Sunny Day, washing the cares away....

Here are some cute pics from the beach and yard yesterday- an abnormally warm and sunny day here in Seattle. Snow on Weds, 70 and sunny on Sunday- crazy town! 

So I have the theme song from Sesame Street in my head. The kids have "discovered" Elmo - and now instead of Caillou they like to pick Sesame Street about 1/2 the time for their TV hour. They watch one show a day usually, usually when mommy gets home from the office and needs to make dinner while papa deals with stuff around the house (I know, bad, but umm, hello you try to make dinner with 2 toddlers buzzing around or skimishing constantly- it is hard). So there has been a fair amount of Elmo in our world this week and now that it is finally sunny I really have the theme in my head. 

Things are good, lots of stuff going on. Gymnastics class is still going strong and now this Weds we are adding swimming (the next in the series of classes) to the schedule. I know it isnt much to have 2 activities, especially while they are still not in school, but I dont want to over schedule them too much! I think this will be fine though - dance class has ended and we did not "re-upp" there. 

I am a bit bitter having received our ridiculous tax bill though. We were unable to take any of the adoption credit because we sold stock to fund the adoption, which made our "earned income" too high for the credit. The result is a ridiculous tax bill based on Capital Gains. Yuck and Ugh. Oh well, at least I sold the stock before the fall so that is good I guess. And apparently as long as we do our WA State re-adoption this year- which we are planning on doing but simply never got around to in 2008, we can claim the full credit next time around, which is good. But still painful to see all those numbers add up and think about the size of the bill. I need the sunny day to wash away those cares! 

My sister Brooks is coming to town this week which should be fun and I am very interested to see how the kids react to her. They haven't seen any pregnant people really (not in person, just on the street or whatever so who knows what they think of them). Anyway, they think all babies come from baby homes apparently- or so they told me. I havent actually disavowed them of this notion- I was waiting until I had to because I am a chicken when it comes to the 'adoption' talk stuff but I am pretty sure they will say something to Brooks because last time they saw her she was not noticably pregnant so they have no idea and here she will show up VERY pregnant so....We shall see!