Last day with Kelly

My sister was gone for pretty much all of August to visit friends in Utah and attend our family reunion. She cam back and spent a final day with me prior to driving back up for her final semester of college at Southern Virginia University. Since Kelly's birthday was while she was gone I gave her some options as to what we would do. This is what she chose...

We went and ate at Chew in Downtown Jax. I went there for the first time with my mom and loved their chips and this cheese fondue dipping sauce. We both had these delicious types of sandwiches along with the chips and cheese. So delicious.



We also went to this neat bookstore name Chamberleins where you can sell your books for store credit and they have 2 floors of book after book! super crazy. We both bought some books there.

Following that we went to Home Goods to browse before our movie started. That was Kelly's first time in Home Goods. We then went and saw the movie Salt with Angelina Jolie. It was a good movie! We had a nice time together.

Visits, Visits, and more Visits

So now that we have a guest bed and a house, it seems that we suddenly have an influx of visitors these past few months. It has kept me busy enough, that between work and visits I have not had time to update my blog. I don't have any pictures from the visits really, but didn't want to miss out on recording.

- My friend Erin and her friend came in February to visit St. Augustine and stayed the night with us. It was fun catching up with her as it had been quite a long time.

- My sister Kelly lived at our house for pretty much all of June and July. Some of the things that we did was:

* See Iron Man 2 * go to the Suns baseball game and watch the midgets wrestle in the after show * Visit Erica Foster and spend time in Fernandina Beach * St. Augustine Flea Market * Riverside Art Market * Twilight Marathon * Swimming * Kelly learned to use my bread machine * 4th of July BBQ * Celebrate Casey's birthday * Ate dinner at Candice Clancy's house twice * Grand Opening of FL Blue * Pick out fabric for Kelly's quilt * Work on decorating my office & buy a sofa

Unfortunately we did not get to do too many things together. I had just started my job and was working a lot of overtime.

- My friend from Alaska was in town 2 times (see other blog entry)

- My mom has come a few times for different things. One time it was for research of hotels to see about having her grants come stay in the area. It was fun going to the different hotels and visiting downtown.

- Naomi, my longtime friend came for a weekend in August. We went shopping at the Outlet to get me some new clothes while it was tax free. We also looked around for bookshelves that I need for my office and found some at the most odd place, Hobby Lobby. Neither of us had been there before and they actually have furniture not just craft stuff. We ate out a few times, and even went to a movie. It has been a long time since I have been to a theater, we went and saw Step Up 3. We also went and visited her old house that she lived in a for a long time here. We knocked on the door hoping the people would answer. We went to the back of the house to look into the back yard and the owners were in their pool. They didn't hear or see us. The house is not what I remembered it being like.

- Omar's mom and brother from Utah and cousin's from Honduras (8 in total) came in August. Boy do they all love to shop. Actually the whole reason they all came from Honduras was to shop! They only spent really a a day and a half here with us, but during that time they went to the outlets twice! Omar was the one that really spent time with them as I was working a lot. I came home and they all loved our house and Nicholas from Honduras loved our colors so much that he wanted to buy them for his house back home.

The Long Awaited Tax Credit

We never thought it would come...our $8k tax credit. We bought the house in September and by October had already had our accountant do a 2008 appeal so we could get our money. We sent it into the IRS who received it in October. We knew it would take a while. January I called because we had not received it yet. The IRS said, oh it has been received and processed and your check should be coming. If I didn't hear from them or receive it by February 14th to call them. I called them and they told me we have no record of us calling in January and that no one would have told us that our check was on the way because our account had been frozen and closed in December due to fraud. They supposedly sent us something in the mail. I verified our address and they told me that there was nothing they could do becuase we had committed fraud by buying more than one house. They told me it goes through a different department and there was no way to contact the department and I was out of luck. They suggested I call back in a month.
So I had Omar call back a month later as I had become very frustrated. They told him to call back in a month. I did research on the computer and found that other people had requested a tax advocate. So we requested one, it only took a few more months with the tax advocate and getting them additional proof that we bought the house and that it was our only house that we have bought to receive the credit. At least we made over $400 in interest by waiting 10 months to receive our tax credit!

Unfortunantly our tax credit is gone, we did buy a few things that we wanted like bookshelves, and a chair for the office. Other than that we have been paying bills and debts off so we can be debt free.