HAPPY BIRTHDAY SPENCER!

Today, my beautiful no longer little pup turned 9. I can't even believe he is 9 years old. He still has the energy of a puppy.

Spencer has lots of toys, but we tend to not buy any "noise" making toys so we don't get annoyed ;) I was walking in the pet sop the other day and decided, oh, okay. I'll buy him one just to see his reaction.

It was the FUNNIEST thing ever. I was laying helplessly on the couch in all my sickness glory when C showed me this picture



Spencer would not touch the thing. every time C squeaked "Herman" Spencer begrudgingly stared him down and pounced back.

Eventually Spencer learned the dog was fake and he could essentially chew the thing up, but It was fun for the first night to watch the two interact.



( Please ignore my smoking trucker man voice. I'm dealing with a nasty sinus, cough, cold, bug)

SUNDAY TIDBITS

>We're preparing for a mini vacation on Tuesday to Southern California. We're going with a good friend down to Disneyland for 4 days and I can't freaking wait! We decided to stay home for New Years Eve, so we were able to swing this mini vacation into our budget. The best part is; We're Flying! We usually just drive, but since it's a short trip we're going to fly. Instead of a 16 hour road trip it will take us 4 hours of flying ( with a few hours in SF for a layover!)

> I'm going through major mommy guilt about leaving Spencer at a dog kennel. We've always got to leave him with our family and friends, and this time we just don't have that available, so he has to stay in a kennel. We've checked a few out and ultimately decided on one based on the fact they offer suites and potty breaks. He literally has his own "hotel" room equipped with a radio, TV & outside access. He gets 3 walks, and a kong toy before bed. If I didn't feel guilty about leaving him, I'd be laughing at this ridiculous situation, but none the less, he'll be well taken care of I'm sure.

>I am doing 2 gym classes today, 2 tomorrow plus a personal training session. I'm really trying to knock out some major work, since we'll be on vacation. I know we'll be on our feet 16 hours a day walking around the park, but I just don't want to have to start back at square one when we get back. It will be interesting to see what my body band tells me I've burned while walking at Disney.

>I'm going through short hair withdraw. I've taken a year to grow my hair out, and then I dyed it brown. But I'm now wishing I had short blonde hair again! I think the hair debacle with forever be a love hate relationship.

>I still have Christmas decor up. I know, I'm lame and lazy. But we literally put it up 4 days before we left for all our Christmas travel. So I feel like I needed a few more weeks to enjoy it's festiveness. But now? it's just mocking me, and begging me to put it away. Maybe before our trip. Maybe not. LOL we'll see how that goes.

>Valentines day stuff makes me sick. Especially when it's in stores the day after Christmas.

>I'm addicted to playing angry birds on my iphone. It literally consumes hours of my time.


It feels good to empty out my brain!

SPRING SHOWERS

Is it STILL Spring? I mean, really? Because we haven't seen one day of sunshine in nearly 2 weeks. And I'm not just talking slightly cloudy skies, I'm talking black, hail falling, non stop raining skies.

I decided I was tired of being trapped in the house, so I opened all my windows and blinds ( even though it was chilly) and aired out the house as much as possible. I don't know how much good it did for our home, but it did help my soul a little.

In the meantime, I had planted a few flowers and herbs a few weeks ago.  I had them sitting on our porch, but with the massive rain fall they started flooding. So I brought my babies in! (It's the small things , people )



I have itty bitty sprouts after only 2 weeks and I'm so excited. I think I'm going to keep them on my window seal for another week, and hope this crummy weather will clear itself up ( or else me and the man upstairs will be having it out!)  We planted : Chives, cilantro, flat leaf parsley and basil and then a mixture of poppy's and garden flowers.

I have zero experience with gardening, and truth be told, there isn't much space around here to do any, but I've decided to start small, see how I do and go from there. Here's to hoping my red thumb turns green very soon!

In addition to gardening and doing a whole lot of nothing, because we're stuck inside, we've been trying to get everything cleaned up. In less then 3 weeks we'll be heading down to California for the first leg of our business year. We'll be gone nearly 3 weeks doing our 4th of July festival, hosting a garage sale, securing a building for our Halloween season and hopefully securing a house to live in for 3 months. I hate leaving our house, but in all honesty, it will be nice to enjoy summer weather and see our friends. Bringing in some extra money doesn't hurt either.

