My Favorite Christmas Gifts

Posted by Lisa Eirene

I wanted to share a few of the awesome things we got for Christmas this year, in case you were thinking of some things to get people for birthday gifts (or wanted to add them to your list!).

AmazonBasics Micromink Sherpa Blanket

I got this blanket from my brother and absolutely LOVE it. It is SO soft and comfortable. I love being cozy under it on the couch watching Netflix with a glass of wine on the weekends! It’s the perfect winter blanket.

Electric Tea Kettle

I didn’t know how much I’d love this until my parents got it for me. I used to have a traditional kettle and never used it. I eventually got rid of it. Michael doesn’t drink coffee but he drinks green tea in the mornings so he uses it every day and I drink tea in the afternoon. It is so fast and easy and we love it!

Magnetic Block/Tile Set

My best friend got Logan this set of magnets that are so cool! He LOVES them and they are super fun building things with. Logan spends so much time building towers and “garages” for his matchbook cars with them. I even find them fun! 😉

Keurig Mini

This was actually something I bought with Amazon giftcards. I needed a new coffee solution for work and this turned out to be great! I absolutely loved how small and minimal this model was. In fact, when my home Keurig finally dies (we got it for our wedding), I will probably replace it with another mini. I just love that it doesn’t take up so much space–which is perfect for work.

Automatic Cat Feeder

This is another Amazon giftcard purchase. It’s something I should have done years ago, especially with Yggdrasil (Fat Kitty’s) food issues. It took about an hour to set it up, figure out the programming and make sure it worked. You can program it to automatically feed (and you can choose what amounts you want) at whatever time of day you want. There are 4 feeding options. I decided to try a breakfast, lunch “snack” and then dinner time feeding. I am playing with the portion sizes to get the settings right. It will be nice for when we go out of town. But I think it will be nice just to have day to day, too. I like that you can program it for certain times. So maybe now Stevie will stop whining at 6 am on the weekends to get fed. 😉

Bamboo Cheese Board

We got this for Michael’s mom. What I liked about it was that it had spots for crackers! (I kinda want one for myself!)

What are some of your favorite gifts?

This post has Amazon affiliate links.

Fun in the Snow

Posted by Lisa Eirene

Michael and I had the chance to have some fun in the snow and sun this weekend! On Saturday, his mom and stepdad came over to babysit Logan and we drove up to Mount Hood to go snowshoeing WITHOUT a kid and WITHOUT a dog! It was so crazy! LOL It was crazy how easy it was to pack for just us. 😉

It was such a gorgeous day. It was clear blue skies and warm–almost 45 degrees up on the mountain. We drove to White River West Sno Park and arrived at about 10am. (When we left the parking lot that holds 200 cars was packed full.)

White River is a popular place for sledding and there were lots of kids out sledding. It looked super fun! The other nice thing about White River is the immediate view of Mount Hood:

It was such a nice day! And it was so nice being out there just the two of us, doing something we used to do before having Logan. Not that it’s not nice doing stuff with our dog and kid, but it’s also nice just doing stuff as a couple, too.

We hiked around a bit and then crossed over into the trees where we found some other trails.

Lots of people were out that day!

 

We ended up doing the Boy Scout Ridge Trail (or at least, part of it). We were the only ones on the trail, which was kind of nice! We followed the trail through the quiet trees, away from the sledders. The trail had been forged and then the snow had frozen a bit and there wasn’t new snow, so that was nice because we didn’t lose the trail.

We followed the trail for a bit and then felt like it was time to turn around. We didn’t have a ton of time and since it was about an hour to drive home and we wanted to stop for lunch, we had to get going. I definitely want to explore this trail some more, though!

I was feeling really good and felt like I could keep going, which is a bummer! But we were short on time, so had to head back to the car. It was such a gorgeous day to be outside on the mountain! And such a nice way to spend some time together.

I was surprised that I didn’t burn more calories. Especially being at a higher weight that I am currently at right now. Usually snowshoeing burns a pretty decent amount. But my heart rate just never really got that high.

We stopped at the Tollgate Restaurant for lunch on the way down. We had a beer.

And split some mozzarella “sticks”:

I had a side salad and the brussels sprouts (about 1/3 of them. I was stuffed by then). The food wasn’t anything special. I don’t know that I’d go back, honestly.

Then home to this cutie pie:

He didn’t want to take a nap until we got home, which actually worked out well because we got home and ALL took a nap!!! It was glorious! It was a nice, relaxing, lazy afternoon. Just what we all needed. We were super lazy the rest of the night and I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner, slathered my calves with this magnesium lotion to hopefully stave off soreness, and went to bed early!

Sunday I went swimming and sat in the hot tub and that felt fantastic! I think the magnesium lotion helped a lot, too, because I wasn’t sore!