Taxes

I’m typically not a procrastinator, but for some reason I drug my feet on filing our taxes this year. It isn't that we owe, we're getting a nice refund, but we don’t get to do anything fun with it. It’s just going to float us over the summer while Justin’s off contract. I guess the lack of thrill, two munchkins taking my energy, and another one making me feel rather ill in the evenings, when I actually have time to do it haven’t helped too much. I did finally get them done—not just today either—I'm not that bad of a procrastinator. My quick estimate of our refund back in January was pretty much right on the nose.

I’ve always done our taxes on paper and never paid a preparer. This year, with all the difficulties I had getting motivated I used a computer program and e-filed. It was nice not to have to check my math repeatedly and take the papers to be photocopied before I mailed them off. The price tag is a bit steep, but with our refund, I figure it was worth it. Besides, next year we have another deduction!

Happy tax day. Should we throw a tea party with teddy bears? Maybe in Boston?

Resurrection Day

This morning began at o’dark early, as one of Justin’s former colleagues used to the say. We rose well before the sun and got the girls up.

For Kate and I, we went down stairs to our tomb to anoint Jesus’ body with oil and spices. Or as Kate put it, “To salt Jesus.”

Her reaction was a little less excited than I expected, perhaps because of the early hour, nearly two hours before she normally rises.

She looked at the empty burial cloths.



Then she turned to tomb upside down to be sure nothing was inside.



Finally she found Jesus, elsewhere on the table.

She ran upstairs and told her Daddy, “He has risen.”

I think while she wasn’t as excited as I had expected, she still seemed to get the object lesson. We went to the sunrise service at church and she heard the scripture passage that our lesson came from. She smiled at that.

We don’t do the Easter bunny around here, but the girls did get baskets with a little candy, toothbrushes, and shoes. They also got to hunt for Easter eggs after church. They’ve had a tired day, so they’re in their bath a few minutes early tonight.

Want To Meet Baby?

We got to go see our newest addition yesterday afternoon. Our friend Ann came and stayed with the girls, so Justin could come along and "meet" baby too. Baby had a heart rate of 173 BPM (beats per minute), and all looked good.

The baby's head is to the right, a hand by the face, and you can see one of the legs to the left. The baby was wiggling and active during the ultrasound. It's really easy to tell which part is what on the screen, but not quite so much in the picture.

He or she is measuring two days ahead. Both Kate and Gabby measured small. Kate's was so far off they said she was conceived after the positive test. Uh, yeah. Perhaps it is a boy or maybe a little girl just had a big growth spurt. We'll see in November!

Justin kept saying he wanted to know gender this time, but after seeing the little one yesterday he decided he could wait. Yay for another surprise! I know my mother is reading this thinking, "But I want to shop!"

We have it figured out. We'll let the tech write it down and seal it in an envelope. Grandparents can shop, but they're sworn to secrecy. No shipping anything to our house or telling anyone, since they might slip up. And of course, don't tell me!

Baby Names

Talk about a big decision. Choosing what another individual will be called for the rest of his or her life is a big choice. Kate was easy. I had a student who passed away, so we named her after her and then “borrowed” my cousin’s middle name. Easy-peasy.

Then came our next baby. We didn’t know her gender until she was born. That meant choosing names for both. We actually decided to choose two names for each. Then Kate got a vote and we decided to see what baby looked like before we made the final decision. Kate chose Gabby and Thad. No one likes Thad but me, Kate, and the midwife—she gets a vote too, right?

We like fairly classic names that can be used in their full length, Katherine and Gabriella, for instance, or shortened to fit a little one or to sound less formal. They both have long middle names too: Elizabeth and Georgia-Marie (Yes, the baby’s name takes up two lines on her social security card.).

Well, we’ve used up our girl names (the other option for Gabby was Isabella, so they’re too similar to have both) and Justin has said no to Thaddeus this time. So now we get to start all over in choosing a name. Justin’s status on Facebook says he votes for Tulkas Wilbur. I sure hope he’s joking!

Palm Sunday

It’s Palm Sunday. Our oldest daughter got to carry in a palm branch this year for the first time. She mostly shook it and tried to bump it into her neighbor’s branch as they sang, but I have learned that with Kate everything is stored in her little mind. What seemed not to have an impact right now, will be talked about over the next several months and perhaps even years.

We had a little chat about Holy week and what Jesus did for us. How He chose to go into the city, knowing that He would die. Taking our sin. I think the thing she got the most out of our talk was the fact that people threw their “coats” (cloaks) in the street. She also was surprised that people would want to kill God. That’s a tough one to explain to a munchkin, but we did our best.

This is they year I had planned to really introduce her to the Easter story. I think she’s reaching an age that she will start to understand it. She’s heard the story, but I have been waiting since she was one to introduce a plan that I learned about in a MOPS group in Alabama.

Here’s the basic idea… On Good Friday, you cover the cross in your house with black cloth. Then you either take a doll or other item, wrap it in strips of cloth. Then place it in a “cave,” which can be made out of anything from Legos to paper machete. Cover the opening with a rock. Then Sunday morning the girls are to rise early to go and anoint the body with oil (a little bottle of perfume). Of course when you get there, the stone has been moved. The cloths are there, but the doll is gone. You then go to wake the men of the house. She gets to live the Easter story in the shoes of the women who first found the empty tomb. She hasn’t heard the story enough times that I think she’ll be expecting it. I can’t wait to see her reaction. What will she do?

Overheard

Overheard at breakfast this morning, as I'm washing dishes.

Justin: "Shoot."

Kate: "Don't say shoot Daddy. I might have a gun."

Note, Kate doesn't even have a toy gun, but the connection was so funny.

****

From the back seat of the van, driving home from church, as we pass a fender bender.

Kate: "Those grown ups are in the road. They're gonna get smushed."

Justin: "No, Kate people are watching."

Kate: "Did she have her triangle light on?"

The hazard lights. Kate asked me about a month ago what that triangle button was in the van. She remembered what it was used for in context. She's forever amazing me.

Dreamin'

One of the unusual effects of pregnancy can be vivid dreams. I’m not sure that these dreams are truly more vivid than other times, or if it’s the fact that your bladder wakes you in the middle of the night repeatedly, thus increasing the likelihood that you will have just finished a dream that you can clearly remember as you stumble to the bathroom…again.

I had one of these dreams recently. I was bowling with a bunch of the guys who I drove with in Driver’s Ed. in high school. Go figure. I haven’t seen any of these people since before I was married. As an aside, I was the only girl in that car. Guess who always had to sit in the middle if I wasn’t driving. If I was driving, the other sophomore got stuck in the middle. Sorry Todd.

Okay, back to this weird dream, our teacher, Coach Hood (who I’d incidentally known forever because we went to church together), wasn’t there. The chick from NCIS was though. Pauley Perrette. Weird, huh? Know what else? I don’t bowl.

Know what else is weird. In Driver’s Ed. I actually told my teacher I wasn’t allowed to drive on the parkway or down the by-pass. Yeah, my mom had forbidden it. When I told her, she said I could have for class. What can I say? I’m a first born, a rule follower. Can some one tell my oldest she’s supposed to follow the rules? Like not sitting on the kitchen table?!?