The wonders of computers...

I am working on my taxes, writing on my blog and listening to music from another blog all at the same time, thanks to the browser Steve loaded on to my computer called Mozilla Firefox. I can open several websites at the same time and can browse through them without having to close applications or having it slowing my computer down. Yet, there are times when I have contemplated drop kicking this thing out of the window but I have to admit it isn't my computers fault. I am a visual person and if I don't do something on a regular basis I forget how to do them. I know I must be wired wrong...

Cake testing...

Last night the family got together; Lisa, Buck, Sarah, Nate, Steve and I to do some wedding cake testing. I came from an appointment with Susie, the baker, at West Salem's Roth IGA loaded down with cake. Not one but four 8" cakes that were eight different flavors. One was a lemon custard and lemon mousse, another was champagne cake with strawberry and strawberry mousse, another was carrot cake and carrot with cream cheese and the last was a german chocolate and chocolate raspberry ganache. Wow, even Nate the cake man; had sugar over load. So I can wait till Lisa's wedding to eat another piece of cake...

Oh, and the winner was the lemon mousse followed closely by the strawberry champagne and the carrot cream cheese...

It helps...

Not all of the stuff I took in for scrapyard got sold but I did okay. I now have just under $75 dollars in credit which will come in handy for the VIP crop at the end of the month. I was a little surprised that not all of the cardstock and printed papers packs sold. They were a little larger packages and that may have been why. So I won't get discouraged and I will just break them down further into smaller packages and sell them that way. So much to do today and instead of doing it I have been sitting in front of my computer working on next month's classes. I need to clean my house and I can't put it off any longer. So it is just a short post today and possibly tomorrow till I get caught up. I actually told Sarah I wanted to hire a housekeeper and she laughed. Mom they would get one look and run away! Yea, I said I would have to clean up a bit first and that really made her laugh. It does kind of sound absurd now that I think about it...

My baby is having a baby...

I am still trying to wrap my brain around this news. I am also fighting the urges to buy "baby" scrapbook stuff! So my dear scrapping friends I am asking for your help. I don't need to buy any more stuff so help me hold out until our dear little one is born. This by the way will be no easy task as I just happened to see the newest Die Cuts with a View baby group, oh my goodness it is so cute! Of course, this isn't a generic baby group that you can just buy and use, it is a boy group and a girl group. So it is important to know the sex of the baby to pick one. Gee, can you imagine what I am going to be like with clothes, toys and stuff!? I am not going near any of those departments while I am shopping...
ETA: This is one of Sarah's senior portraits taken in Stayton by Stro's Photography.

Turbo Tax...

God bless the people who developed this software, it sure makes doing the taxes so much easier. I remember how hard it was to read and understand the Paperwork Reduction Act that the federal government came up with many years ago. I hated this time of year. Steve and I paid hundreds of dollars a couple years in a row to a tax preparer because we couldn't make heads or tails out of the tax forms. When Steve figured we would pay another $400 to get our taxes done he decided to buy the Turbo Tax software. At $40 and help from their online services I did the taxes. From then on it has been little old me sorting and suffering through the paperwork so we could file the taxes. It is fairly easy for us since we sort our receipts monthly and file them in folders labeled taxes. But our children have not gotten quite there yet. Lisa is better about her tax stuff because she has student loan interest that she can deduct. Sarah does not understand the whole tax thing and admits so. So I have to remind them to make sure to keep records of anything that might impact their tax status. Since both of them will have changes in their tax situation next year I told them to keep everything. Then at the end of the year we will throw out anything they don't need. I hope I don't have to do this next year because I really don't like the stress...

Birthday present???

Sarah had her first doctor's visit yesterday. She met with the midwife this week and will meet with the doctor next week. She is nauseous at various times of the day and told her that. So she gave her some samples of different vitamins and said that if she still became sick with these that to go with folic acid and a children's multi-vitamin. They also revised her due date, a guess on their part, to November 16th. So if she has the baby a couple of weeks early it could potentially be on my birthday!!!

Good news...

Lisa picked up her veil and tiara today along with Sarah and Natalie's dresses. She told the lady that helped her that they had just found out that one of the bridesmaid's is expecting. She told Lisa they will exchange the dress for a bigger size. So now we won't worry about Sarah fitting into her dress.