See ya later Summer, HELLO Autumn!

Happy 1st day of Autumn to everyone who actually reads my blog :) I am SO excited that summer is gone, I decided to type in orange to honor the beautiful season which is upon us. The other day we were driving to town and I noticed a few maple trees are a tiny bit beginning to turn red :) In a matter of weeks, we will be able to look around and see all the colors of fall!

I think I am actually going to buy pumpkins this year, carve them and put them on our porch. Even though I am working Halloween night, I think it would be fun to be a wee bit festive this year. Who know, I may even splurge a little and buy a few indoor decorations! I flew home from Missouri last year on Halloween so I did not take the time to decorate. What's the fun in that? I'm smelling a great FHE in the Quillon home in a couple weeks. I'll make Paul my dad's famous hot chocolate and cookies or something. I think that will seal the deal! He will carve pumpkins if I feed him :)

This time of year ALWAYS reminds me of the years I spent growing up in Wisconsin. Every Fall, my family would drive to Devil's Lake. We would hike and then stop for caramel apples on our way home. (IDEA: Maybe I will make Paul a caramel apple while we carve pumpkins!! ) I will never forget those years with my family. I grew up in such a wonderful home, filled with amazing holiday memories.

I am flying home (to Missouri) in 2 weeks. I'll only be home for 4 days which means I won't have much, if any, time to see people I want so much to see... but I will have lots of quality time with my mom! I can't wait to spend that time with her, just the two of us. This is kinda a last minute trip home but I am ready to spend a few days with some of my family.

We actually had a realtor come for a previewing yesterday. She did a quick walk through and then left. Apparently there is an elderly couple who's moving to the area from our of town/state (not sure which). Their realtor fears the house will be too big for them, but we will have to wait and see. They are apparently coming to see the house early next week. I sure hope they don't decide not to come b/c Paul and I worked our rear end's off getting the house ready for the showing. I will say though, the house looks awesome now. Monday I have to go to Lowes and buy a few bags of mulch for the front of the house, but other then that, the front yard is not looking too shabby. We are keeping our fingers crossed that the couple likes the house. Testing dates for Rock Springs, Wy PD is the 2nd week of January. We are sooooooo much wanting the house to be sold by then. We would love to be able to fly to Wy in January so he can test for their PD. It's a strange feeling to be pulled to another area of the country, but be tied down to your current location. Wish us luck :)

I think that's all we have for now. I'm off to the grocery store to buy milk and popcorn.

Holy cow it's September, WOW!

August bid fairwell and September has arrived! I cannot express how excited I am knowing that the HOT summer months are over and things are starting to cool down in Virginia. I love seeing the high temps for the next week only reaching into the mid 80's :) It's such a beautiful thing.

Speaking of weather... Mother Nature has not been so kind to Virginia the past several weeks. As you all know from my last post, we had an earthquake in central VA about 2 weeks ago. That was an something I never care to experience again. I was hopeful that the one big earthquake would be the end of it, but apparently we have had almost 20 aftershocks. Most of which I have not felt. We had a 4.3 aftershock on my Birthday (Sept 1). Last week VA also got hit by hurricane Irene. Lucky for us, we got a little rain and a little wind, but that was the extent of our hurricane experience. Some friends closer to the ocean were not so lucky though. I'm thankful our house has been kept safe from Mother Nature!

I celebrated my 28th Birthday on September 1st! It was a bitter-sweet day for me. Although I enjoy having a day to celebrate "me", I have struggled the past few years with the idea of getting older. Everyone tells me they enjoy getting older, I don't. I down right hate it. I'll be honest, I started the day off on quite an emotional note but by the end, it was a perfect day. Here's how it went : Originally I had plans to get together with a couple friends and have dinner...but that pretty much fell through so I decided I would just stay home by myself and be sad. After several minutes of feeling bad for myself I decided to take a shower, get dressed and take myself to a movie like I had originally planned. When I told Paul I was going to be spending the evening alone, he said he would meet me in town when my movie was over and have dinner with me at Buffalo Wild Wings. I left the house and headed to town to see The Help. If you have not seen it already, it is a MUST SEE!!! Wonderful movie :) Well, about 30 minutes into the movie I got a text from Paul saying he had the rest of the night off and he would meet me at BW3 when I was done with the movie. I could not figure out why he had the rest of the night off. When the movie was finished, I haded to BW3 for dinner. Paul told me that his SGT asked him after line-up if he wanted to grab something to eat. Paul explained to him that he was meeting his wife in town b/c it was her birthday. His SGT told him they had plenty of people to work and told him to take the evening off. HOW NICE IS HE!!!!!! After dinner we went to Walmart and ended up in line behind the 1 person in the store who could not count and was trying to get 40ish items through the 20 items or less counter. There was a long line of people behind her. All of us had fewer then 10 items and everyone was getting frustrated. I was puchasing a yard stick and I wont lie... I wanted to smack her with it. I can't stand people like her. What was worse was that I could not stop looking at her.... she had done WAY too much botox... it was nasty! My little sister Emily sent me flowers on my birthday too :) I was not home when they tried to deliver them so I got them the next day. They sure are beautiful!!! The bouquet has roses, lillies, daiseys and sunflowers. It really made me smile when I saw them! Saturday was my big celebration day with Paul. Instead of him buying me a present, I wanted to go shopping to buy some clothes for this fall! Saturday was so much fun too. I loved spending the day with my sweet husband. He did such a great job shopping with me :) My only rule that day was that he was not to act nervous or fidget and he did not do either! We went to Buckle in Shortpump. I love their clothes. Although they are a weeeee bit expensive, I'll have them for several years and can add to my wardrobe over time. I'll post pictures of the thigns I got. We ended the day at Cheesecake Factory. It was so amazingly good. We bought 4 slices of cheesecake, most of which we brought home with us. I think Cheesecake Factory is the place where we will celebrate big occasions. We both love it there!

Most of you also know we are selling our house. Well, trying to sell our house. The market is crap right now so I am not holding my breath. We have decided to lower the price of the house by $8,000. We hope that the drop in price will draw more attention and we will find a buyer. Paul and I have been trying to decide if we want to stay in Virginia after the house sells. Both of are feeling a pull to move out West. We are thinking Wyoming. My oldest brother would like us to at least look at South Dakota where they are.... so I may try to talk Paul into at least looking... but we both feel really really good about Wyoming. It provides a totally different lifestyle that we would both love to have when it comes to raising our children that Virginia does not have. We have been looking at Police Departments, Real Estate, apartments, etc is all of the major Wyoming cities. We get more and more excited about the idea. But first, we have to sell our house. I'll keep you posted!

That's about all I have for now.

Liz