Happy Emancipation Day, Washington, D.C.

AKA Happy (should be) Tax Day! Today is usually the day when I get my life back. The hubs gets his wife back. Buster gets his momma back. I get to see friends again. Oh, glorious April 15th! But...

Not this year. This year, April 15th falls on Emancipation Day (Observed) - a holiday only observed by Washington, D.C. The actual holiday is on April 16th, but since that is on a Saturday it got pushed to the 15th, thus, pushing the tax deadline to April 18th. Thank you, Emancipation Day, for taking one more of my weekends away from me.

Fun Fact: Emancipation Day celebrates, yup, you guessed it, the day President Abraham Lincoln signed the Compensated Emancipation Act to release slaves from forced labor about 9 months before he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. It became a national holiday in 2005 (bet you didn't think you'd get a history lesson today!).

Hopefully I won't have to work this weekend, but I'm not getting my hopes up. It's easier on my mental health if I just assume I do and then maybe, possibly I will get a happy surprise. We'll just have to wait and see what special surprises pop up!

I hope you all have your taxes in and aren't running to your accountant today to get them done! Have a great weekend everybody!

I See Dead People

Well, I don't, but my husband does. Yesterday Zachary got to had to go observe autopsies at the Maricopa County Examiner. Maybe I watch too much Law and Order: SVU (I love that show), but I was really interested to hear what it was like in real life since we always see them on some of our favorite shows like NCIS. Basically, he said they looked exactly like how they do on TV.

He said it was crazy how fast they do the autopsies. Each autopsy only takes about 30-40 minutes and they were doing about 4 at a time. Zach and the other students were able to watch from behind windows, and he said it was really hard seeing the first one, but then it got easier. He got to see a ton of different cases, each one unique, but no homicides. Fun Fact: I guess if you witness the autopsy of a homicide, then you can be called on to the stand during trial to testify, so they weren't allowed to view those ones.

Zach was definitely in kind of a funk the rest of the day, which is totally understandable. I can't imagine having that as my day job... kind of depressing and sad to see so much death all the time. But, I guess if you are into how the body works it might be intriguing to figure out the cause of some one's death through science. I can see how it would be satisfying to help families and loved ones get closure.

Unfortunately, he didn't get to hear the results of any of the cases because it takes a few days/weeks to process some of the testing results. Oh, a day in the life of a med student...

Speaking of Law and Order... check out this website where people take the one sentence description of a Law and Order episode and make art out of it. It's pretty cool.

6 Days to Go...

Only six more days to go of my three least favorite months of the year. I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but trying not to get too excited because there are still a lot of working hours in 6 days. Oh, to have freedom again!

I came home last night around 10 and BBoy was already asleep and the hubs kissed me and then went straight to bed. Sad. :( But, that meant I got to catch up on an episode of House Hunters - I love me some HGTV! (Side note - do you know that show is rigged? The people have already purchased a house and the other two houses they look at are "dummy" houses. Crazy, huh? I still watch it though - apparently the house they "choose" is the empty one since they have already purchased it - and try to guess which one they end up with).

Another side note - what happened to all my shows this month?! This is the one month where I want to veg out and watch TV all night when I get home after a long day of work and there hasn't been any new episodes all month! It does not make me very happy...

In other Kane family news... the hubs gets to observe an autopsy today for one of his classes. Without sounding too morbid/weird, how cool is that?! I can't wait to hear all about it (and share all the juicy details, of course!).

And just because I love this little guy so much, here's another Buster pic...

Pecan Bars

Over Christmas, my parents, brother, grandparents, and Zach's parents came down to visit. Luckily, my parents have a house down here in Goodyear, so it's not too far and everyone has a place to stay. This year, I took on the task of making every one's favorite type of cookies while they were here. The breakdown went a little like this...

Daddio - Sugar Cookies

Mom - Molasses Cookies

Dude - Fudge

Zach - Chocolate Crinkle Cookies

Me - No-Bake Cookies

Grandma - Mincemeat Cookies (and I learned what mincemeat is!)

Grandpa - Chocolate Cake (it was his 90th birthday)

Renee and Schmevin - Pecan Bars

Let's just say, no one was without something sweet to munch on! I managed to make everything within two weeks, except for the Pecan Bars. So, when Renee and Schmevin came for a visit last week, I made it top priority to make them their favorite Pecan Bars.

Here's my recipe for Pecan Bars (found here):

Ingredients

2 cups flour

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 cup butter

5 eggs

1 cup dark corn syrup

3/4 cup white sugar

a pinch of salt

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine flour and brown sugar.

Cut in butter until mixture resembles course crumbs.

The original recipe called for 1/2 cup butter and 1/2 cup margarine, but we didn't have margarine, so I just used 1 cup butter (Actually, it looks like from the pic below I only used 1/2 cup butter - but they still turned out!). 

