another post! And a sigh of relief!

 I am posting because I just tackled a task I have been procrastinating on doing for over a month!   Since my husband is a minister, and we are technically "self-employed" for tax reasons, we have to track all of my husbands mileage and expenses so we can write it off at the end of the year.  He doesn't have an office, which is good and bad.  It means that anywhere he pays to use (such as Starbucks) as an office space, we get to write off the travel mileage and the expense.  But this also means a lot of receipts and a lot of using Google maps to figure out distances (I've got a pretty good system down by now, though).

Anyway, I usually try to do it every 1 - 2 weeks so it doesn't all pile up and take me forever. Heh.


Before tonight, I hadn't gotten us caught up since November 7th!  Yikes.  So, an hour later, we're looking good.  And now, tomorrow (fingers crossed), I can get our taxes almost finalized for the year so we can make our last payment and have everything ready to submit early (paying quarterly taxes is kind of a pain, but I'm kind of glad now because I don't have to do as much work or worry about a big payment at the end of the year).


I'm considering scanning all of our receipts into the computer and compiling them into a PDF so I can just keep an electronic copy and don't have to hang on to all of them, but we'll see if I get around to that!


Thrilling, I know!  But I really am glad I got that done with!  PHEW!


Anyway!   Today I had a really nice day!  I have SO been enjoying sleeping in and being with Shea all day during break - I feel like a real mom again (not that moms who work are NOT moms, but you know what I mean, right?) .  Its actually very hard to believe that I am going back to work on Monday _ I nearly forgot that I have a job!  Jeremy and I were talking today about me not going back to work next year.  We're not really starving for extra income and I don't want to miss any more time with Shea.  Ok, Tangent.  Back to business. ;)

This is from the day after Christmas -
can you believe how insanely old my son looks here?
He is sitting on his chair from his Great Grandpa
(now he likes to stand on it though...he is all boy!)

We played a lot this morning, and then went out to run some errands - some fun ones involved (well, maybe not for Shea):

• we filled up the car with gas at Costco
• went to Old Navy (I saw they had 60% clearance, so I had to go in!  I got some much needed pajamas for Shea, a sweater for myself, and a hoodie for Jeremy - early b'day present)
• went to the T-Mobile store to try and get a phone fixed (they couldn't help though)
• went to Ross to check for more clothes for Shea (didn't find any good ones)
• Came home and had lunch, put Shea down for a nap
• Put away all the clean laundry and vacuumed the bedroom (which also means it was CLEAN enough to vacuum)
• Went grocery shopping
• At this point, I finally took a shower (about 3 in the afternoon)
• Made Shea dinner, gave him a bath, read a few books to him, and put him to bed.

I also got all of our Christmas stuff down and put away yesterday.  I normally leave it up until after new years, but since I have to go back to work next week and I was getting tired of having less space due to the tree, it came down.  Here is my mantel post-Christmas:

And now, here I am.  My husband went out to Starbucks to meet with a guy he's been working with, so I am home in the quiet with the heat on, and I am thinking about making myself a cup of green and white tea.

Oh, and this totally cracked me up today:

Shea is a  baby-wearing baby!  He was just walking around with this baby in his sweater giving it kisses on the back of its head! (and isn't that a cute new sweater I got at goodwill for .99 cents!?)

Did you girls get snow over there?  They said it was going to snow here, but its been clear blue skies all day - I'm sure it will get very cold tonight, though!

Stay warm!