Happy Hour Shower

Nicole and Camille had this great idea to throw a "Happy Hour" shower for Michelle. Nicole loves the idea of fun food and she and Camille dreamed up some great drinks and food. Here are some photos of the party.




The spread - bruchetta, lemon bars, brownie bites, brie and berries and crackers, puff pastry and spinach dip mini quiches, strawberries, mini banana choc chip muffins, PLUS three kind of drinks!




















Camille and Nicole even raided their old prom clothes to dress up for the part!


Here we are! We all got a great big kick out of cousin Lori's present - a scanty black teddy with glittery, strappy heels for the honeymoon!! You should have seen the laugh on Michelle's face when she looked in the bag! Michelle received some great gifts and a fun time was had by all.

Tax Time

Last night I prepared our federal and state taxes, using Turbo Tax online. I have done this since 2001 and it is a snap, since they pre-populate the info with what you gave last year. It was late, but I had all the necessary documents. I did both returns in less than an hour. As I put everything away, I realized I had forgotten to enter our $1900 of real estate taxes!! Yikes. Plus I had taken a deduction on the state forms for insurance premiums that I had have never taken before - wahoo.

So tonight I went back in to Turbo tax and they walked me through an amended return. Turns out I owe $462 less!. So after creating two amended returns, I decided to check on the state insurance deduction. We were NOT eligible after all. So I did a third amended return for the state. Less refund :( but I am honest. Now I have to mail my amended returns and I get to wonder if the IRS will take the first amt due out of my account, then give me a refund or what!!. And will the refund sent by the state be too much now that I have figured it correctly? I will make some phone calls tomorrow. And take a bit more time next year? Sheesh.

Our Lake

The snow has been melting. Our front gutter does not have enough slope for gravity to make the water run under the very frozen layer of ice and pile of snow under the tree.
















We now have a lake in our driveway and Clyde has been digging a trench/canal to drain the water. I have done this many winters. Now that we have a nice drain only 15 feet from our driveway, it seems silly for so much water to accumulate. Next year we will have to get our snow blower fixed and hope that Clyde will clear the gutter area - it takes a long time to melt that pile under the tree!

Crunch!

Today about 2:30 I decided to leave work and run two errands - one to pick up my two heart and blood pressure meds since they had both run out in the last two days. The CRV (new last April) was parked in the West ASB lot and there was a student trying to park a extra long flat bed truck in a car stall! At first he tried two stalls away from my car, but backed up and went further down the row. Then he started attempting to pull into the stall to the right of my CRV! He backed up a few times to get a wider turn, but his truck was huge AND wide and just as I was 4 feet from my car, his truck HIT my car!@!@! arrgh! It was terrible to see. So he jumps out and apologizes and tells me this is his FIRST TIME driving and he was coming to the "learn how to drive a truck " class! His boss just handed him the keys, told him where the training was and said good luck. NO instruction as to where it might be appropriate to park the huge thing (25 foot truck!) NO trucks except regular pickup trucks and passenger cars park in this lot! I finally went and got a BYU policeman and made a report. I was trying to remain calm since I really needed my heart meds - missing a day did not feel too good! Clyde finally got my message and showed up not too happy. The poor 18 yr old kid even said yes when I asked him if he wanted someone else to back up his truck and drive it away. He was going to walk to his bosses office and just give him the keys! About 5 other cars would not have been able to move if he did that. So Clyde pulled our car forward and the policeman guided the student driver on backing out and not hitting anyone else! BYU Risk Management will pay for this repair and Clyde made good friends with the guy in charge - he had just purchased the same car for his wife! The estimate is $1125 and will be fixed next Monday. It was a terrible sound and sight to see! I wonder if the student will even be able to keep his job as a driver! For sure we are going to complain about how they did not give enough instruction on where to park for his first venture out!!

Enough Already!

This is a Hawaiian saying in pidgin that expresses my feeling about all the snow we have received lately. It just keeps coming 3 - 4 inches at a time. But since our snow blower is not working, we have been shoveling this winter (mostly Clyde) The pile on the side of our driveway is HUGE!! See if you can spot the little bit of the corner of the mailbox in this photo. Spring we are ready!!

8 weeks later trip to the ER!

On my way to take Michelle to meet a photographer, my heart started racing again. We turned around and went home instead of to Salt Lake. This was at 2 pm. Heart rate - about 180 beats per minute. I decided to sit quietly and see if it would go away on its own. About 5 pm Clyde took me to the store so I could use the blood pressure cuff and see my heart rate. I really thought it had slowed a bit. nope - 188 per minute. So my neighbor brought over her stethoscope and let me listen to how fast it was beating. She encouraged me to go get 'converted' at the ER. This procedure is called "converted" because you get converted to a healthy heart state from a very fast heart rate. So we went at 7 :10 pm. Saw the same nurse as before, and at 8:15 pm got the same heart stopping shot as before. Worked like a charm, I think medicine is amazing that a shot of liquid can reach the heart in seconds, stop it and restart it so it beats normally. That's a miracle. Clyde is glad to be done with this long before the middle of the night! 6 hours is a long time to have your heat beat at 180 bpm. I'll count that as heart exercise...
I have a second follow up appt with the famous electro cardiologist so we'll see what he says after a second episode in 8 weeks. I promised to take my meds until then.

Shivverrr

It's been really cold here in Provo, as low as 4 degrees at night and Thursday it only got up to 16 degrees all day. So when I came home Friday night I didn't think much when Michelle told me she was really cold and had to put on a fleece jacket to even eat dinner with us. We left pretty soon after dinner to go to a movie with the Paxmans. Upon returning at 10:10 pm, we noticed the house was registering at 66 degrees!! No wonder Michelle was cold! We experienced this same problem of the furnace not working on Christmas day. After a $75 service call three weeks ago we thought all was well. So last night we bundled up and went to bed before our body temps dropped! This morning the house was 60 degrees! I baked some cinnamon rolls, drank hot chocolate, and wore my heavy fleece robe over my clothes. A different heating business is coming this morning to check out the problem. They have warned us it will be expensive since they charge almost double to come on a Saturday! Yikes. We wonder if we could last through the weekend and how cold the house would really get if we waited till Monday. Carlsons are coming from Denver on Sunday to visit the baby so we will pay the huge weekend fees to get our house warm. Right now I'm planning to hurry and get in the car to go shopping -- it's bound to be warmer at the store than our house!! Post Note: $350 later, we are getting warm again! a part had to be replaced, this time it is expected to work for a long time!