Passport update

Well, my initial passport application got rejected by Passport Canada due to my passport photos. They said my eyes weren't fully visible (like a little, itty bitty part was hidden) and there was a flash on my forehead (you can see the photo for yourself a few posts below or by clicking here to go to that post). D'oh >_< So, I went back to Walmart where I had the photos done and got a refund as my photos were rejected because of them, wasting me both time and money.

For round two, I went to Walgreens. They weren't 100% positive they did Canadian sizes, but lo and behold, their photo machines had an international section for passport photos, Canada being one of the countries. So, got those done and this time, kept my glasses off, to prevent any errors. You can see these photos below (again, excuse the meh expression):

I then mailed my passport application in again, keeping my fingers crossed. I didn't bother paying $30 this time for it to arrive within 5 days. So, I paid like less than $5 instead for it to arrive in a week, and no tracking. I kept all fingers crossed it would get there.

After like a week or two after sending in my passport on January 25th, I began to call Passport Canada twice a week to see if they had received it. Finally, around mid-February, they told me they had received it on February 7th and they were just beginning to process it. So, I started to call once a day to get status updates. I felt like I was going through NVC all over again!

A few days after they told me they received it, I saw my credit card had been charged the C$97 fee from Passport Canada. I called up asap and found they had accepted my application, phew!

And just last week, they told me they had ordered for my passport to be printed. And then last Friday, they told me they had shipped it! After getting a very long tracking number for FedEx (and when I say long, I mean like 30+ digits long!), I tracked my passport. Yesterday, it arrived safely at my apartment and I finally had a passport again! What a relief!

Enjoy the photo below of my brand new, shiny passport :)

~Lindsay

Tax update

Well, we had sent our tax return online on February 2nd. TurboTax finally sent it on February 14 (since we had education credits and IRS was only accepting those kind of returns on the 14th). On the 21st, our refund got approved, and my husband got the amount deposited over the weekend!

I ordered 2012 tax transcripts for my ROC package on the 21st, so I'm thinking they'll arrive sometime this week, as it's never taken longer than a week to arrive (for us anyways). I'll leave an update once I do get them.

~Lindsay

P.S. My checking account is looking real nice and my husband still needs one more day to transfer the rest of my portion of the refund :)

Taxes

Well, we finally submitted our taxes about an hour ago online through Turbo Tax. Expected refund: $2860 :) Since I had education credits and the IRS are only processing education credits starting mid-February, it'll still be awhile before we get our refund. Which I'm a little bummed about as I wanted to 1). use the money to pay for ROC, and 2). request a tax transcript to show we filed married filing jointly. So, either I wait until early March (which is when Turbo Tax said we should expect our refund) to file for ROC, or file early, taking money from my savings account (or something) and just simply send our tax return (instead of a tax transcript). Guess I'll just play by ear and see what happens...

~Lindsay