Taxes? Check.

I'll admit I'm pretty proud of myself right now. In the mail yesterday came my stuff from Revenue Canada, and at exactly 5:00 today, I sent them, completed, back to Revenue Canada. Go me! Admittedly, it was a bit of a stressful afternoon. I had to track down receipts for the Family Day Home, tuition, etc, but I got it all done. Yesterday afternoon I printed off the forms at school, but the computers don't like me right now, because for some reason I can't log on so I had to do it when someone else was on the computer. And there were some schedules and and stuff that needed to be printed that I missed yesterday, so I visited my neighbor 4 or 5 times today to print.
Seriously, I am so thankful for them. I have the greatest neighbors. Yvonne called me this morning to see if I had any carrots she could have, and I've called on her for various things. We are the kind of neighbors with open doors. Seems to me it is a rare find these days. I had a question about something tax-related when I was over at her house for the afternoon yesterday (this will give you an idea of our relationship: I came over while her youngest napped, so our boys could do quiet time together and we could have adult contact -- I worked on taxes and she folded laundry and sorted through toys), and she pulled out her taxes for the past few years, handed me one -- she kept one -- and said, "see if you can figure it out from this." Honestly! How many neighbors would just hand over personal financial information to help out a friend? What a great gal! Another time, early in the school year, her husband Lance and her brother Chris came over. Lance said, "Hey, do you want this icecream?" holding up a partly filled 4L pail. "Sweet, sure," I said. And then he goes, "Do you have a deep freezer?" "No, why?" I say. "Ah, I got that deer back from the butcher, and don't have enough freezer space." I was glad not to have a freezer. We don't eat meat, so a neighbor (even a neighbor we love), who comes over and asks to borrow my freezer to store his dead deer? Yuck. Even so, I would have done it. I was happy not to have to, but I would have. I just can't say enough about how awesome my neighbors are.
But anyway! Taxes are in the mail, but still no sign of my province-approved HAR. I want to call Anne Scully about it tomorrow to find out the status, not that there is a huge rush right this minute. What else? Ruth, from ABC had sent me some paperwork that I submitted to them when I applied for a HAR, but need now to send on to Imagine. She emailed me today to let me know that it had been returned. We worked out an addressing issue, so it should be coming soonish.
Now that I have access to the school again, I am going to go in and get some ID photocopying done, so I can send off my passport application tomorrow. Despite my former blog, with my peaceful internal acceptance of the whole not filing my taxes problem, I am having a hard time with the self-imposed delay. So I will take the time to do all the preemptive paper pushing I can -- passport, immigration part I, and then lesson planning like crazy.
I introduced Jonah a little more today to the idea of his sister. So far all we've said is that one day, he'll have a sister. And we've said, "One day, when you have a sister..." about different things. But today we talked a little bit more about her. About when he has a sister, she won't be as little as his cousin, Carmen. That she will probably already know how to sit, and may know how to crawl, or even walk a bit. He thought that was pretty cool. I told her how she would probably have black hair and eyes and brown skin. I feel so uplifted whenever I think of her.
This afternoon, during one of the many invasions of my neighbor's place, I met Yvonne's friend Michelle, who has a Son and daughter who are 3 1/2, almost 4 years apart, and she was saying that they are really close. That he just adores her, is always patient with her, never loses his temperature, and thinks she is great. This gives me hope. I know that lots of sibs who are a few years apart, are close, but some aren't. I know that it'll be a bit of a shock to Jonah's system to be thrust into the world of brotherhood, after 4+ years as my one and only, but I do hold out hope that he will do well. He loves babies and is always sweet to little folks. We have some family friends with kids a few years younger tha Melanie and I. The older of the 2, Nick, was 5 I think, when Tasha came along. But he had a really laid back personality, and they have always been close, despite the gap. I remember when Tasha was small and got hurt, their mom would go to console her, and she would refuse the affection. She'd sit and cry until Nick came to make it all better. Ruffled their mom's feathers a bit, but nobody could deny that it was the sweetest thing. I really hope that they will be close.
Anyway, I also wanted to send a shout out to Lesley from Calgary, who has generously offered a crib set and border for my girl's room, after she found out her match is a boy. Thank you so much! I am really excited to have them. And a big congratulations on your referral! Also, I have recently joined the canadaadoptsethiopia yahoo group and am looking forward to getting to know fellow family-growers, and becoming part of that community.
Have a good one all!