All Shall Be Well

The kids are LOVING that $30 swingset. I'm so happy. :)

And yesterday we went cherry and strawberry picking with good friends, first stopping by our TKD Master's house to see their freshly-hatched baby quail. (OMG sooooooo cute!) One of the babies hatched while we were there. Mollusc (ever-patient and ever-vigilant) stayed at the incubator while we were checking out the progress of all the fruit trees in the yard, and she got to watch him come out of the shell. Wow! :)

When we got home, a bill was waiting for us from the tax man for summer property taxes, and can I just say, "GULP!"

So it's a good thing we splurged on that fun stuff when we did, because it's belt-tightening time from here on out. You know, I don't mind paying for the roads (though it would be nice if they were better maintained) and I don't mind paying for the library (though I pay cash over and above taxes for the priviledge of using our local library) and there are a few other things I find acceptable, but it ticks me off that the people who reassess the value of your house (whenever they find it convenient -- i.e. when they want more $ ) are the ones who stand to gain from that reassessment. So it doesn't matter that houses here in MI don't sell for anywhere near what you paid for them, and that you have to keep your house on the market for at least a year in order to sell it; they still raise the assessment value. :-/

I have a new motto:

"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well." ~St. Julian of Norwich (who, by the way, was a chick.)