checking it twice

Does anyone else feel like they spend their life making "to do" lists that never end? Jon and I are definitely on the perma-to-do-list program, and I have to admit we're pretty fantastic at never going without one. Oh wait, maybe because we've never finished one. But my cute husband is good at reminding me of important perspectives that I could always use more of, even when it comes to our to do's.

Saturday, 3.28.09
TO DO
Safety inspection: check.
Online car registration: check.
Online payment of ticket received for not having current car registration: check.
Baby shower for childhood friend: check.
Last minute gift, card, and wrapping for baby shower: check.
Taxes: check (funny story in post below).
Start Sunday dinner in crock pot: check.
Trip to Trader Joe's for last-minute items for Sunday dinner: check.
Read scriptures: check.
Play with, feed, and enjoy Van all day long: check.
Prepare March digital photos to print: partial check.
Prepare Sunbeam lesson: attempted check.
National Kite Festival on the Mall: UNCHECK.

What? Since when do the Smiths not participate in any big nearby event? The Kite Festival— thousands of people flying thousands of kites surrounded by the Capitol, Washington and Lincoln all to kick off the annual Cherry Blossom Festival??? We're so in (check out last year). But Saturday dawned overcast, chilly, and cursed with a constant misty rain, and visions of a wet five month old wondering why he had been dragged to a soggy wet field to watch fabrics on string nosedive into the mud kept us from venturing out in typical Smith fashion. Okay, maybe we weren't fancying the idea of a wet festival either, but still, being so close and not going leaves me feeling officially guilty, as if we're not taking advantage of our DC opportunities. It's a curse I have.

During a couple of the hours we would have been flying our kites up to the highest heights, we instead lounged lazily on our couch switching between a movie and a couple shows on TV, snuggled in our warm house away from the gray outdoors. We never do that.

So at day's end I said to Jon something along the lines of feeling guilty for not accomplishing much that day, especially because of our 2 hour affair with the TV. Jon looked at me like I was crazy, and said, "We got our safety inspection, registered our car, and did our taxes!! Those things alone made the day a huge accomplishment! 2 hours is nothing, we deserved it." Oh yeah, so doing things nonstop to check everything off our list isn't, in fact, what constitutes a good day. And oh yeah, it's okay to just do nothing sometimes, relax, and maybe even watch TV. I'm so glad Jon knows when to kick some logic into me and remind me that we ARE doing enough. I'm doing enough.

Sunday night, 3.29.09
TO DO
Pillow talk: check.


Thanks honey for reminding me we need more of this stuff on our to do list.

Taxes: where our wildest dreams come true

photo from couponmountain.com, nothing to do with the post really,
but funny nonetheless.

Last year I did our taxes by hand, by the books, all of them. Me. I had no idea what I was doing, but my dad had always made me do my taxes with him and be somewhat responsible for them, so I thought I could totally do it, no problem. Hours and hours later, they were done. I totally mastered it, and I even got us a kicking refund to go with the economic stimulus. But I never wanted to do them again. Jon was amazed, in love, and certain he had married his soulmate: someone who would do the family accounting for him. :) But this year, I was ready to turn in my accounting card and join the mainstream in TurboTax land.

So Saturday night Jon and I sat down to do our taxes together, via TurboTax online. Fellow TurboTax users might remember that at the top of your screen there is always a running total showing both your federal and state returns or the amount you owe. After entering some initial numbers and throughout the rest of our tax-filing session, our running total on top was something along the following:

Federal: $3,527 Virginia: $8,984

?!?!?!

Our thoughts EXACTLY. No WAY!!! I mean at first I kept saying something had to be wrong, state never gives back more than a hundred-something, unless we really screwed up when we filled out our W-4's at work. We kept waiting for an error that would switch it all to a normal amount, but it didn't happen. We started thinking of how this could have happened...it must be Van! Have a kid! Everyone have babies! We talked about how we were going to campaign for everyone to have children so that they could get a $9,000 refund too. This was huge! Then we started talking about what we were going to do with the money, how much should we save? Should we spend any? How about a trip to Europe? Hopes and dreams started flying around our heads like they were nothing but pocket change now. We were praising Virginia and planning our bright future.

The finalizing pages to e-file came up, and it asked how much we wanted to donate to certain causes, and feeling so suddenly wealthy, we started cashing out donations to the Virginia Arts Foundation, the Martin Luther King Center, the College Grant and Tuition Fund, I mean we when you're talking about $9,000, $100 here and $100 there really isn't that big of a deal. Why not be generous? Past all the donations and ready to file, TurboTax informed us that there were a couple discrepancies to be reviewed, and everything went off without a hitch. No change in our running total. I was baffled and Jon was starting to ask me if I'd ripped him off a couple thousand last year when I did our taxes on my own. No matter, Europe here we come!!

One final review of our documents, and we would be good to go. There was one number we realized had been put in wrong from something that had nothing to do with our regular W-2's and seemed inconsequential, and yet, the second that number was altered, we watched in dismay as our running totals scrolled like a slot machine, flipping through numbers until it landed on the final verdict. Virginia: $122.

Sigh. So it was too good to be true. We laughed out loud knowing this was much more realistic, although secretly outraged that our dreams that had just begun an hour ago were already ruined. We may or may not have gone back and removed all of our donations to the very worthy causes, and something about Virginia and hosers may have been spoken in the same sentence , but maybe this way we'll at least use the realistic refund to save for more realistic dreams. Like groceries and diapers.

Dream big, America. :)
And happy taxing!

a little behind

But we have big plans for catching up soon.

Our blog's been suffering while we've been away spending some perfect getaway time here:




....more photos to come.


