Decking the Halls: Tree Ornaments

It's late...but Happy Thanksgiving, all!

I am continuously thankful for all 3 of you that continue to read my posts.
But really, I hope that everyone had a very Happy Thanksgiving and that you are blessed with much to be thankful for.

In our house, the turkey-day leftovers are still quite abundant - especially in the potato realm. Why are there SO many potatoes left?! I am actually not a huge potato fan - especially in the mashed form. I am a sucker for a potato chip or a potato french fry... but not so much in mashed form. I have also learned that I am not a fan of the sweet potato (or yam). I just completed my first Whole 30 (I know you're SUPER bummed I didn't blog all about that!) and attempted to work sweet potatoes into my eating habits with no luck. Maybe if I had been allowed to cover them in marshmallows I would have been more inclined, but no dice.

Look at all those leftovers!!

Hmm.. weird potato tangent. Anyway... my point is that we are still working on eating up our leftovers from Thanksgiving as we transition into Christmas season - or Advent.  (And, sadly, we're still finishing up Halloween candy! I think these holidays are too close together!)


Yesterday, as many did, we jumped in our truck to brave the cold Oregon weather to go get our Christmas tree. The spouse and I still have many friends and family in California that had a 70+ degree Thanksgiving... not us. I think it is a brisk 30 degrees out as I am typing & we even had a few flurries yesterday as we were tree-hunting. True winter weather. But we couldn't wait another until another day to get our tree.

As I started to decorate our tree, I started looking through all our ornaments and trying to remember where we had found each ornament, or who had given it to us. Too many times I have skipped over all of the memories & sentiments of our ornament collection - but now my son is starting to understand more about Christmas and the traditions that are such a big part of the meaning of this season, I find myself dwelling over each ornament and its story.

A few to share.

This is the Christmas Pickle. Does your family have a Christmas Pickle? As the history goes, an ornament in the shape of a pickle (so it's not just a clever name) is hidden on the tree and the finder of the pickle is said to be rewarded with a prosperous year. Lucky for me, since I am the one who places the pickle on the tree, I am usually the first to find it... one prosperous year after another.

This little frame was the ornament I bought the first Christmas after we got married. It doesn't need much explanation - it's one of my favorite pictures from our big day. Bonus - the spouse looks like a Beatle.
(Apologies for it being sort of fuzzy...)

The soccer-playing penguin. This ornament is the Spouse's. I decided to include it for 3 reasons: 1. his mom gave it to him when he was in college, 2. it has survived this long and 3. I like this one better than the Ninja Turtle ornament, which was the other option.

I bought this Sparkle Acorn last year for our first Christmas in Portland. Simple and sparkly - just like me.

Finally, this ornament was given to us by my mother-in-law last year. She always gets us these cute personalized ornaments every year.  This one is one of my favorites.

What are your favorite ornaments? And what fun stories do they tell?

I'm excited to keep growing our collection with new ornaments and new memories. I know, I sound like a silly Hallmark commercial, but it's true.

Stay tuned for my next posts: Why Everything Must Sparkle and How Many Lights Can We Possibly Put Up?


XOXO
Amy

Labor Day Camping - Trout Creek

For Labor Day in Portland, we did what a vast number of Pacific North-Westerners do and went camping. Thanks to a friendly post over at Good Stuff NW we decided to try out Trout Creek in the Willamette National Forest. 

We were very pleased with our choice. We had a nice big site with easy creek access, close to the bathrooms & close to the water pumps.

Trout Creek campground is located about 20 miles east of Sweet Home - far enough away from civilization that you feel like you're off the grid (umm.. no cell reception!) but close enough to a town that when you run out of beer and milk you can run to Safeway and back within an hour or so.

Everyone had a great time. Drew enjoyed mucking about in the sand and dirt, Zoey enjoyed jumping around in the creek (also mucking about in the sand and dirt), Mom & Dad enjoyed stolen moments of peace and quiet around the campfire at night. Our good friend, Kaija & her frenchie, Dash, joined in the festivities as well. 

Below are just a spattering of pictures from our weekend. 

We highly recommend Trout Creek for anyone looking for a good family camp ground in the PDX area. However, I am keeping our site number top secret so it doesn't all-of-a-sudden become the most popular. Sorry, guys... have to protect treasures!  

Drew.. dressed by his dad.. checking out the creek.

Zoey - swimming like a champ!

Drew and Zo

Drew in the creek

Dash!

Drew & Dad 

Not sure if you can see Drew in this picture since he is wearing 2 different camo
prints - he blends in pretty well. 

More cute Drew & Dad. Dad was explaining that Drew needed to
take the rocks slow & carefully since they can be super slippery. Drew did pretty well!

Kaija & Dashy

Someone came before us & put up these cool cairns.
I'm hoping they really weren't using them to mark their path since Drew
immediately knocked them down. 

My camp banner!

Open-Flame Cooking Champ: Dad!

Kaija & Drew posing for Instagram selfies - they turned out really cute

My selfie - just to prove I was there

Drew's version of a silly face
(we have some work to do on this!)

Being silly...

Zo & Dashy had a great time playing

XOXO

Portland - We have arrived! Watch out!

Greetings from Northeast Portland!

We finally arrived in our new city last Friday and here I am, over a week later, finally getting some updates! Holy Cats, I'm slow! 

In my defense, it's been a bit hectic. You know.. moving, and all. 

We pulled into town at a bit before 5pm on a Friday night - honestly, not the best time to be trying to navigate through the city for the first time but I did ok. Only 3-4 wrong turns. 

