Thursday, April 17, 2008

Yes it is true....I have been a horrible blogger!

Wow it has been now over month since I have last posted a blog or even really looked at it. Things have just been so busy and lately I have just been too tired to restart the blog. It is one of those things that once you decided to put it off, the next time you think about it you have developed this habit and you figure, heck what is another day...I will do it tomorrow. Well finally tomorrow is here. Of course, life has been fun and filled with adventures mixed in with taxes and finding new tenants for our rental in UT. Lets start with what had started this slippery slide into the blog black hole. TAXES- really, need I say more. I am hoping that one day someone else will be doing this for me. This year we had to file taxes in 3 states (almost 4). This really took me a long time to figure out. At first I enjoyed doing it, but by day 3 I was done. Every time I would review the stupid figures, it seems I would have to spend hours on the internet to figure out what you can claim as deductions for a rental property and a bunch of other confusing things. I will warn you, never file in Mississippi, their tax forms for a partial resident is as backwards as the state. I apologize if this offends anyone, but they really need to have someone rewrite some of their directions. So far, I believe I filed each state right. I guess, I will have to wait and see. My next reason for my slacking is due to finding new tenants for our home in Provo, UT. Luckily we have not had a problem with interest in our home, but the overwhelming responses I have received from an ad I posted on Craigslist kept me really busy. We posted the home on Craigslist on a Friday and I removed it by Monday because I had over 40 responses. It was nice to know that we would not have to struggle to find a tenant, but it kept me busy sifting through everyone and trying to get a great tenant. If you are bored here is a link with pictures of our pad http://picasaweb.google.com/joymetzgar/ProvoHouse?authkey=xoZVmbEB8vY. We spent our first 4 years of marriage remodeling the place. We learned alot about home improvement, each other and to never buy a hundred year old house. The place turned out great, but we spent so much time working with this granddaddy that I am surprised we just didn't give up. There was one time were Greg and I literally did not sleep for 2 nights. We were so set on finishing our bathroom and trying to cut cost by renting equipment overnight that we couldn't seem to find time to sleep. Another great story would be when Greg went to rip of the shingles of the roof and after three layers he got down to an additional 2 layers of shake. The only way to get the roof up to code was to take everything off down to the frame and start over. It was a dirty dirt job. When he was done with the destruction, he was covered from head to toe in this black soot. I thought he looked hilarious and 5 years later, Greg finally agrees too. It was really a great learning experience..one that I hope to never repeat. Also, here are two quick photos of the kids. Now that I have explained my lack of writing, I will start posting some everyday fun stuff.