We [heart] the IRS!

The background story: We owned and operated a bbq restaurant in KY from 02/05 through 04/07. With that said, we had little to no trouble filing all sorts of taxes, until now -- 2 YEARS LATER.

About 6 months ago, we received a letter from the IRS stating that we owed nearly $2,000 in unemployment taxes. What? We called our CPA, he confirmed we were paid in full. But the letters kept coming always with adjusted fees and taxes some higher, some lower. The Man finally calls them and they swear we owe them this money.

About 4 months ago, being good citizens, we pay them (and that wasn't easy on the budget either).

Then, 6 weeks ago, we received a letter from the IRS stating the restaurant was found to be in overpayment. Duh!!!! They would be sending us our reimbursement for the overpaid amount in 4 to 6 weeks. Yay!

Last week, we received said check! WooHoo! Yay! Far-Out! Excellent! Yee-Haw!Right-On!

Saturday, we received a letter stating that a portion of the reimbursement money would be put toward other outstanding debt to the IRS, uh, what? What other outstanding debts, and we already received the check, how's that possible?

Then I open a bill for that said 'other outstanding debt'.

Then I open this lovely bill, I mean really what's the point.

Its a little blurry (I'm not real camera savvy), but it states we owe the IRS $0.40, yes 40 cents. Are kidding me? The stamp to mail the letter cost more than they are asking for. I should send them their postage stamp back and call it even. UGH!

So there's one reason for loving the IRS! God Bless America, please!

To Be Continued, I'm sure.......

Good Monday Morning!

Been busy cleaning up for our relaxed and lazy weekend at home. The boys loved being home and playing all weekend together.

This morning after taking the Buddy to school and checking emails, blog posts, etc. I caught Little Guy scrolling through the pictures on the computer. He was so cute talking to the computer and remember the snow. His mouse ablities amaze me.

They are certainly growing up in a different age, but don't all parents say that.

So back to spring! And what better way to celebrate than with a healthy snack.

FRUIT SALAD YUMMY, YUMMY!

Tomorrow look forward to why: WE LOVE THE IRS!

Dearly Departed

Our beloved pizza stone has broken! This actually happened the day we left for our Spring Break trip and I was so upset, I couldn't blog about it : (

I was preparing lunch for Little Guy and I, and when I opened the oven to check on our food there was the pizza stone in two pieces on the oven rack. I was devastated in the way you can be over your favorite kitchen utensil biting the dust. I just left it in the oven until today and I had to take it out and photograph it.

As you can see, it was well-used and loved. I probably have used this almost daily for the last year. It's a wonderful thing, but it is no longer.

Good news though, it is going to be replaced. Pampered Chef is requesting a chunk of it to see why it cracked and they will be sending M.E. a new one. Too bad for us that our pizzas will not be the same until then. Buddy is most upset about this too!

In other dearly departed news, the snowman is no more.

All 6" of snow melted today. All that's left is a spongy yard and mud. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

SSSSNOW

OK. ITS SPRING! ITS MARCH 28TH! AND WE HAVE OVER 4" OF SNOW!

As of 2 PM Central Time, we have 4 and three quarters inches of snow and its still coming down with no end in sight.

Little Guy is ready to go outside. He reminds me of the kid on a Christmas Story.


The Man helped Buddy & Little Guy built an adorable snowman. The snow is huge wet flakes that are almost slush! But it sure is pretty.

Buddy is taking aim on the Man during their brief snowball fight. The following pics were taken from inside the sunroom, thus they are blurry, but still enjoyable.

Little Guy's boots are still alittle big yet, so he had trouble walking and not falling down.

Buddy shielding himself from the incoming snowballs.

The boys await the Man's snowballs. Buddy has too much fun in the snow.

Little Guy gets ready to throw a snowball at the window, thus ending my picture taking session.

FUN, FUN, FUN!

Which is What Answer

On Wednesday, I came down the hallway to discover this.

On the left we have a cantelope and the right we have Buddy's indoor basketball.

Sew, Sew

As I wasn't blogging and taking a photo-a-day until Jan. 1, some of you may not know how thrilled as was when the Man bought M.E. a sewing machine for Christmas. I've always like the idea of sewing and making things, but never really did much with it. Nana let me borrow her Mom's when we lived in WA, but I really only played with it and never did much.

Now that I'm at home full time, I figured I wasn't a real homemaker unless I owned and could actually use a sewing machine. Like I said, I got one for Christmas and until today it had never been out of the box.