Press into 9x13 pan and bake for 10 minutes.

Combine remaining ingredients, except for pecans, blend well.

Stir in pecans and pour over baked crust.

I poured some pecans on top for some decorative flava.

Reduce oven to 275 degrees.

Bake 50 minutes or until set. Cool, then cut into bars.

The bars were a huge hit! I think the whole pan was gone in two days!

Psst... Check out some of my past baking adventures here.

Catfish, Kebabs, and Itsy Bitsy Baby Toes

The past two weeks have been jam packed with family, cards, good food, and a lot of laughter. It's been great having our families visit, albeit exhausting for me when you add 70 hours of work on top of it. But seeing the fam was just what I needed to finish out busy season strong. Only one more week to go!

First, Renee and Schmevin were here (his real name is Kevin, we just lovingly call him Schmevin). The hubs got to go golfing with his pops, and I managed to escape work one night during the week to have dinner with the crew at El Zocolo, Renee's favorite Mexican restaurant in Arizona. Awesome margaritas and yummy enchiladas. We also went to dinner one night at Pappadeaux, a Louisiana Bayou-Style Seafood Kitchen.

In the spirit of trying new things I decided to try the "Pappadeaux Platter" which included catfish, craw fish, shrimp, and crab cakes. I'd never had catfish or craw fish before and I have to say, the catfish was really good - it was breaded and fried, kind of like fish and chips. The craw fish, not my favorite - a little chewy. Overall, it was a lot of food and very delicious. And of course, we couldn't forget to go to the Cracker Barrel, Schmevin's all time favorite, or play a little Pinnacle (the girls won, like usual). :) We had a great time with the Kane's!

Then last week, the Boehme's arrived. They brought with them some friends, one couple who had a 3 year old little boy, Jonah, and a 5 month old little girl, Lydia. The kids were so cute and I definitely got my baby fix in! Lydia was such a cute little chubby baby. I wish we had taken this picture earlier and had it ready to send to Schmevin for April Fool's...

How cute is this?!

I was a little nervous because Buster had never been around kids before, but he did pretty well. He got a little hyper around Jonah because he wanted to play, but other than that, as my grandma would say - no close calls! The cutest thing was when he would go up to Lydia and lick her little baby toes. He loved to lick her toes! I wish I could have snapped some photos.

The boys also took over dinner one night and we had some yummy BBQ Kebabs.

I did beat my dad at cards once, but the rest of the weekend Zach ended up winning all but one game of Up and Down the River we played. He was unstoppable! Otherwise, Zach and Buster Boy had plenty of time to lounge around in the sun and relax during spring break.

Overall, it's been a great couple of weeks, but I am exhausted!

TGI... ATEOBS

Thank Goodness It's Friday Almost The End Of Busy Season! This week has been rough to say the least, thus the lack of posts. But those tax returns aren't going to prepare themselves! Hopefully next week I'll be back at it again, sharing all our recent adventures.

Teaser: stay tuned for all the juicy details on our new bread maker (and a lot of cookie/bread baking), family time (my one goal in life this weekend is to beat my Dad at cards!), some Buster stories (what did he chew on this week? Hint: starts with i and ends with Pad), a glasses update (oh yes, I definitely am looking smarter these days), and getting my baby fix (those little itsy bitsy toes are just so dang cute!). I know the two readers I have out there (Hi, Mom!) are probably holding their breaths waiting for the latest Kane family update, but you'll just have to wait a little bit longer!  Happy Weekend!

Month Two: Busy Season Wins. Again.

Month two of the spending diet is finally over. March was a looooooooong month. Especially after the shorty known as February. But we survived. Barely.

Busy season is kicking my butt. I'm so ready for it to be April 15th 18th (Damn you, Emancipation Day!). I'm not trying to make excuses, but busy season has not been good for the spending diet. On the one hand, it's good that I don't have time to think about or go shopping. On the other hand, I get lazy about making meals at home and drinking the mediocre coffee at work. It's kind of like my Starbucks lattes become a need during busy season. I need them to function and have something to look forward to in the morning that starts my 12 hour work day.

Anyways, blah blah blah... busy season sucks. I think we all know that by now. The bad news is, we weren't able to save any money this month. I know, right? Epic fail.

APRIL FOOLS! Yeah, that was my un-inspired attempt at an April Fools joke. We were actually able to put $1,000 in savings this month! We might have been able to do a little more, but we did veer off a little bit due to the fact that I needed new glasses (more on that next week), the parentals visited, my dying computer needed a little help, etc. Overall, we feel pretty good about our March savings. Not great, but not bad.

I'm ready for April, though. April better watch out. It's going to get the crap saved out of it!

Happy Friday!