I feel bad, I was saying I did not have too much sympathy for dh's 1 stitch, but since sunday he has had swelling and bruising from his vasectomy. I am worried how he is doing today - he is home with Little Monkey. He shouldn't have to lift him too much and thankfully Big Monkey is at Grandma's. HE can get pretty rambuctious and keeps us on our toes a little more anyway, so hopefully dh will get some rest and relaxation today. Little Monkey is very occupied with all his new toys.

My parents came over yesterday and did not bring any gifts for the kids. & I am HAPPY about that - LOL. Phew. We had a nice day and them they took Big Monkey home with them to deliver him to Grandma for 3 days or so. I would REALLY miss him and might not be so happy with this arrangement but I Am swamped at work and dh needs his rest. Plus I Was worried Big Monkey would get homesick after so long, but he stayed 2 nights with grandma before christmas eve and did NOT want to come home. I think he will be okay. Hopefully by Thursday he will be Grandma'd out and will decide coming home isn't so bad. & thankfully he goes back to preschool next week. It is hard on me with driving him and all but I think everyone is happier and calmer, he needs activity if nothing else. More than we can give.

I made my christmas cash deposit today. $1475. Sounds pretty sweet, eh? But it won't get far. The $1k I expected from dh's family and essentially will go to pay the estate lawyer, so I don't have to dig it out of savings. Now that is a NICE gift - though - getting that done and out of our hair. Leaves $475. $250 is from work, I am trying to set aside $200 for work clothes and $50 for my boss's gift. The $200 who knows since I already used it to pay our health insurance for january. I still don't know when our reduced coverage will take affect. If Jan.1, then I should get a full $200 refund in time to go shopping for tax season. If not, I will buy less I guess. Just wait and see. Not that I intend to spend it all anyway.

Leaves $225. Already spent $100 on bills - let's say for dh's surgery. Gosh, it is all going for MEDICAL but what else is new.

LEaves $125. Since I used dh's money from his grandpa for bills I told him we would split whatever we got from my mom in 1/2. She gave us $125. We decided $25 to savings & we will both get $50 to jumpstart our allowance funds, which we are starting anew in 2007.

All that and I only saved $25. Pathetic! I think I saved $75 this month already, which is something I guess, but I am not sure - I changed my stats on the right and deleted November - LOL. I'd have to check at home.

On the plus side I should receive around $500 for some side work in January and ALL of it should go to savings. I was feeling frustrated today and thinking forward how to bring in some extra money in January, and I remembered that. That will go straight to savings and I am quite pleased. Plus is the 4th month I believe that I had a full $800 for our short-term savings fund. We are loads above where we were last summer, just frustrating not to have more for Long-term savings and retirment in such a month of extra cash. But if we keep up as is, next december we should be able to set aside any christmas money, it is nice to look forward to.

Anyway, work is CRAZY but I had been crunching all morning and needed to give my brain a break. Phew.

Oh yeah, at home I have been doing dishes, laundry, cooking, watching kids, doing all the lifting, etc. the last couple of days, and work is crazy through friday/saturday. I am lucky I caught a break today. This week is more of the same since dh is still swelling and all. I am exhausted. I have NO IDEA how single parents do it. I am just exhausted. I appreciate what dh does, yes, but even moreso that we don't have to work full-time because this is how my evenings/weekend would be spent. I feel like I Can't catch a break anyway, but at least when I get home I can usually just sit down and play with the kids and not do all of the chores...

Needless to say I will be very pleased when dh is back to feeling 100%!

Oh yeah at work, just making sure all of our big clients have withheld enough money for the year, and that their corporations have paid out their earnings, just lots of time-sensitive tax planning. This week is always crunch week for me - I am lucky to get christmas off. On the plus side, I had one HUGE client that the manager left and I remember him staying here until midnight crunching numbers last year, figuring bonuses and such. I worked all day saturday just to get the books up to date through november, was behind on that for other reasons, and was dreading how much time this would take to figure bonuses, the first year I am in charge! I am looking at all these hand written shcedules scratching my head why anyone would write this all out by hand, because 1 change could take hours to fix, so I threw them in excel this morning in an hour or 2. When I get the final receipts for the week it will take me all of 1 minute to get them the bonus #s. Maybe 10-15 minutes if I Want to take my time and double and triple check my #s. Ah, I hope the rest of my clients go this smooth. I am feeling a little relief today anyway... It is amazing to me in the 5 years that I have been year how technology has sped up this entire process. We used to wait for clients to fax over or drop off records and reports, and now for many of them we can just grab their data online. It is incredible. If I wasn't so behind otherwise I think this week may be downright easy but I have quite a few clients I still need to update through november which is the time consuming part. Well, I hope my boss will be impressed with my speed.

& I gotta get back to the number crunching!