Fast

I asked Jason, as I prepared to update this, what we had done this week. . . I really can't remember it went by so fast.
Tax season is coming to an end. I'm not really all that stressed, so that's not as big of a deal to me as it usually is.
Mixed in with that is the beginning of Jason's first semester as a CIT student. He's got statistics, 2 computer classes and something else. He's excited. Alisabeth too will be shifting focus as she starts her first formal pre-school. . . speaking of, I need to get her shot records over there!

Anyway, we're all excited for the upcoming changes.

I do remember one exciting thing this week. I got to spend a total of nearly 3 hours on the phone with the IRS this week and last. I did a friend's taxes and the IRS came back saying they had changed the refund by almost 3K not in my friend's favor. Needless to say I was outraged! As I got to looking at it and trying to figure out what had happened (because of course they didn't send out the response letter until almost 2 weeks later) I just couldn't figure it out. I tried everything from taking off a kid to reducing income. Nothing could even come close to matching the changes.
So I put it aside and we waited to see what their reasons were. When it came I was even more frustrated and irritated. It's no wonder people have such a hard time with taxes. The description of the "possible" reasons for the changes were completely generic and had absolutely nothing to do with my friend's situation (especially due to the fact that they mentioned Social Security received and my friends are in their 20's).
Anyway I got on the phone with them and after almost 2 painful hours and one hang up I was able to figure out exactly what numbers had changed and by how much. Then the lady "accidentally" hung up on me.
A few days later I finally had the time to call again, this time I used the practitioner's hotline just for us tax folks and my wait time went from 45 minutes to 5 minutes. In no time I was talking to a guy and working on the problem. I think it would have taken a lot less than the 1.5 hrs it did had the gentleman in question ever actually done taxes, but after walking him through the same calculation three times we finally got it figured out. (Yes I had to walk him through his own software after he incorrectly calculated the numbers several times in a row).
And finally in the end he could see exactly what I could see and made the corrections on their side so that my friends will get the rest of their refund.
It was a painful process, but also kind of interesting.
I don't exactly know what flagged the return in the first place, but it was strange indeed. All three credits that my friends qualified for were based on "earned" income which is wages and self-employment and military pay and all of those things, yet for two of the three credits the earned income was changed to be greater than I had claimed and for the last credit it was recalculated to be zero.
For those of you who didn't understand a word of that, I'm sorry, but it was the most fascinatingly frustrating event of the week so I had to share it.

Jason on the other hand hasn't dealt with anything super complicated this week. He broke his new RC car for the fiftieth time and this time it won't drive right so he actually has to wait for the replacement parts he ordered. oooooh, poor boy.

Alisabeth has had a great week too. She's started on her numbers in "school" with Jason and they're on 2. She's really slopping on writing her twos and has to constantly be reminded to slow down, however, when she takes the time her penmanship is very nice. She also does really well at tracing. Nana got her a new tracing book to write in (with a magic marker). She's loving it. The book also includes the spelled out version of the number, so she now knows that two is spelled t w o. She loves to learn. I am constantly amazed by her.
She's also developed a fear this week. We're not exactly sure where it came from. There wasn't a new movie or a change of any kind that we know of, but several times this last week she's woken up calling for me and with genuine fear she thinks she's heard a noise. One time at least I'm fairly sure it was the cat jumping down off her bed. The other time it was right after I had moved a box of toys away from the door where I had tripped on them and I think they may have shifted after I left.
Anyway we say a prayer and talk about how Heavenly Father will keep us safe and take away the fear and then we turned on the light and looked around. She doesn't have a problem after that. Although one night she had elected to sleep on the bottom bunk and after hearing the sound she had decided to move up to the top. Whatever it is, at least she doesn't keep freaking out. This house makes a lot of wierd noises, so I'm sure that doesn't help either. :)

Oh, and we started our garden this week. We picked out peas, cilantro, lettuce, tomatoes and chives? I think that's what it was. Anyway, they're growing well. The tomatoes aren't really interseted in being alive, but the peas are hilariously vigorous. Alisabeth dropped one in the water between the starter soil containers and it actually grew roots and stuck them into it's two nearest neighbors.
Another one actually poked it's own seed out of the ground in it's haste to grow and is now VERY stunted as it tries to catch up to brothers and sisters over 8 inches tall.
We haven't planted the lettuce yet, because we ran out of pots, but we'll get there. All of this is currently in window boxes so we move them to whichever window is getting actual sun.

Not that we've had any this week. Last week we started to warm up and even had a day or two where we could comfortably wear shorts (about 45-50 for those of you in AZ) :)
Then BAM! It starts to rain and quickly drops the temperature until it is snowing. Friday I drove home through a white-out. Not cold enough to freeze thank goodness, but enough to be annoyingly slushy. That mixed with the constant cloud cover means we've been back down at an average temperature of 34 for the past week. Grrrrrr. Oh wait, I mean Brrrrrrrr.