We quickly met with our landlady for our keys and then unpacked our car/truck and let the pets get acclimated. I have to say, the cats & dog did great on our 2-day trek north. I figured Zoey, our golden retriever would do fine since she's been in the car a bunch and she would be with Mark, whom she adores. I was not-so-convinced about our cats - Freddie & Foxy. They don't care for traveling. 

On day one, Freddie did meow and cry from our house in Orange County until we came down off the Grapevine. (For those of you not sure how long that is... roughly 2 hours) Then she mellowed out. The rest of the trip was fine... except once when I slammed on the breaks to avoid the back end of a Subaru. They were not thrilled about that. 

Our POD showed up on Saturday morning & we spent the entire day unloading it. It was a large project but it was great to get it all finished. We felt like champs. 

*side bar comment*

If you ever plan on moving, I highly recommend using a POD. The whole process was great & easy and I can't say enough about the convenience or ease of the whole thing. Kudos, PODS - nice work!

So, 4 billion boxes, 2 huge trips to Target, 1 trip to Ikea and many beers later... here we are. So far, we LOVE Portland. Ironically, the day we unloaded our POD it had to have been in the high-80s if not low-90s. It was hot. And ever since, it's been raining. Still, it's been great. 

Drew and my mom made the trek up from NorCal the middle of last week & Drew has adjusted seamlessly. At one point, he did try to convince me that his tooth brush had fallen down in the drain, but I assured him that happened at our old house. (sorry, new owners... forgot to mention there is a toddler tooth brush in the drain. oops!) But at least Drew is considering this house home now. 

Now, a few pics.

Our front door. We live in a duplex & we have the back unit which is 2-floors (plus a basement - score!)
I love the color scheme of our house - grey & salmon. Purrr.
BTW, those are Drew's blue curtains - not a classy tarp over the windows. His Robot room required blue curtains.
Only now do I see the striking closeness of the color to a tarp. Hmm...

The view from our sidewalk. Little stairway up to our walkway. 

This is the front of our house. That is our garage door on the right (and my car).
The window above belongs to our neighbor, as does the left side of the driveway.
My car fits in pretty well around these parts. 

A happy dog.. and some toes that need a pedicure. 

 Once our house is a bit more put-together, I will post more pictures. I am sure no one wants to look at a bunch of pictures of rooms with boxes in them... so I'll hold off until we are a bit further on our unpacking.


xoxo

Cousins

 One of the hardest things about our move to Portland is that we are moving away from family. Much of my husband's family lives within an hour of us so we see them fairly often. 

My family is a bit more spread out but we still manage to see each other at least a few times a year.  I know that we will still see our families - and with the invention of Skype, even when we can't see them in person, we can see them on the screen. But still... I can't help but struggle with leaving them. 

I grew up in Northern California & my mom's family was mostly on the Central Coast so we didn't see them more than 2-3 times a year while grew up - however, my cousins and I were very close then and continue to be so now. So I know that it can be done - my kids and their cousins can still be super close  even if they don't see each other as much as we do now. I believe it!

So.. I thought I'd share some pictures of Drew and his cousins. 

(Some pictures more recent than others)

I couldn't find a picture of Drew and Dakota... so we get Dakota by herself...
Didn't want to leave her out!

Pretty fun, right?!

I love cousins - they're like siblings without the fighting. My cousins are the best, my husband's cousins are the best... and my son's cousins are the best. 

We love you & will miss you...

but we'll see you all soon!

xoxo

Moving on up... geographically speaking

Well, I know it's been a while since I posted last BUT I have a good reason - we've been super busy.

To bring everyone up to speed on the last few months... we have decided to sell our house & move to Portland!

This has not been a quick decision - it's something that we have been discussing and re-discussing for at least 2 years. After a few long talks & a quick visit in December we decided to go for it. We worked like crazy on our house every weekend since Christmas trying to get it looking as good as possible, de-cluttering, cleaning, etc. Finally, on April 17th, we put our house on the market.... and sold it within five days. Holy Cats!

I will try to post more about our move & all the fun that comes along with that over the next few weeks. Thanks for bearing with us over the last few months - I am so happy to be able to talk about all of this now! No more hush-hush!

Anyway - so excited to bring you along on this crazy adventure of ours.
The Lepper Colony heads North!

Cheers!

photo credit: sweet southern nights

Drew's Sports Class: Soccer

Mark and I have Drew enrolled in a multi-sport class; 2 weeks of soccer, 2 weeks of t-ball & 2 weeks of basketball. Mark plays adult-league soccer twice a week plus we watch it on TV frequently so I thought for sure Drew would be super into playing. Especially if his dad played with him.

I was surprised to see his reaction to his first class - he wanted nothing to do with it. I was stunned. Here is a kid that runs out in the backyard as often as possible to kick around a soccer ball.... but then when it was an official class with other kids, he wanted no part of it. Say what?!

After much coaxing (and threats.. promises.. etc) he finally kicked the ball around and made it into the goal. If I can brag for a second (and since this is MY blog, I can), Drew is already very talented at soccer. He can dribble, kick, make it in the goal - he's a natural. (Gets it from his dad... not me.)

Stretching before playing

Not interested...

Needing a little assistance from Dad

Hmm... not quite getting the "no hands" rule. 

Putting the ball down in front of the goal

Kicking it in the net

Surveying the result

Wait.. let's try this again...

Dribbling..and..

GOAL!!!!

Victory lap

Next week we start t-ball. Mark and I already agree that we're not sure Drew with a bat is a good idea.

Thanks for stopping by!