Hello to February

Yes, Brandon and I love February and we couldn't help but decorate our blog in the true colors of this month. We hope you like our hearts and the symbol for LOVE in Japanese (that was Bran's idea and I love it)!

With the passing of President Hinckley I felt the need to take a break from posting and have my own "time of mourning". It is so strange to know that he is gone and we'll never see him again in this life time. Mom Thomas recorded his funeral for Brandon and I to watch and I am really looking forward to seeing it. He was an awesome prophet!

Brandon and I spent some time working on more things for nursery this week. We figure that the more organized we can get it, the smoother Sunday's will be. We made it a goal to get this cute poster made this week and we purchased this cool trimmer just at the right time. The sign was so much easier to make with this trimmer. Since it was 40% off we got the main part plus all the accessories. Thank you Roberts Craft Store! Even Brandon enjoys shopping there.



For lunch on Saturday we got the very, very special opportunity to go and have lunch with Brandon's parents and siblings at Red Robbin. Mom and Dad kept us "in the dark" about the reason for taking us out. For two weeks we tried to figure out what could be going on. Was the celebration to announce they were going on a mission, pregnant, selling their house, having Dad called to the Stake Presidency, reading us their newly written will, or just to get us all together to chat. We were all anxious and very excited to be told the good news. Yes, it was good news and it wasn't anything that I listed above. Mom and Dad got us all together to announce that they have officially paid off their home. Yippee! Dad brought a copy of their original mortgage and symbolically shredding it to pieces. It was so much fun clapping and telling them congratulations. After 21 years they truly deserved a celebration. I pay tribute to both Dad and Mom for their dedication in paying off their mortgage earlier then the typical 30 years. They are a wonderful example of managing money wisely and I hope that Brandon and I follow in their footsteps. I am so very lucky to have such inspirational in-laws that I love to pieces. After eating, all nine of us casually strolled around the mall enjoying each others company.

Brandon and I came home and decided to do our taxes. We should have known that the bad would follow such a delightful morning. No matter how we looked at things and refigured the numbers it looks like our tax return this year is going to be nonexistent. In fact, it looks like we've got quite the debt to repay the IRS. Ouch! Let's just say that the amount we owe could have sent us on an expense paid 7 day vacation to Disneyland :-( We read a bunch of tax laws and code to try and figure out what went wrong and we pin pointed the problem very easily. It's because my salary doubled last year and not enough taxes were taken out to compensate for the increase in pay. It was a good lesson for us both to learn and we don't plan on repeating it. Thankfully we have made it a priority to put a little money aside for a "rainy day".

However, we can't be too sad because we have been really, really blessed this year already. For instance, Brandon is steadily progressing on his Senior project, work is going well for both of us, and we are getting more used to church. Besides that, we also made the decision of where to go to celebrate Brandon's graduation. We will be spending 6 days in Washington D.C. scooping out our Nation's capital. We are both very excited to go and we hope we get to see many awe inspiring places. Since Brandon's been there before I am excited to go and see his favorite places.