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Powered by LifeTypeSo, any bets on whether I'm missing something? I've just finished our 2009 taxes, tentatively, since we'll have a bit more income and expenses, and I didn't add in a couple other numbers that will be easier to calculate later. But, thanks to all the new credits, we have a refund due, and we haven't even paid our 4th quarter estimate yet!
And, we're looking at a new record - under two hours to figure out the taxes.
I mentioned our new wood stove previously, and asked some of you for recommendations, but never got around to writing about it here. We've had it for a couple months, and it has been great! We ended up buying an Englander 13-NCI. I don't remember what the 13 stands for, but 12 is the smallest size I've seen. The "NC" means it doesn't have a catalytic converter, and the "I" means an insert, as opposed to a free standing stove. (More)
Last year, we were the only people on our street without outside Christmas decorations, and most neighbors had nice decorations, and so I wanted to not be the dark house on the street, so we looked around for something appropriate. (no animated Santas, etc.) Though, I did see this picture after deciding what we were going to get.
I could be up for that, and we have a good commuting road that would be ideal for it. (More)
We have had the joy of testing out various mouse trap products over the last year with varying degrees of success.
Our goals are, in priority order:
11/7 - Noah discovered the two cube puzzle that has pictures of six different vehicles and plays the sound of each when the puzzle is completed. He was having trouble with it, which seemed strange to me at this age. He kept getting the wrong sounds playing. I told him to match up the pictures and it would work. After a while, I took my attention off of Faith to watch Noah and see what the trouble was. He was matching the pieces face to face instead of next to each other! (More)
I'll start with most recent and then go to my pocket notes. Jonathan and Faith both had well child checkups yesterday. As much as it seems like it would be easier to have two checkups together, it really isn't. I'll go back to scheduling them separately. It wasn't too bad, but a bit hectic and it took a long time. (More)
We began the day learning about Guy Fawkes Day (Jonathan says now if we ever visit England he wants to visit at the beginning of November so he can participate in the festivities.) We ended the day by taking Daddy to the ER. Jon's notes in italics.
It was quarter of five and I had gotten dinner ready a bit early. I went downstairs to let "the men" know. Jon was working on adding our new ultraviolet filter (to radiate the coliform bacteria) to the plumbing and Noah and Jonathan were doing projects. Jonathan's project was making a new shelf for Daddy's tools. He asked me to hold the shelf up while he hammered. Then I heard a cry from Jon of severe pain. He went running out of the well room holding his head. He was unable to tell what had happened or even say where it hurt (though now he now says if I ever hear that kind of cry it is always eyes...) I asked if I needed to call the doctor or go to the hospital and he said he didn't know. He took his hand away for me to look at some point but I couldn't see any blood anywhere. He was a bit faint, so he lay down on the floor. I started praying and assuring the boys and Faith (and myself) that God would take care of Daddy. (More)
10/23 - Jon said, "Ask Jonathan an addition problem with two digit numbers that sum to a multiple of ten." I asked him 53+17, and Jonathan figured out loud, "the seventeen goes to twenty, the fifty three goes to fifty...seventy!"
I signed Jonathan up for the Pizza Hut Book-it program and the way it works now is that you set your own goals. We set a goal of thirty books a month - one a day. He didn't really need extra motivation to read, but it's fun to get free pizza. (: Some of the books he's read recently include The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, Curious George, and Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. (More)
NEWS BULLETIN: Saying it will improve the education of children who have grown up immersed in computer lingo,
the school board in San Jose, Calif., has officially designated computer English, or "Geekonics," as a second
language. "This entirely reconfigures our parameters," Milton "Floppy" Macintosh, chairman of Geekonics
Unlimited, said after the school board became the first in the nation to recognize Geekonics.
"No longer are we preformatted for failure," Macintosh said during a celebration that saw many Geekonics
backers come dangerously close to smiling. (More)
I was searching for Noah's first word on our blog (I found his first signed word: please, but I couldn't find his first spoken word) because Faith has started talking a little, and I don't know exactly what her first word is, probably "hi". But, today, she has repeatedly said, "tada" when putting a bit of a puzzle together.
While searching for that, I came across an old post where I had posted some word problems for you to solve. And today, I have another:What method is the best (considering cost) for purifying a drinking water system that occasionally gets coliform bacteria in it? Your answer should be expressed in terms of: (More)
Jonathan has created a new superhero. Actually, a team of superheroes. They are the SuperFire team, made up of as many different colors as you would like. Super Orange Fire is the captain (that's usually Jonathan.) Noah is often Super Blue Fire, or Super Green Fire. I'm sure I'm forgetting details, but some of the features are that they can turn into fire and they can shoot worlds from their arms. They have capes that can separate into wings. The theme song includes phrases from the Ride of the Valkyries. (More)
I noticed that upromise now allows you to withdraw your money instead of having to wait until your kid goes to college. Given that our balance is currently $90.74 (thanks Grandma for $16 of that) it'll take a long time before we could even put it in a 529 account, assuming they are going to stick around, and so withdrawing that money now (and spending on our recent Rainbow Resources order for homeschooling stuff) seems like a good use of that money.
We are in the process of moving to a new filename format for our pictures, simpy using the timestamp from the camera, rather than manually typing in ordering numbers, etc. And that postponed the publishing of our pictures for a couple months, but I finally spent the time today to get it all setup. The RSS feed for our pictures was a little strange, so if you normally see our pictures that way, you may or may not have seen all of them appropriately.
You can click here to see the most recent pictures.
And I see that most of our Maggie P pictures are not in the RSS feed - not sure why that is - probably due to too many pictures. Probably the best way to not miss any pictures at this point is to check out the "all chronologically" folder.
Noah's three year appointment was at the beginning of the month. He is 42.5 lbs and 41" tall. They did the hearing and vision tests and the nurse was very impressed. She said usually at this age, they can hear the sounds but not figure out which ear they're hearing it in, and he did great. The vision test was very interesting for me, but not the eye part. His vision is fine, but what they do at that age is show the pictures up close first to see what the child will call each object. So Noah said "apple" and "house" just fine, and then circle was "round" and square was "round." She went back and forth on those a couple of times and then said, "are those two shapes the same?" He started to say yes, and then emphatically said No! So I told him that that shape was called a square and he repeated it. Then for the real test, a square was the first object. He hesitated, and then she reminded him of the name. After that, he named each object perfectly. At first, it rather bothered me that Noah didn't know the simple shape names, but it just means we haven't gotten to that part yet. He knows his colors and lots of other things. So now he knows the name for a square. (: (More)