alisabeth has had a great week too. She's started on her numbers in "school" with Jason and they're on 2. She's really slopping on writing her twos and has to constantly be reminded to slow down, however, when she takes the time her penmanship is very nice. She also does really well at tracing. Nana got her a new tracing book to write in (with a magic marker). She's loving it. The book also includes the spelled out version of the number, so she now knows that two is spelled t w o. She loves to learn. I am constantly amazed by her.
She's also developed a fear this week. We're not exactly sure where it came from. There wasn't a new movie or a change of any kind that we know of, but several times this last week she's woken up calling for me and with genuine fear she thinks she's heard a noise. One time at least I'm fairly sure it was the cat jumping down off her bed. The other time it was right after I had moved a box of toys away from the door where I had tripped on them and I think they may have shifted after I left.
Anyway we say a prayer and talk about how Heavenly Father will keep us safe and take away the fear and then we turned on the light and looked around. She doesn't have a problem after that. Although one night she had elected to sleep on the bottom bunk and after hearing the sound she had decided to move up to the top. Whatever it is, at least she doesn't keep freaking out. This house makes a lot of wierd noises, so I'm sure that doesn't help either. :)

Oh, and we started our garden this week. We picked out peas, cilantro, lettuce, tomatoes and chives? I think that's what it was. Anyway, they're growing well. The tomatoes aren't really interseted in being alive, but the peas are hilariously vigorous. Alisabeth dropped one in the water between the starter soil containers and it actually grew roots and stuck them into it's two nearest neighbors.
Another one actually poked it's own seed out of the ground in it's haste to grow and is now VERY stunted as it tries to catch up to brothers and sisters over 8 inches tall.
We haven't planted the lettuce yet, because we ran out of pots, but we'll get there. All of this is currently in window boxes so we move them to whichever window is getting actual sun.

Not that we've had any this week. Last week we started to warm up and even had a day or two where we could comfortably wear shorts (about 45-50 for those of you in AZ) :)
Then BAM! It starts to rain and quickly drops the temperature until it is snowing. Friday I drove home through a white-out. Not cold enough to freeze thank goodness, but enough to be annoyingly slushy. That mixed with the constant cloud cover means we've been back down at an average temperature of 34 for the past week. Grrrrrr. Oh wait, I mean Brrrrrrrr.