ARGH!

Look - our child was abducted by aliens and returned to us somewhat changed.

It's been a rough couple of weeks. You've already heard about the day care and the house - now our jeep is leaking gas and the city of Grand Rapids wants back taxes on our house. Yikes.

So we found a new day care because I went online and found that a previous complant that a child had bruises had been brought up against our child care provider, that and the fact that she can never bother to snap all of his snaps on his onsies just proves to me a certain lack of attention to the details. Aaron and I thought it was important to get Ian out of there asap. I think we are going to like the new place but it cost us two weeks of day care to move him ($240) since our contract required that we give two weeks notice and we just wanted him out. The new place is on the outside of town in a big house where she has converted the walk out basement for daycare. She's willing to use clothe diapers and has a 3 to1 ratio, kids to providers. I feel like we are getting the best of a child care center and family child care. Most important I think Ian will be safe.

The girls moved out of the house with little or no notice and I thought about sticking them with at least 1/2 a months rent but then decided to just let them go. It's hard to be a landlord with empathy - bit of a conflict really. So we lose a months rent at the minimum and here we go with the showings and the decisions and and and...

So that brings me to the back taxes. I didn't realize we get a break on the property taxes when the house is our primary residence. Well when we moved I sent a letter to the City of GR giving them our new address for the water bill except it got forwarded to the assessors office as well. We then got a nice registered letter in the mail about auditing our property taxes for the year of 2005 and 2006. Thank god they only went for two years. (Those of you who may work for the city who read this blog can just keep this to themselves.) This is costing us about $1500 we don't have!!

Then there is the car. It's leaking gas and we're bringing it in today. Thank goodness we have Matt and Maria to lend us their second car for a couple of days. Whew. But who knows how much this will cost us.

I'm glad engineering has a healthy salary or I would never recover from going back to school! I keep telling myself it is only temporary and to keep it in perspective. After all I wouldn't be out of my house if I didn't have the great opportunity to go to school at UM.

Oh yeah and Ian has his first cold and he gave it to me. Next week has got to be better!!

Strangely enough, life is still good.