Tax time

So it's been a day or two since I posted. Things are good here. God has been blessing us and providing as always. I'm not going to lie - money has been CRAZY tight. Winter in general is always a little pinched just because work slows down at my husband's commission based job. And with Christmas and New Year's Day his check(s) for those weeks always take a hit because they get a flat amount for the day that is always smaller than they would have made on a normal day. 

Winter 2011-12 had some unexpected blessings. In late 2011 Nick and I shot a wedding together, which was $1200. Also in late 2011 Nick totaled his car, which was paid off, and we got an unexpectedly large check from the insurance for it. And when I was in the hospital, one of my very favorite blogger friends sent us a Christmas card with some surprise cash inside, right when we needed it (she was one of my very favorite bloggers even before that ;)). Then, when we filed our income taxes for 2011, we got back a nice tax refund. And just a few weeks after that we unexpectedly got some extra money back from our home insurance on our roof replacement.

But Winter 2012-13 has been harder than most, and certainly harder than last winter. To start with, his pay for the year was almost $5,000 less in 2012 than in 2011, just due to the available work. Most of that shortage was the last quarter of 2012. This was also the first year since we went to one income that Kate and Will didn't send us a nice big check for Christmas. Not, of course, that they owed it to us or anything, but let's be real, it always really helped, and we definitely felt the lack of it this year. And of course we've had an extra person to feed, clothe, and diaper this year.

All of these things combined to take us to the point where we've not just been struggling to keep everything less than 30 days past due, but occasionally writing a check we couldn't cover, because the bill had to be paid and letting the bank's overdraft protection kick in, something we HATE doing. That said, we've  certainly not gone hungry, and many times, just when we didn't know what to do, God has sent just what we needed, whether it was a sudden request for Nick to work on someone's car, or a sale in my Etsy shop, or a photography client buying a larger CD than they originally planned to, or my mom slipping me $20 for gas at church, or my parents showing up with a pack of toilet paper, a gallon of milk, and a bag of oranges for my fruit-loving girls. Just this Sunday we had a Praise Night at church followed by a chili dinner, and all of the leftover chili was sent home with us. We ate it for 3 days, and I still had a gallon of it left to stick in the freezer today. And in the last 2 weeks we've sold 4 things we had listed on Craigslist, one of which we'd listed several times in the last couple of years with no interest. 

I had just come to the conclusion that while last year God was teaching us all about how He could move in BIG ways, this year's lesson was all about trusting Him on the thin edge of no other options, and we wouldn't be getting any "big" blessings. Then I filed our income tax tonight. Income tax time has always been the time when we caught up on anything we were running behind on, as well as took care of things like new glasses, dental work, replacing worn out shoes, etc. And if we had anything left, we could buy something big, like my camera, or our living room furniture.

This year though we were honestly just hoping that we would get back enough to pay my parents back what we owe them, and we were kind of afraid we might actually have pay something. See, we've always set our paychecks up so that we didn't claim any dependents all year so that we got more back at tax time. One year I messed up and claimed 3 people (me, Nick, and Morgan), and we ended up having to pay about $100 that year when we filed. So since then we've always tried to not take the deductions throughout the year.

When Jack was born on January 2 we joked that if he could have just shown up a couple of days sooner we could have gotten a nicer tax return, although truthfully we were glad for him to have the extra couple of days inside. But we were almost giddy thinking of what an awesome tax return we would have with 3 kids this year. Much to our dismay though, we quickly found that we could no longer pay our bills on the amount Nick was bringing home after taxes, so with a sense of mourning for our much anticipated tax return, he reluctantly adjusted his withholding to reflect all of our dependents. 

Tonight Nick brought home the last document we needed to file, and I took a deep breath and decided to get it over with. Much to our amazement and relief, we'll be getting back almost as much as we got last year! I just want to thank God for the little blessings AND the BIG ones!

Spam and spankings

Okay, first of all, about the word verification. I've gone back and forth with it over the years. It's no question that it's a huge pain in the butt. I honestly hate it as much as you do. But when it's not on there there are floods of spam comments. FLOODS. Now they don't generally show up on here because Blogger's spam filter is pretty good, but they do overrun my email inbox. 