But its out of the box now.

Buddy has this wonderful ability to rip the knees out of his pants faster than any child I know. Just this school year he has went through at the very least 10+ pairs of school pants. To the point that we are now down to 2 pairs. I like laundry, but don't like washing these pants everyday.

I had gotten him a few pairs awhile back but they were too long, so I put them up, thinking he'll grow into them. Now, I realized I can't wait for his legs to grow 2 or 3 inches, I'm going to have to hem them. Easy enough right. Well, just reading the instruction to the new sewing machine made M.E. nervous. I called Mamaw. She suggested I do it by hand. OK, that's not what I had in mind. Because I also wanted to take the kneeless pants and cut them off to make shorts.

It wasn't as hard as I thought! I now have two pairs of pants and three new pairs of shorts for the Buddy. The hems are a little crooked but hey who will notice.

Now I've just got to wait for him to get home to try them on and see if the shorts are too short, or if the pants are still too long. I probably should have waited for him to have them on when I measured and cut, but I realized that too late. So we'll see. And Mamaw, I included M.E. in the photo just for you!

WHICH IS WHICH

Found this in the hall.

Can you tell which is what?

Pleasant Surprise!

I have mention once or twice before that we moved in our new house in October, so we have no idea what spring will bring for our landscaping. It was a very pleasant surprise to find this bush next to the front door budding with cute little red flowers when we returned home.

Buddy even noticed and made a comment about all the trees and flowers in our neighborhood that bloomed and budded while we were away. I think Spring is here. Which is also noted by the big thunderstorms that got the Man and I out of bed last night about 2 AM. We got dime size hail for about 5 minutes. Ah, spring!

Routine Resumes

After arriving home last night and trying to get situated for today's return to work, school and routine, I discovered that in the chaos of the vomit episode in the van on Day 1, we must have left Buddy's school shoes on the side of the road in TX. The are solid black and it was very dark, so it was easy to have overlooked them. So last night, M.E. and Buddy headed out to Wal-Mart in search of new school shoes. They had none. All the Payless shoe stores were closed for the night, so off to Target, where I scored an awesome pair for only $5. Now that's a happy ending.

Today, I'm faced with this and fatigue.

The post vacation laundry! At least laundry is probably my most enjoyable chore, that is if chores can be enjoyable.

Thanks for the patience while catching up on the blog. I had every intention blogging on the road, but that didn't happen. Also thanks for all the well wishes and prayers. We had a very safe trip.

Home on the Range!

We are back! We are all safe and well. I'll do my best to post the entire trip as soon as I can.

Day 10 - Last Leg/Home At Last

First let me say, the Man and I are very emotional about the Hilltoppers loss last night to the Zags. It was a very good game and its just too bad that it ended with a last second shot. We are both very proud of our team and will be anxiously awaiting next season.

Today we drove the last 6 or so hours home. A long drive because we knew we were so close. The boys did wonderfully and I'm so proud of them. We put 2,850 miles on the van -- an all time record. And I really think that record will stand for some time to come, as we aren't excited about driving 40+ hours again on a vacation.

Our house felt like a mansion when we finally arrived home. After being in the van, RV, and hotel rooms for the last 10 days, having all this space was wonderful. I'll close today's post with some other random pictures from the trip. And its so true, Dorothy, there's no place like home!

Little Guy in a Bucket!Buddy sunning!

Little Guy having to hold up his glasses to see what he was eating (a bite of M.E's snicker bar)
Buddy's silly face!
Little Guy blowing bubbles. Look in the background, Phoenix had RC cola. I was so excited.

Day 9 - Spring Break

We arrived in Albuquerque in the early evening, last night and easily found the R family home. A cute adobe home, totally fitting the landscape. The R family (1st, 2nd & 3rd generations) were present to welcome us and have a cook out.


**The R family lived in Norway for 9 years, 2 of which was while the Man and his family were living there and they all became great friends. Its been 20 years since the family's have hung out and visited since Norway, so there was a lot of catching up to do.



The boys had a blast playing with the little ones ages 5 and 2. Buddy was so excited. He even said, he didn't care if the kids were going to be girls, he was still going to play with them. Good thing, because the oldest was a girl and they really hit it off and had so much fun.



We really had a wonderful time. They were the nicest of families and were so laid back. They made us feel right at home for our stay. The Mom and I had so much in common and talked until the wee hours of the morning. Mostly Mom-Talk!

