Getting ready for taxes...

Well, it is time to start pulling together documents for our accountant. This is going to be quite a job...

Let me say this... if you are thinking of starting a business, or have recently, go take a book keeping class at a local college. You don't have to get an accounting degree, but learn the basics of business administration. We didn't do that, but we use Quickbooks Pro and Quickbooks Point of Sale. There are some things we did not know how to do with regard to book keeping, and we have put it off. What I intended to be a month or two delay has turned into nine month delay of learning some basics. I have taught myself to do quarterly reporting for city and state sales tax, use tax, state and federal withholding, unemployment insurance taxes, etc as well as to process payroll, among other things. We have done well with the things we needed to learn for day to day operations, but I have this nagging list of questions written down that I need to learn about Quickbooks, and book keeping in general. Now that 2007 is over, I need to schedule some time with our accountant's assistant and learn a few things. I will then have to go back and complete the book keeping tasks for nine months worth of data. Time goes by much faster than it seems... Learn what you need to know now so it is not such a big job to get caught up later...

I typically ignore all the celebrity garbage in the news. For some reason, the media has decided that the misbehaviour of celebrities is more important than telling us about the good things going on in Iraq (if you have family members or friends in the military, you know that many of them feel good things are happening and that it is a worthy cause). Hearing that Heath Ledger died this week was a very sad thing for me. I usually could care less, but I think he was an amazing young talent and it makes me sad to know that he is gone. It sounds as though he had issues with addiction, resulting in issues with his relationship, as well as problems sleeping. Who knows what caused his life to head in the wrong direction, but I feel the loss of many great future movies that will not happen now. I know that sounds petty compared to the loss of his life and how it will affect his daughter, his ex, his parents and sister, etc... If you have never seen the movie 'The Four Feathers' go find a copy and watch it. I would be surprised if it does not make your list of favorites... Even as silly as 'A Knight's Tale' is, Tracy and I have watched it over and over again with Josh, Jonah, and Ethan. It is a fun story that our whole family can watch together and enjoy. So many young actors are about good looks and crazy behaviour, not about true acting talent. He had a gift for acting, and it is sad to see him gone. My prayers go out to his family, especially for his daughter.

Tracy and I regularly have conversations with the boys about good choices, bad choices, consequences, choosing friends, peer pressure, etc. We don't yet know if he died from an overdose, but we will be talking with the kids about it and using his tragic end as a way to teach our children about good choices in life. We won't be able to make choices for our kids, but we can send them into adulthood with the knowledge of right and wrong, good and evil, rewards and consequences, etc... If you haven't had a conversation with your kids about those types of things, you might want to give it a shot.

JD