Holidays

2020

Posted by Lisa Eirene

The start of a new decade. As I look back, I think of all of the stuff I did and all the things I accomplished and think “wow.” It was a lot!

I started this blog. I made a lot of friends online through blogging and Twitter. I am grateful for that. It was nice to have a “community.” I maintained my weight loss of 110 pounds for over 10 years.

I was on the cover of a magazine! And on the local news. My 15 minutes of fame. LOL

Michael and I did a TON of traveling! Something I definitely miss. Having kids means that changes, for sure. We still travel but it looks differently. But pre-Logan, we went to Texas a few times (Austin was great!), Vegas a few times, Tucson twice, California, Hawaii twice…so many fun trips.

We did a lot of activities together, too. I ran a bunch of races–half a dozen 5ks, a 10k, Hood To Coast. We biked a lot of events together (Reach the Beach and the Portland Century). You can read about the different events here.

We got a dog! Welcome to the family, Bella! Bella has been a gift to our family. I can’t imagine our life without her. She’s the best dog ever. She’s the best cuddler. 😀 She’s just so happy and sweet.

We got engaged and married. And went to Maui for our honeymoon. That was such a magical time!

I got pregnant and we had Logan:

It’s crazy how different our life is after having a baby. It really does change everything. But like with Bella, I can’t imagine NOT having Logan in our life. Both are a blessing.

Logan was a fairly easy baby with a sweet disposition and a goofy laugh. He loved everything and everyone and was curious and energetic. He grew into a curious and energetic toddler. And now, in 2020 he’s going to turn 4 years old (crazy!) and he’s smart and stubborn and inquisitive and opinionated.

In sad news, I said goodbye to my beloved kitty of 15 years. It was one of the hardest, saddest things I’ve ever done and the grief was real. I cried for months. It took almost a year and a half before I was able to even think about another cat.

In 2018 we welcomed Stevie to our family:

Stevie fit right into our family immediately like he always belonged there. He loves everyone and particularly loves cuddling with Bella! It’s so cute. 🙂

In 2019, Logan and I both had surgery. I had sinus surgery (which has helped me a lot!) and Logan got tubes put in his ears. While both were good things, it added to the stress of 2019 in particular. Healing in general is difficult.

We bought a new house in 2019. Packed up our old house, finished the remodeling projects, moved into our new house, put our house on the market….

And after a VERY stressful summer, our old house SOLD! What a relief! A huge weight off our shoulders. We could finally relax and enjoy our new house and get settled without worrying about the old house selling.

As I sit down and think about the last decade of my life I think “pheww! that was a lot of stuff!” And it was, a lot of big life stuff. Big “adult” stuff. To say that it’s been a lot would be an understatement.

When I think about the new year and what I want to accomplish, my goals are simple. Yes, I am still trying to lose weight. I still have 20 or so pounds to lose. I’ve struggled with my depression and anxiety and medication management. I have been gaining and losing the same 10 pounds since I had Logan. It’s frustrating. So I am hoping that 2020 is the year I end that cycle.

I’d also like to work on being more kind to myself. I often feel like a failure when I don’t reach my goals in a specific time frame, even if they aren’t realistic. Patience is not my forte.

I’d also like to build more me time and more family time/downtime into our schedule. We tend to be very booked and it can get stressful and overwhelming. I miss doing fun stuff on the weekends and going out of town for little getaways. I’d like to do that more.

QUESTION: What were the big highlights of your decade? Any New Year’s Resolutions?

December Keto

Posted by Lisa Eirene

I got a new protein powder, that actually tastes really good! I got the Orgain Keto protein powder. It has collagen, MCT oil in it and no net carbs. I mix it up in a blender with water and some frozen blueberries. One scoop is 90 calories.

Speaking of MCT Oil…On days I don’t do protein shakes (you don’t want TOO much MCT oil in one day or your tummy will not be happy!) I put one scoop in my coffee. I switched to the powdered MCT Oil because the oil was just kinda gross. It didn’t mix well, it made my throat itchy and I didn’t like the texture. But the powder mixes really well in coffee. This is the brand I use: MCT Oil Powder.

White Lazy Lasagna – Delicious! Would definitely make it again. It falls apart when you dish it up, hence, no picture. 🙂 The only thing we’d change next time would be to do half ground turkey and half italian sausage. Michael also added red pepper flakes and Italian Seasoning, which was a good call. (I also read the recipe wrong and only used 1/2 of the jar of the alfredo sauce. But honestly, I think it was better with less liquid, so FYI.)

I kinda went off the planned schedule for December. Except for the week of Christmas when I fell off the wagon (boo!) I was mostly on the diet for the month of December but we basically did our usually rotation of easy keto dinners. There was just a lot going on with the holidays and it was harder than we thought to try new recipes. Which was fine.

As far as progress, the Christmas week undid some of my progress, which is a bummer. Not that I went crazy. I was mostly on plan except for dessert on Christmas Eve (we got a lot of Christmas cookies that week from our new neighbors and they were really hard for me to resist!) and then Christmas Day and the day after Christmas I just ate whatever I wanted. I haven’t weighed myself. I just wanted to wait to get back to my normal eating habits before getting too upset with whatever I saw on the scale (i.e. Christmas Cookie Damage).

For Christmas, Michael usually gives me a big bag of chocolate M&Ms in my stocking. This year he got me some fancy new Keto chocolates from Costco and some assorted almonds. So that’s nice! My brother also got me a package of ChocZero Keto Bark !

My goal was to lose some weight before our trip to Hawaii in January. I don’t think I’m going to quite make that goal but I am going to keep trying!