Letting the Men catch up and the rest of us meeting for the first time was a highlight of our trip. It is safe to say, we will all be friends for many years to come and hopefully it won't take 20 years for us to get together again.

Now we are off to Texas. We are going to stop early tonight to watch the WKU game. GO TOPPERS!

Day 8 - Headed East

It's hard to believe its already time to head home. We have had a fabulous time visiting with Grandpa and Nana and visiting all the beautiful sites of AZ. We headed back up to Flagstaff (a wonderful town) before making our first stop of the day at Meteor Crater National Monument.

We had original stopped here on the way out, but we arrived at 5:45 and the park closed at 5 and were turned away. As it was one of the big things the Man wanted to see, we arrived bright and early today.

Its hard to show in pictures just how large this crater is. But its huge!

There really wasn't much to do after you climb to the top, so we just took a break from being in the van and hung out awhile. Its not the best photo, but it most certainly captures us. Buddy looking through the telescope at the clouds, Little Guy hiding, and M.E. trying to get out of the picture. It was a cloudy day, so the weather was great for taking a rest.


Back on the road, we only had to go about 5 hours to Albuquerque, NM. The Man has a friend living there that he hasn't seen in 20 years and they managed to get in touch & plan for us to spend the night there. Good thing too, because we are tired of driving.

Day 7 - Spring Break

The Man feels back to normal today. Its amazing what dehydration can do to your system.

Its another gorgeous day, sunny with a few high clouds, 90 degrees and light breeze. Perfect! I'm normally not much of a sun person, but this has been an nice break - weather and otherwise. We headed up to the pool again this morning.

Little Guy taught himself how to hold his breath and put his face in the water. It was too funny watching him do this. Buddy is nearly swimming for real.

One of the advantages of Phoenix, it that its where the Seattle Mariners spring training camp is. The Fam is huge Mariners fans. So we took in an afternoon game. Watching baseball live is alot of fun.
The boys had a good time playing in the cool grass and watching the people around us. Little Guy was a hit with the crowd as he strutted around with his sunglasses on upside down. First of all, he gets really upset when the sun is in his eyes, so I got him some sunglasses, Lightning McQueen none the less. Second, when wearing them the normal way they side down his nose, so he decided on his own to wear them upside down. Whatever works!

After the game we ate out for the first time on the entire vacation. I am so proud of us for sticking with our budget. We had some great fried Cod, yummy! Back at the RV park, we prepped to watch the WKU Hilltoppers game. The local station wasn't going to air it, so we had to watch it on the computer via internet. The quality was pretty good considering and we were super stoked that they manage to hang on to the lead and win. GO TOPPERS!!!!

The boys didn't make to the end of the game, but they tried. Last night in the RV!

No Cribbage tonight either, I think the Men are done trying to beat us. Final standing, the Girls 6 - the Men 2. Matches will resume in June.

Day 6 - Spring Break

Last Night's Cribbage Report: the Girls 2 (one of which was a skunk) - the Men 1

The Man woke up this morning not feeling very well, so he's taking it easy today while Grandpa, Nana and I head up to the pool with the boys. A sunny 90 degrees leads to too much fun in the pool.

I think we could have skipped the Grand Canyon, Sedona and every other thing and just went swimming and the boys would have been happier. I just can't describe how much they love it.

We hung out at the RV for awhile and let the boys ride their bikes, another favorite of the RV park. Everyone in the park was really nice and friendly to the boys and their bikes. (Yes, he still has training wheels. He has no desire not too.)

Next, we took the boys for a little drive up to a Ghost Town. The Ghost Town is an old mining camp, turned tourist attraction. There were lots of shops and activities for the kids. The boys got an ice cream and had fun walking around the town.

Afterwards we headed over to the ranch to check on the horses. Little Guy is much more animal friendly than Buddy, but I was still surprised when Little Guy wanted on one of the horses.

Even Buddy got friendly with one and helped Nana brush her.

Little Guy opted out of working with the horses for laying in the dirt and playing.

Meanwhile the Man was laying in bed at the RV Park getting worse by the minute. He said he could not move he was so tired and aching. He wouldn't eat or drink because his stomach was upset, so there we were. He finally decided to go to the doctor. Let me say this -- the Man has to be SICK in order to seek help. He never goes to the doctor, so I was alittle concerned that he wanted to go to UrgentCare, which turned out to be an 3 hours mistake, as they couldn't do anything for us. UGH!!! We wound up in the ER at 6:30 PM and it was the best hospital experience ever. They were so efficient and nice. Turns out the Man had a virus, but because he had become dehydrated, it really hit his system hard. They gave him two liters of IV and he was feeling like a million bucks, and we were on our way home by 8:30. Awesome!