All that said, I don't want to discourage comments, so for now at least I'm going to try comment moderation on some posts instead. Hopefully it will discourage all but the first comment per spammer per day.

Anyway, enough about that. I finally got that spanking Thursday night. The stars aligned, and the kids were all three asleep at a decent hour. Nick took me upstairs, taking his belt off as we went. I really had to pee, so he let me go to the bathroom. When I came out he was lying on the bed, so I crawled up beside him. He held me a little while, and talked to me about why he feels that it's important that I be in bed at a decent hour. He told me that he understands that I need some time alone after all the kids are in bed, and that he wants me to have that. But as a family we need to be able to function on somewhat of a cohesive schedule, and if we can get everybody on the right schedule, then that free time is going to be there for me. And he's right, of course, and I do appreciate him being the voice of reason when I just want to stay up all night and play on Pinterest.

He really did cut me a break on the spanking, mostly because it had taken a few days for us to get to it and I had really been trying to get to bed on time for the least few days. He spanked hard, but I only got about 25 licks, and he let me keep my jeans on. After it was over he held me again for a while, and we talked about some of the things we'd like to see happen this year as far as schedule and organization. 

I'm glad to have it behind me, but I do want to say how much I appreciate him following through with me. He's really been there for me lately with DD, and it just makes me feel so very loved.

Followers

I had a comment earlier from an early blog reader who had lost my blog and just re-found it asking why there was no easy way to follow my blog. At one time I did have the followers widget up, but I took it down when I started to take the blog dormant a few months ago and never put it back up. Well, I started to put it back up tonight, but I ran into something that I need some reader advice on. 

Obviously, because this is a DD blog, a good portion of my followers are going to be interested in spanking. Because of that, maybe half of them have a profile picture featuring a bare bottom. Now if you are one of those people, that's totally your prerogative, and I'm not judging you at all. But the thing is, I make it a point not to feature any nudity on this blog, even on the sidebar. That was not always the case (although I always tried to not have anything gratuitous), but several years ago God really got hold of me about the content I put out there, and I changed some of the things I posted and featured. Beyond that, my brother (and pastor!) has the link to this blog, and I wouldn't want him popping in to see anyone's naked butt.

So here's my dilemma - I'm glad to have followers, but I need to not have everyone's profile picture appear on my sidebar. I've done some quick research to try to figure out how to create a text only Follow Me link, but so far I've not found a way. For now I'm just going to do without the widget, and I know that at the very least you can add me as a subscription in your Google Reader or (should be) any other reader you use with just the blog URL. But if anyone can come up with the correct HTML for me to add a text only Follow Me link, that would be great. Thanks!

Oh, and I got that spanking, but it's bedtime, so I'll tell you about it later!

Just checking in...

Hey, guys. Not a whole lot going on here - just checking in. We're getting settled into the new year. Morgan went back to school today. It was a busy Christmas break; her best friend next door spent the night 4 or 5 times, and she spent the night over there once. Also, her best friend from her old school spent the night here on Friday, and she and Daisy spent the night with my parents one night last week. 

Jack's first birthday was last Wednesday. I really wanted to do a party for him, like I did for Morgan's and Daisy's first birthdays, but it just wasn't in the budget this year. But my mom got him a cake and bought some ice cream, and we had that after church that night, so that was nice.

It's my intention to establish some better eating/exercising habits this year. I'd love to join a gym; Nick belongs to one and goes almost every day on his lunch break. Unfortunately we've not had the money to add me as of yet. 

I'm also trying (without great success) to get myself in bed earlier. In fact, I'm supposed to be spanked for ignoring my curfew a couple of nights last week, although it hasn't happened yet. I thought he was actually going to let it slide, but he says he still plans to do it. He got a new belt for Christmas, and I think he plans to take the opportunity to break it in. Jack has gotten his days and nights flipped, so that's made it difficult to find time alone.

I had a photo shoot yesterday, which helped tremendously money-wise. It wasn't a huge payout for the sitting fee, but it did get us diapers and gas, which were our two most urgent needs.

Anyway, I'm off to work on the house - Happy New Year!