All the while cleaning isn't going great. You see, with the rain, and a dog who LOVEs being outside I keep running into this issue...



Did you get that? If not a closer look...


Muddy wet paws all over my freshly  mopped floors. I can't seem to win the battle!


I hope you all have a fabulous weekend. Sparky and I are headed to a festival, and hopefully having a date night!

WOW, I'M FINALLY HERE!

Okay, so I know I've been slacking. But almost a month of no blogs? Seriously? My time is going by SO fast. It's nearing towards the end of May which means starting in June my busy season starts. It means we'll actually have money coming in instead of going out. It means we can afford to live without having to watch every single penny ( although we always have a budget). You get the idea... We only make money 6 months out of the year, so it's always nice when that time of year rolls around again.

So what have I been up to?

Well I know I need to do a big recap of our vacation, but truth be told I haven't even gotten the pictures off my camera yet!

As soon as we got home we had to deal with Spencer. He somehow cut his paw open right before we left C's parents house. the poor guy wasn't happy and kept trying to lick it which resulted in loss of fur on his paw. It was a horrible situation. All is well now, and it's healing great!

Then we had various appointments with a new business opportunity we came into ( I can't disclose info on it right now, but soon enough!)

Of course there was mothers day. Again, I need to do a recap on this and get those darn pictures of out my camera!

Leading us to a very hot weekend in Oregon. I'm talking 90 degrees hot so C and I decided to go on a fast little boat ride!



We rode on  Willamette jet boats. It was a spur of the moment decision to go last Saturday but we just wanted to get out of the house. We actually ran into a little problem as we arrived. Apparently in order to reserve a seat you should call a few days in advance, which we didn't (obviously) so we had to wait until everybody who had reserved their space was seated to see if there was enough room for us. Luckily they had 2 seats left.


Once on the river, they took no time to get that boat going at speeds over 40. The breeze was nice, but within the first 5 minutes the boat slammed on it's brakes drenching every single person on the boat. It was really fun although the first taste of river water wasn't pleasant.


( and just a side note, I was more worried about my hair, as I had just took the time to dry and straighten it mere minutes before! ugh!)


The trip lasted a little over 2 hours. There were lots of e-brake stops and quite a few spin outs. it seemed like just when you were starting to dry off and get warm the guy would get us all wet again. Toward the end I was really starting to freeze and actually began getting pissy that he needed to stop doing that since the sun was going down and the weather was changing.

The scenery was amazing and only viewable by boat. We passed some huge mansions on the water that i didnt even know Oregon had! What's even more amazing was that in 1996 Oregon experienced the worst flood of it's life time and most of the homes




Can you imagine your 15 millon dollar home under water?  Or how about your grocery store?






It was amazing hearing about it, and still being able to see some of the damage that was never fixed. What was even more amazing is the addition to the river are river houses.






I don't know about you, but I don't think living in a state where water falling from the sky seems to be endless, all the while sleeping on a river that is known to flood. And these houses aren't cheap! I can only imagine their home insurance is through the roof!

Anyhow, the experience was awesome, and we'll absolutely be taking some out of town guests on it again this summer.






I'll try to be a better blogger here the next few days as I have a small break from work.

AND THE WINNER GOES TO..

ME!! for being the worst blogger the last 2 weeks. But I've had good reason right? Right, okay moving on...



C and I have been busy doing a whole lot of nothing!

This week we finally splurged and bought our selves a new gas grill for the patio. At our last house, our grill was built in, and next to the pool, so we never actually owned one. When we moved into our town house, we figured we would be traveling most of the summer anyway, so it was useless.After going an entire spring and summer season with no BBQ, was horrible. So we splurged. And we've already grilled fillet mignon which was freaking amazing!. 

Remember the golf cart we bought? We got it home and had used it for a few days but it kept dying. We tried everything to get it to work, but alas we found out the batteries which were only 2 years old hadn't been taken care of so we had to buy new ones. At $750.00 for all 6 I wasn't looking forward to it. I'm pretty sure C got some evil looks in there. But the smart guy he is, sold our used batteries on craigslist for $200 bucks. Which meant these batteries were $200 cheaper. While still expensive, at least they weren't as expensive.