Grandpa and Nana had the boys asleep when we got back and had a nice evening with them. Thankfully, the Man feels much better. No Cribbage tonight!

Day 5 - Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Last Night's Cribbage Report: the Girls 2 - the Men 0

Today was Day One of relaxing at the RV Park. And let me tell you, it was wonderful. The Men went to play golf, so the Girls hung out with the kiddos. We blew bubbles, played with the hotwheels in the gravel, and watched some cartoons. Buddy's newest game (he's such a game inventor), is hide the golf balls. Much like a traditional Easter egg hunt, we hid the golf balls around the RV and have some one find them. We played this game countless times and he always was the best ball hider.

Buddy took this photo of M.E. relaxing with Nana, although Nana's not quite all in the picture.

When the Men finally returned, we headed to the pool. Taking the boys swimming is not sometime I would want to do by myself as they are too excited and wild.

Like I said before, these picture do not capture the JOY and FUN the boys were having in the pool.

Buddy did really good going under the water and could swim the length of the pool with the noodle and floaties on. He was so proud of himself. M.E. too!

Day 4 - Heading South

Last night's Cribbage Report: The Girls 2 - The Men 1

Today, we packed up the RV and van to head down south to Grandpa and Nana's RV park. The Man and I really wanted to take the scenic route through Sedona down to Phoenix, and the folks decided to go with us. I must say this is one of the most fabulous drives I've ever taken in my life. The high elevation mountains and pine trees was gorgeous. Our first stop was Oak Creek Canyon.

The boys loved getting out of the car and running around in the cool air.

The pictures may not display the tiny, winding road that you must take to get to the bottom of this canyon, but lets just say the road was narrow and curvy. The folks were a bit anxious in the RV, but managed it well. Again this was an absolutely gorgeous area. The road winds itself along side the Oak Creek and there are little camps and houses nestled into the pines. We loved it. The Canyon finally enters the high red rocks of Sedona. GORGEOUS!!!

We will for sure be coming back to the area again. It's just too awesome. Heading south from Sedona we finally drop down below 3000 feet in elevation and hit warmer temperatures to reveal cactus. Little Guy loved these. He kept saying cactus, two cactus, three cactus.

We finally make Phoenix after heavy traffic and the boys are too ready to get out of the van. Too much driving in the last four days. I, too, am glad to be put for a couple of days. The boys were anxious to the get the pool so before supper we all suited up and hit the swimming pool. Words can no describe the Little Guy's reactions and fun he had in the pool. To say the boys loved it, is an understatement. They were one with the pool. It was so FUN!

P.S. The Men want a rematch in Cribbage tonight!

Day 3 - Grand Canyon

It was surprisingly comfortable sleeping in the RV last night, but I also think we were really tired. This morning we were ready to hit the road for the Grand Canyon. The Man is so excited.

A mile deep and miles across its hard to understand the distance from the pictures just how massive the canyon is. Even in person you loose your depth perception and it makes you alittle dizzy if you stare at it too long. It is amazing to say the least, something I've wanted to see for a long time and I'm thrilled to get to see it.

Grandpa and Buddy take a stroll to the lookout.

Nana is uncomfortable around people and heights, especially with the boys around. Buddy too asked to not be near the edge, so the two of them found a little rock seat while the rest of us check out the views. Also, Nana is wearing her WKU Hilltoppers sweatshirt, they will be playing in the NCAA tourny later this week. We drove from the National Park along the rim east before heading back down to Flagstaff. The drive was great, but at the same time long. I must say I knew the Canyon was, uh, Grand, but I had no idea that you could only see a fraction of it from the highway, none the less, it was awesome. We also stopped at the Little Colorado Canyon for some site seeing and shopping at an Native American flee market. There was all sorts of beautiful jewelry, dream catchers, Christmas ornaments and crafts, hand-made by the natives. The boys were more interested in climbing on the rocks and playing with their cars in the dirt, than any of the views we stopped at. I really hope they made a few memories of what they saw but its not likely.

Back at camp, Little Guy insisted on taking Nana's cat for a walk. It was too cute.

A fabulous day of sight seeing, although we are all glad to be out of the car. Tonight Nana and I will take on the Men in Cribbage, although its been years since I've played.