The Envelope

My husband and I received notification from the Internal Revenue Service last month letting us we were being audited on three of the areas of our 2013 federal tax return.   We’ve been working since that time to get proof of everything we claimed for those areas.   This has taken some time, mostly because account statements aren’t available online that far back in many cases and we’ve had to request copies from the various entities.  

Nothing we had to do was particularly difficult, it just required pulling together everything, tallying up the individual amounts, finding cancelled checks or proof of payment and getting it all organized in a nice bundle of paperwork.   And for those of you that know me, you know it was a very nicely organized bundle of paperwork, because I just can’t send in mess.

And when I say, “paperwork” I mean digital paperwork, because we organized everything digitally first, scanning in all items so we can reference any part of the audit if needed.

Today was the day: we made it within the thirty day response window and my husband was about to take it all to the post office to mail it.   That’s when he came over and showed me what the IRS had thoughtfully included for us to mail our audit documentation in with:

The Big Boy Update:  We were talking about what to do for his sister’s birthday party yesterday afternoon.  At the time, my son was naked due to a dirty underpants issue and an ultimatum that he couldn’t play with any toys or do anything until he went and put on more clothing from his bedroom. As he wandered around the table we were sitting at he said, “I want to have a naked birthday party.”  The adults at the table egged him on, asking who he wanted to invite.   He wanted to invite all the boys from his class.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Something strange happened the other morning when I got up to do an early morning run.   We had had a conversation with the children about sleeping in their own beds and that they could come down when it was light outside, but if it was dark it was time to sleep in their beds.    As I was groggily waking up in the dark I could have sworn I heard my daughter come into our room, go to our bathroom to use the toilet and then leave.   When I was about to leave to go run a while later I found her: she was sleeping on the chair in the living room, balled up around the pillow.    She didn’t want to get into bed with daddy, she said she would just like a blanket.    She seemed very happy there as I headed off into the dark for a run.