The first!!!

The first flower to bloom in my yard!

Not that I have tons of blooming plants, but one year I did plant a bunch of bulbs, ranging from early bloomers to late tulips. This one is the first to bloom. And it's not even one I planted... it's a volunteer that sprang up from the bulbs I had planted about 6 feet away... so it must have come up from seed. Interesting!

I had procrastinated doing our taxes. I was afraid of what my bellydance business might do to our return. So I procrastinated. I shouldn't have. ha! I managed to come up with enough business expenses (that I can prove) to take my net income down to less than $300 (out of almost $5000). So, we're still getting a nice return. And if I had to... I probably could have come up with enough expenses to prove a loss... but I won't do that now, as that would require me to fill out another form, and I'm done with forms. Anyway, it will be good to get our return. I wanted to get a dishwasher last year but didn't push for it. However, this year we will get it. I can hardly wait. It will probably pay for itself within a couple years just with the $ saved in water that is saved compared to how the dishes are done by hand here. Not to mention how convenient and so much cleaner the dishes will be. I can hardly wait. We even looked at some today.

We did by a new nuker today. Our old one is in poor shape, and about 20 yrs old, and only 750 watt or some such... barely has any power. We picked up a scratch-n-dent model for $40 today, with more power. And we used a gift card so it wasn't out-of-pocket $$. Kevin "drove" the cart around in Best Buy... they had this big cart that looks like a car or whatever... he saw the wheels on it, did his best "Oooo!" so naturally we had to put him behind it's steering wheel. For mama pushing it around, it was like pushing a bus compared to the regular shopping carts, but Kevin had a blast "steering" the play steering wheel in it.