Wow, it's been 18 days!

So wow, life is flying. Tax season ended in a rush, as it always seems to and then I expected a bored lull. Instead one of my co-workers accepted a job offer and so a lot of his workload was shifted to me. It's fun. . . and it's not. I have a general idea of what' necessary, but one of the biggest problems that we accountants have is leaving a trail someone else can follow. I find, as I go through files, that the person before me has often done it for several years in a row and knows exactly what needs to be done, so there aren't as many notes and helpful hints as I would like. It usually takes me several hours to figure out what a specific spreadsheet was for and where the numbers came from. The worst is when I come to a piece of information that wasn't there last year. I have to search back through the past records and hope I can find something similar, (even when I have a pretty strong hunch of how it should be taken care of) because many times my hunches are incorrect and I end up getting reamed by my boss.All in all it's been enjoyable. I'm learning.I also have the joy of giving a "training" session on Monday morning. Yes that's right, it's my turn in the

rotation, but as the most junior member of the office I am daunted by the task. What could apply to an office of half audit, half tax that they don't already know, which I can research enough in three days? This should be interesting.

Jason is doing well too. He's started his classes, and despite being a little overwhelmed with the amount of homework that was immediately and continuously assigned he is staying strong and pushing through. He has already found the value of some of the assignments which, at first, seemed worthless. He's enjoying his networking class the most right now, but his computer fundamentals class is also interesting enough that

he'll spend an hour or so explaining the conversion between Hexidecimal and Binary and Decimal systems. :)

The only other minorly exciting thing is that we're house shopping :) We've been at it since shortly after the last post, which doesn't seem like a lot of time now that I count the days. In that time we have looked at about 250 houses through various websites, have physically driven by or entered over 52 homes, and have revisited 1. We have budgeted, re-budgeted, and stared at it with disbelief. I have sent and received more than 200 emails from various banks and from our real estate agent. We have also spent about 50 hoursAlisabeth is struggling with the changes. She's been a lot more whiny this week and pretty much every 35 minute trip from home to preschool is filled with "I don't wanna go to preschool." Once we get there she screams and cries and won't let go of me and the teacher eventually steps in and pries her off of me and then holds her until I drive away. I am assured that as soon as I am out of sight she is fine and happy. I believe it too, because this is what she used to do when we would leave her with a babysitter, but it doesn't make it any easier. It's amazing how well kids can pull at your heartstrings. The preschool is fully equipped with tons of different rooms, playgrounds, toys and fun. They have a great structure and she seems to be really liking her teacher, but I can tell it's hard on her because as soon as she sees me she runs into my arms. Luckily it's only for the three days a week that Jason has class/study.

reviewing, researching, and filling out random paperwork. It's been an eye opening process.

Finally we have exhausted the possibilities within our comfort zone (payment wise) and we've narrowed the search down to 4 homes.

All of them have their good and their bad, but as many of our readers know, that's what makes this decision so important. :)

If you want to look up the details you can always look them up on www.snakerivermls.com using the MLS numbers below.

15th - 1959

MLS 173352

Bed/Bath: 5/1.75

Price: 115K

Sq Ft: 1914

Good: Totally updated, huge backyard, great location

Bad: Only one car garage

Ronglyn - 1955

MLS 170334

Bed/Bath: 4/2.5

Price: 110K

Sq Ft: 2848

Good: Nice backyard, huge garage, good location, custom created in it's day, so the quality is good.

Bad: Never upgraded again.

Ririe - 1917 (with additions later)

MLS 171344

Bed/Bath: 3/2

Price: 95K

Sq Ft: 1284

Good: HUGE backyard, Everything appeared in good repair.

Bad: no garage, long distance from work. Passthrough bedroom.

Lincoln - 1920

MLS 173033

Bed/Bath: 3/1

Price: 90K

Sq Ft: 1957

Good: Large Yards, HUGE garage, nice feel inside.

Bad: Unattached garage, needs work on outside, small bedrooms, no bath upstairs.

Have a favorite?

We're going to visit all of them the same day and see what we see. We can't decide whether the price difference will make up for the additional work that would need(could be) done to the older two homes. Any way we work it we're in a place that will probably do us well for the next phase of our lives.

That's this week's excitement. What have you been up to?