Have you ever heard of Groupon.com? It's my new love. I seriously have scored some awesome deals. There is a Chicago style hot dog shop in downtown Portland I've been wanting to try. I logged onto to groupon and what do ya know? Hot dog shop offering $8 worth of food for $4 bucks. I bought two of those!

My second purchase was for a hair salon. I've been lucky enough to be in California every 6-8 weeks so I could stick with my lady. Since my hair is getting longer, it needs to be maintained a bit more, so I knew I needed to find someone here. I really love the bumble and bumble product, although expensive, I can totally justify the price after I blow dry my hair and feel how soft and healthy it is. Anyhow, a bumble and bumble salon offered $110 worth of service for $55. You can't beat that!

If you haven't been to the site check it out. I know they offer it in quite a few cities.


Yesterday this family had an off day. :( Spencer woke up with a swollen, puffy, red eye with gunk coming out of it. I had a mini heart attack as my pirate dog looked at me and it just made me sad. We made him a vet appointment, and then proceeded to look on google. We found that if we cleaned out his eye with distilled water, and wiped down the goopies every few hours with a warm towel we could possible fix the problem. So we gave it a ago. And watched it over night. This morning he is doing much better! The swelling is gone, the redness is gone, and just a little bit of wetness.

In the meantime, C woke up with a horrible migraine that kept him in bed all day. I felt so bad that I couldnt do anything for him, so I just made sure the room was cool and dark and that there was little noise. He finally felt better around 8pm.

I on the other hand woke up with the worst stomach pain. About 6 months ago I've starting taking out dairy. I was getting stomach aches after drinking milk and associated it with dairy. After switching to soy, limiting cheese, sour cream, etc I've been much better. Less bloat, less gas, all around happy. But the night before we decided to get some pizza. I hadn't had any in a few months and was craving it.  I paid the price though. I couldnt even button my pants or put pressure on my stomach because it hurt so bad.  :(  i'm sad to see the pizza go.

I'm going to try making it at home next week and try it with less cheese and see how that does. I can still eat some cheese just not as much as I would like.


That's pretty much what's going on around here. No big plans for the weekend. I have a chair I'm going to paint and reupholster. I'll try and get some pictures taken in the next day or two.

Have a great weekend!

Happy Birthday Spencer!

Spencer turns 8 this year! He still acts just like a big ol' puppy dog. Always playing hide and go seek with dad ( seriously) fetching his ball, running around like a mad man and puddle jumping ( his newest hobby)


We're not sure when his actual birthday is. We got him on Valentines day so for us, that's his Birthday. He was found in a box, that was laying in a bush at Walmart. He was really on the verge of dying from malnutrition, and being beaten. Lucky for us, some friends of my mom found him, took him home for a few weeks, got him mostly healthy and then gave him to us. He was around 4 or 5 weeks old when we got him and he has been attached ever since.

OH, HAPPY DAY!

The sun is shining after 3 long weeks of non stop rain. I threw open every single window, curtain and shade in my house to let as much air and light flow through. January is the only month I get tired of winter. Funny thing, I don't mind winter in February, or even March, but something about the dreary skies of Janurary just makes me cringe.

More news. I have been stocking a few of my hot spot thrift stores for the last few days looking for a few items, and I found a really great piece. I haven't started the project yet, but will in a few days, which of course ill then post pictures and a recap.


After a stop and go basis, I've finally got the motivation and desire to go to the gym. In addition to me going, I've motivated Sparky as well. I can't wait for some kick butt work outs!


The dog has a new horrible habit of running in muddy puddles. Every single time we take him for a walk, he heads into the biggest puddle he can possibly find and jumps right in. SO annoying and SO funny. I wouldn't have a problem with this if it wasn't a) 30 degrees outside and B) we didn't have white carpet. Oh well. It's not the end of the world, and obvisouly we'll be buying a carpet cleaner.


And last but not least. My long time blog friend is having her baby today! I'm so excited for her and her husband and cannot wait to find out if it's a boy or a girl! Run over and check out her nursery ( or house for that matter) it's awesome!