Also, Van's been doing a little of this———>

03.06.09



and this———>

03.07.09



and our backyard's been doing a lot of this———>




Remember how I was excited about the first one? Well now we officially have hundreds of the little spring flowers to gloat in as much as we like. Does that make them weeds? If so, I love weeds.

happy green day!

These were totally ready for St. Patty's Day, but then we skipped town the very next day, which made blogging somewhat difficult when said town-skipping plans required packing and other such preparations. Although belated, Green Day photos must be posted to put aside any doubts that we don't love our holidays.

our first

We of course begged Kalli to take some family photos for us for our little family of 3, so while in Utah we had them taken in a little bit of a rush, which only further attests to her amazing photog skills. She took these in 5-10 minutes max, at dusk, in the cold, and they were AMAZING. We could not be happier with the way they turned out! We would recommend Kalli over and over, she's so great!! Check her blog out here. Thanks so so much Kalli! It's so hard to choose which photos to put up, but these are some of our favorites.

Utah Trip Highlights: part 4—the Sorensens.

The last segment of our trip.

Not only did we catch all of the Smiths on our trip, but we were doubly fortunate to catch all the Sorensens too {my family}. We loved our time in Cedar having family game nights, experiencing the Wii fit for the first time, eating great food, watching the Inaguration from TV instead of in person (we totally forgot about that when we planned this trip last July, and I was SO bummed that we'd be gone EXACTLY when I wanted to be here the most! I guess it at least gave us a good excuse for not sucking it up and braving the cold and crowds), and of course sneaking in some family pics. Jon even got to spend another day on the slopes, this time with my brother (thanks again Jer for hooking him up with a free pass!).

I especially had so much fun seeing my sisters and their new babies! Well, they were new to me at least, even though they were born in March and August, because I hadn't even met them yet! So the 3 Sorensen girls each had a baby in 2008...a good year for the grandparents. :) Their kids are all so darling, we loved playing with them. Thanks Mom and Dad for making the trip so fun! We loved seeing you! And thanks Ann for letting us crash at your place for our last night, dinner was great, and it was so nice to spend time with all of you.

Without further ado, the remainder of our Utah trip photos:











He was a witness.



family photos

Utah Trip Highlights: part 3—great grandparents.

While in Utah we had the fun opportunity of taking Van to meet almost all of his great-grandparents: the Wakefields, the Frandsens, and the Adams. We're so glad we got to see them and spend a little time with each of them, and we hope someday Van will appreciate getting his own personal photo shoots with some of the great branches of his family tree—who happen to be people we love very much. I loved seeing the contrast of little Van next to our grandparents, and the joy he brought to their faces.


Wakefields




Frandsens






Adams

looks like it's a tradition: President's Day = home improvement day

After Jon and I spent our whole President's Day holiday trying to give our little basement apartment some added character, I realized that's exactly what we did last year. The biggest difference being this year we did things that can come with us when we leave (which also means everything we did at our last place--paint, light fixtures, bathroom fixtures--were all landlord-reimbursed, and all handiwork this year came out of pocket).

Inspired on a trip last June by the way frames were hung at Thomas Jefferson's historic home Monticello, we spent the next 8 months mulling over the idea and finally made it happen. We LOVE the way it turned out, and it was much easier than the painting-the-kitchen-red project we tackled last year. It's a great way to display photos and give a big wall a nice gallery feel.
















This was so easy to do.

• we got the pole for $2.16 at Home Depot. It was plain silver something, and we searched good and hard to find the best deal. Watch out, there are at least 3 sections of raw pole materials, so don't settle on the first you find! I think we ended up getting this near the light fixtures, as opposed to the plumbing poles, curtain rod poles, or closet poles.
• our pole was 1/2" in diameter, 10 feet long. We had some guy cut about a foot off while we were there to save us the trouble at home, but anyone could take a hack-saw to it and get the job done.
• we bought brackets to match our pole diameter. These were also plain silver, and super cheap. We got a small bag of the kind that has a screw whole on each side of the bracket, and then another small bag of brackets with screw holes on only one side.
• we found screws to match the size of our bracket holes. They have sizers there in the screw section. Make sure they're long enough to give proper support for all the weight of the frames. I think we got 1.5" screws.
• black spray paint was essential for the Monticello look we were going for, we spray painted everything black when we got home
• we found some black ribbon at a craft store and just bought a whole spool so we wouldn't run out. I'm sure it would have been smarter to measure how much we wanted in advance, but we didn't want to take the time.

• before hanging the pole, we looped ribbon for each frame over the pole and tied it to the hook on the back of the frame (we did 8 frames). We lined up all the frames on the floor to make sure they would hang where we wanted them to
• with ribbons and frames attached, we put the pole on the wall, marked it for brackets, and screwed everything in. (this is obviously a 2-man job)

Here's the finished product that we LOVE:



























We also got a little crafty with an art print we'd bought on clearance over a year ago at a local art store that was closing. We wanted to spice it up a bit, so we got a blank canvas and some mod podge and after a few coats it almost looks like an original! And by almost I mean not really at all like an original, but you can tell that we tried. A little.

I saw on some mod podge tip site something about putting mod podge on both the surface you're putting the object on as well as the back of the object, and at least for me, that tip should not be applied to mod-podging paper, especially big huge ones that will start to warp and wrinkle before you ever finish coating it in time to put it on the canvas. I was almost in tears when I saw that my first attempt had nearly destroyed the whole project, but the good news is that the paper seems to tighten back up as it dries, thus mostly getting rid of the wrinkles.

Once I got over the wrinkles, I like it a lot. But I would probably use foam board next time instead of canvas, just because it's so much cheaper.