Happy Birthday to my dear Spencer....the big 9 today.

OK,... I know this is not the most flattering picture of me but we are focusing on my first born Spencer in this post. This was Christmas morning 2009. I forgot to buy them new jammies this year. Now I know why I buy them new jammies....for all the pictures we take on Christmas morning. I remember my photos always had me looking like a bomb had gone off in my head and my jammies were always weird.
This is Spencer's favorite candy bar.

This is a great photo of him. He has matured so much in the last few months. Hard for me to explain.

This was his favorite gift. It took him about 5 hours to put it together.

We went skiing tonight for his birthday. He is starting to get really good.

I am wanting to go on a cruise this year.....we may have to take a trip out to Colorado next year.

He got to go over a jump in the hill...thought he was big stuff. Owen freaked out that he did not get to do it. Maybe next time!!!

Happy birthday my wonderful son!! Can hardly believe you're half way to 18 (yikes!!!) I need to catalog more of my life with my boys. It is fun to look back. If I can figure out my scanner I will put some photos of when he was younger. We just got a new computer so the oldest photo I have on here is 3 months ago.

3 new bags and a lost tooth

My little guy...who is not so little any more, will be 6 tomorrow and last night he lost his first tooth!!! He was soooooooooooooooo excited!!! He will now be in the lost tooth club at school.

Dragon Fly $95.00

Gray with 3 red flowers $105.00

Gray with pink flowers and a butterfly!!! $95.00

Love this bag!!! You can not see it in the photo but is has a curly q in pink for the butterfly.

First day of school.

First day of school!!! Owen and Spencer both have mixed emotions. ;) So does mom.

The bus stop. Had to have a picture of it because it might be the only time they make the bus...not much of a morning crew in our house.

Owen the big full fledged all day kindergartner!!! He looks scared but he is really excited.

August 2009

Here are a few photos of August. I will try to explain a few.
This was a pretty frog we saw at our friends house in Minnesota. Can you tell I am a mom of 2 boys......"pretty" frog....yikes. It was really pretty though.

And it brought so much joy to these kids. This is Arabella and Spencer. Cute red heads have to stick together.

Here is the Quigley/Koepp crew. What a glorious weekend we had with dear friends. I miss you Karee more than you will ever know.

Just cant get enough.

Again.......two peas in a pod.

Owen found a toad. Not so pretty........

All of the kids at the end of a fun filled day on the lake.......can you say pooped out?

Thanks Dan for all your mad driving skills on the boat.

Can you say Arabella Quigley????

Spencer and Owen have been building their own "ships" out of legos. They are really good at this. Definately future engineers.

Spencer's "professional" shot.....

Side view

We went to Ikea and they had face painting. The boys had fun.

Owen loves batman right now. Too cute!!!

Middle name meme

This is my grandmother Gertrude, my father's mother to whom I am named after. She went by Gert. Her birthday is March 17, 1898. Yes, my grandmother was born in the 1800's. My dad is the youngest of 5 and I am the youngest of 8. So that makes me the Baby Baby. She had 26 grandchildren and I was her last one.

G-Good Friend. I like to have a lot of friends.

E-Entertain. I like to have people over and have fun.

R-Resale. I love to go to resale shops and pilfer through old junk.

T-Toes. I love love love baby toes.

R-Read. I like to read fiction with happy endings. Life is too real right now so I need happy stories.

U-Unfortunate. Only that I was never able to meet this woman. She died before my dad had any children. I heard she made great pies.

D-Devoted. To my family and friends and to my love of making things.

E-Elated that I was able to complete this. It was really hard to do.

What can happen in a week? A lot!!

I want to share with you one of the most beautiful sites of my week. Here is my friend Tina bringing me food for dinner.

We belong to a cooking club where we each take a night to cook for the other families and then the other nights we sit back a wait for our food to be delivered.

This has changed my life. My grocery bills have gone down, we are saving fuel from only firing up one oven and we are developing wonderful relationships.

If you ever have any questions about this, or if you want to start one of your own, let me know. I would be glad to help.

This is why I am all out of wack right now. This is what my kitchen looks like. Do you like my decorating?

We just had our carpets cleaned. Oh how I love when the carpets are cleaned.










This is my family room with no furniture in it and beautifully cleaned carpets. View 1


And View 2.....Captain Underpants is in my family room with his blanky.

My family room looks huge without any furniture.

We had the carpets cleaned yesterday but we wanted to give it a full 35 hours (and counting) before we put the furniture back.












Three new bags and 2 bags that have already been featured on here are going to SoBo Style in the morning.

Hopefully I will get the other 2 done before the mail gets here.



I have been trying to get bags done like a crazy lady but things keep coming up.


I had a Jewelry party on Friday. I invited about 40 women to come and only 4 showed up. Yikes. I have never in my life had that kind of a turn out. I guess my lessons learned are

one, dont have your party on the first Friday of the month because people might not turn their calendar over before your party,

two send out more reminders, and

three, only have parties that you are willing to sell sell sell the product!!!! I am not much of a fashion jewelry type of person. I would much rather have the diamonds and gold thank you!! (I am also allergic to most metals) However, this was not all bad. The four ladies that did make it, we all had a wonderful time and the Jewelry Lady did not do too bad either. Thanks ladies for a wonderful party and the after party party.......smile.

The last thing to share with you is that I have given up Diet Coke!!! The real reason for the dragging this week I think. This has been very difficult for me because I am seriously addicted to it. I have been feeling really bad for the last three and over those years it has gotten progessively worse. And my diet coke addiction started about 3 years ago..so.... My sister sent me this email telling me how bad diet coke is for you and how they have linked it to so many joint issues such as, MS, Lupis, and Fibromyalgia. I have been having many of those symptoms of fibromyalgia. We will see how it goes. If anyone wants to get on the wagon with me let me know.

Yesterday we went to Spicer's Orchard. We picked blueberries. Yummo!!! We had such a great time and the weather was perfect. And the blueberries are really big this year. I forgot the camera so all I have is a picture of the "bounty". All these blueberries...$3.50, donuts and pop $3.75, not to mention the 2 hours of entertainment and spending time with our kids.......priceless.

Spencer's picture.

Owen's picture.

Along with luscious blueberries came really dirty feet. Yukko!!!