Just last Sunday, we came back home our first camping trip this year. We had a wonderful time and the weather was nice – it was sunny and warm during the days and really bitterly cold at night (we had to sleep in our car rather than our tent two nights out of three). But even despite this little inconvenience, we could not have had a better time!

We left on our trip on Thursday afternoon after making a spur-of-the-moment decision. Since we were out at the time (I was shopping for John’s birthday gift), we bought some groceries on the way home and immediately started packing. It felt so good to be this spontaneous, let me tell you! We got ready to go quite fast and left for Deception State Park.

Since the weather was beautiful and we got there before it was dark, we went for a walk on the beach. Oh, it was so fun and I felt so energetic! I could have walked and walked and walked… We had a campfire that night and were visited by several persistent raccoons (it was quite fun to watch them, except for the time when one of them stole a bag of our marshmallows and started to run away with it ).
We woke up in the morning, really cold, and went for a walk on the beach. The tide was out quite a ways, and we could walk down the whole length of the beach. It was so much fun! Since we have come to Deception Pass State Park before, we had so many fond memories to remember as we walked. I have to admit that it feels so good to find that I have been here long enough to create so many precious memories. It makes me feel like I belong here more, that I’m not a total stranger anymore.

After the walk, we packed up our camp and headed towards Keystone- Port Townsend ferry as we wanted to get to the Olympic Peninsula. It’s been our dream for quite a while to drive along the coast of that peninsula and we finally decided not to wait for anything but just go. And so we did!

The Olympic Peninsula is such a beautiful place and so peaceful, too. After you get past Port Angeles, you can drive for miles and miles and not see any towns or even houses. At first, it feels very refreshing to be away from the civilization but after a while, it started to feel not so good. I felt like we were out in the middle of nowhere (which we were, literally) and it was a little bit unsettling.

We spend two nights on the peninsula, at campgrounds right by the beach, sleeping in our car to stay warmer. It worked, too, even though the first night could not be more uncomfortable (we didn’t have time to set up our car for sleeping in a more comfortable way and paid for it with pain in our legs the next morning).

We had quite a few adventures during that trip (all of them ended well, thankfully) and we managed to do some hiking, too. Since we were right around the Olympic National Park, we decided to go ahead and hike to the Marymere Falls. It was not the most difficult hike ever, but the waterfall was so beautiful! Oh, I love waterfalls so much!

The highlight of the trip, I think, was finding the Dungeness National Park and deciding to camp there. It’s a beautiful place and we also learned that the Dungeness Spit is the longest sand spit in the USA. We decided to hike the trail down the beach to the lighthouse (5,5 miles one way). It was very fun and very enjoyable, even though the way back was extremely hard for me (due to pain in my knees and my right hip). I barely made it back, but I still don’t regret going – I wouldn’t miss it for anything!

All in all, it was a very fun trip. Now I can’t wait to go for the next one

~eireen

Over the last month and a half, there has been so much going on in my life that I didn’t really have much time or mind presence to try and keep up with updating my blog. At the same time, I have been trying to start a freelance writing business to see if I could make some extra money that way. This kept me busy enough – I hope that you can forgive me the lack of updates and I promise I’m going to make more effort to write them more regularly. Thank you for your patience with me

~eireen

Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone! Since as the saying goes, everybody’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day!!!

baloon The baloon John got for me as a gift for my name’s day yesterday!

Hope all of you have a great day!

~eireen

Ps. I know I haven’t posted an update in a long time *blush* I’m going to try to make up for it as soon as I can.

It’s amazing how just within a few days since my last post the weather began to change and by now, it’s obvious to me that Spring is here! It has finally come! The days are getting warmer and it’s light out early in the morning again. Wherever you look, you see buds on the trees and daffodils and crocuses beginning to bloom.

Since it’s so nice and warm out, John and I find it really easy to keep up with our walking routine, and we’re having lots of fun taking a long walk every afternoon. And even when it happens to rain, you can still tell that it’s Spring, as it’s warm outside and there is that unmistakable smell of freshness in the air…

Oh, how I love spring! It makes me feel alive after long months of greyness and coldness of winter. I’m so glad Spring is here!

~eireen

John and I on one of our walks

This week doesn’t seem to be too good for me – my flu came back (thankfully, at least it’s not as bad as it was last week),and yesterday night, it hailed a lot and so today, with the temperatures around 30F, it feels like the winter is trying to come back. I hope that this is only very temporary and the spring will be back in a day or two (I really like it when it’s warm and sunny, with daffodils starting to bloom).

I also haven’t posted our Valentine’s Day update yet, since I wasn’t feeling good and was quite busy whenever I felt good enough to do things. So, here goes a small Valentine’s Day update (very belated).

It was our first Valentine’s Day as a married couple and so we were very excited about it. Luckily, it was on a Saturday which was very great, as it meant that John didn’t have to go to work and we could just take our time, having the whole day ahead of us. We got up fairly early and decided to exchange our little Valentine’s Day gifts before we went out. It turned out to be really funny, as we both got a card and a heart-shapped chocolate box for each other.  We spend a while reading the cards and hugging and kissing… there is truly no better feeling in the world than loving someone and knowing that you’re loved back!

We spent the day in Lynwood. We went to the theatre and saw a movie – of course, we did not realize that everybody else would want to see that very same movie at 7 p.m. and so we ended up sitting in the fourth row as the theatre was packed by the time we got there! (Actually, despite my doubts, the seats turned out to be quite okay, and we could watch the movie without problems).

