Wahoo!

Ben and I are very excited to announce......that our taxes are done! :) Yup. It's February, and we just finished them last night....on our own! H&R Block shall no longer receive a few hundred dollars from us every year. It still took us about 15 minutes to figure out how some of our funds are reported, but everything else was a breeze. This process one year took almost 6 hours of our life w/ 2-3 trips back to H&R. Sometimes it's just so hit and miss w/ who you get and they take so long entering in your information that we always walk away saying, "We really should do our own next year." In the past, we've always had some type of out of the ordinary thing to factor in - living in another state for part of the year, working for another company in another state or owning a house in another state, and then finally, funds transferring banks and selling a home in another state. Well, this year, we were finally pretty ordinary;) Don't comment on that statement!

Anywho, back to what Rachel's readers, I mean our readers are interested in.....Rachel! She was so fun yesterday (and all other days too, of course). The three of us hung out together yesterday in between errands and taxes - it was oddly enough, a very relaxing but productive day! At any rate, Rachel cracked us up w/ the things that she was doing.....like taking a giant lego piece from the seat of her exersaucer (it needs to get put away, but it's providing entertainment for her, so why bother, right?!?!?), putting the piece in her mouth, bending over and dropping it into the tray of the Saucer from her mouth. It's so funny to us b/c it's not something you'd think an almost 15 mo would think to do on their own - it seems pretty random. It's just amazing to sit back and watch her play and see the little noggin' ticking away! I've also been singing little songs w/ her lately (Itsy Bitsy Spider, My God is So Big, etc), and yesterday, I just sang them and didn't hold her hands to help her to do all the various motions, and I was excited b/c she started doing the motions all on her own. Now, she didn't do all of them, but wow. She's such an observer, that when she starts doing something on her own, I get very excited....b/c I'm so used to her just watching me make a fool out of myself and then just sit back and do nothing;)

Well, I need to go get ready for church....if I keep typing, my waking up at 5:30 will not allow me to be dressed and ready before our little Rae wakes up for the day. Well, it's now Monday afternoon, and as you can probably tell, our little Rae woke up for the day, and this post did not happen:) At any rate, we have been enjoying this warm, February day. We took a looonnnggg walk this morning, and Rachel was looking all cute w/ her little jacket and sunglasses. Since we couldn't take any pictures these past 2 days since my camera died this AM b/c I left it plugged into the computer yesterday but never finished uploading the pics to post to the blog. Our computer is on its last leg.....we're seriously considering the iMac!