We also got to go out for a nice dinner and had a lot of fun visiting. Luckily, the restaurant that we chose, even thought it was full, wasn’t too noisy and we had a private booth, which made it even better.

All in all, the day was great and we had a lot of fun together. Unfortunately, by the time we got home, I was so wiped out that I wanted to go to bed, even though we planned to dance together for a while.  I was quite disappointed about not being able to do it, but John said that it was okay. He’s so sweet!

But, as it turns out, the dancing was not forgotten altogether. A couple days ago, I was doing some chores and John was working on stuff as well, when he suddenly said that we didn’t dance and we should do it right then. Oh, it was so much fun! We danced and danced for the longest time, and we laughed and we cried feeling so utterly happy that it almost felt like we were going to burst from all the love! it was just so amazing!

So, in this way, we still got to do our dancing, and even though we did it on a different day than Valentine’s Day, I don’t think it made it any less special. If anything, we got one extra special moment that we didn’t know was coming…

Happy and very much in love

~eireen

Hello,

I do know that I’m running really late on the Valentine’s Day post, and I feel really bad about it, but I got a stomach flu and it made me unable to do much more than sleep and feel not so great. As it is, I still have a hard time trying to type and read words on the screen, so I can’t really write a longer post, but as soon as I’m better, I promise the Valentine’s Day update.

Thank you for your patience!

~eireen

Last Saturday, when I was grocery shopping, I noticed something on one of the shelves that I didn’t expect to see. Nutella. Oh, that was a surprise!!! For those of you who don’t know, Nutella is a hazelnut bread spread with milk and cocoa. Very delicious! But to me, it’s something more than that. It’s a memory of childhood.

It was really fun to make a sandwich with Nutella and instantly, I remembered how my brother and I used to make our sandwiches when we were little, trying to put as much Nutella on them as we could only get away with. Or, how we’d come into the kitchen every now and then and stick our fingers in the jar when no one was looking, so we could lick Nutella off of them. Or we’d grab a spoon, get as much Nutella as we could fit onto it without it falling off of it, and then eat it in our rooms. I remember how excited we were when our mom would buy whipped cream (the spray kind) and we would get to put it on top of our Nutella sandwich. That was such a treat! Sometimes, our parents would get bread at the bakery not too far from our house, and so, it would be still very hot when we sliced it up and watched butter and Nutella melt… Yummy! Not to mention all the fights we had when the jar was empty and each of us would want to be the one to scrape out whatever we still could get from that jar…

So many memories… and all because of a familiar taste. I miss those days sometimes…

~eireen

Nine months passed almost like a day… well, maybe a month. But it doesn’t feel like we’ve been married for 277 days! Yet, that’s what my calendar says

We went to Haggen to celebrate our anniversary with a heart-shaped cheescake, called ‘cheescake for two’ and it was just the right size for us to be able to eat it in one sitting

Here’s a picture of the cheescake before we dug in:)

And here’s a picture of us

Time passes by, life goes on, everything’s changing but one thing…

We’re still so in love and happy to be married!

~eireen

Tomorrow is the last day of January and it seems like the whole month just breezed by. Lots of strange things have been happening lately and I’ve been just feeling tired. Very tired.

The sky has been cloudy most of the time and the occasional rays of sun are not enough to sustain my energy levels. I can’t wait until the days are warm and sunny and for the spring to finally come. I had enough dark and cold and cloudy already; I’m so ready for a change.

I’ve always been quite sensitive to the weather changes and I think partially this is what makes me feel so tired and forgetful and unable to focus very well lately. Sometimes it’s scary, sometimes it’s funny – like the time when I forgot to take my keys out of the door lock and they stayed there for the whole night and half of the day! Luckily no one took them. If it was one time accident, it would be okay – but it just keeps on happening over and over again and it’s getting a little tiring

Like this was not enough, yesterday I kept on having little accidents over and over again – I hit my leg against the coffee table and bruised it quite bad, then I hurt my elbow and then, a muffin pan fell on my foot! What a day!

And I still didn’t manage to catch up on all of my New Year’s resolutions and lost my routines that looked so promising and were beginning to work… I hope to start them all over in February. *keeps her fingers crossed*

Sun! Oh, I want sun!

~eireen

It feels like it was just a couple days ago that we were at the New Year’s Eve party and today, when I look at the calendar, I see that it’s already January 20th! Once again, I ask myself how it is possible that so much time has gone by and I hardly noticed!

As for this New Year, it hasn’t really been all that different from the old one. I’ve had days where I felt invigorated and ready to do things, then some days where all I felt like doing was wrapping up in a blanket, drinking hot tea and staying home.

Though, I have to say that I managed to start working towards some of my New Year’s resolutions (like working on my book to try and get it in shape so it could be published – hopefully, later this year). However, I also managed to fail on keeping up with some other ones (due to lots of strange pain in my bones, exercising kind of did not work out – I’m going to try to get back to it as soon as I can, though).

The weather that we had up until last Sunday was mostly rain and grey, overcast sky. But the last few days, it’s been sunny and even though it’s still cold and frosty, I’m hoping that the sun will stay with us for good. It would be so great if it stayed so nice all the way until spring! *hopeful*

We also had to take down our Christmas tree, as it started to dry. I was sad to see it go, since I really liked it and got used to it lighting up our living room (which is pitch dark at night these days). I really can’t wait until the next Christmas!

So, I think that’s all of the update for today

~eireen