McCall Weekend

My friend Kristin organized a fun little getaway this past weekend. Her husband plays ice hockey so when she found out he was having a tournament in McCall, she invited us and one other couple to join them and go in together on a little cabin. We only stayed 2 nights, but it was a blast. Lots of snow with blue skies, yummy food, hot tubs, hot cocoa, late nights, fun games, good company, good laughs & beautiful scenery...

Brigham's Ice Hockey Game Friday night



Cameron & Hollie Kuehne



Eric entertaining us with an impressive showing in our Minute to Win It challenge. This game is called "Junk in the Trunk", and the goal is to "shake" 8 ping pong balls out of that box strapped to your back/bum in 60 seconds.

Hollie showing us how it's done with "Stack Attack". (She had to stack and take down 36 cups in 1 min)



On Saturday all of us kind of did our own thing during the day b/c Brigham had a couple of hockey games, Eric and I were scoping out cabins for our family reunion this summer and Hollie & Cameron went snowboarding.



Lovely day in McCall...

I picture Santa's elves living in a place like this :)

So much snow, the roof of this van was caving in

Oh yum. Can't go to McCall without getting one of these from the Pancake House. And only $3! That thing fed 4 of us.

E-Mealz

Pssst...I want to let you in on a cool little secret.

First, a little background. One day I told Eric I wanted to start eating healthier...not a new year's resolution, not a diet, just healthier. Eric quickly agreed and suggested a program he heard Dave Ramsey recommend over the radio, E-mealz. I later learned that he had been wanting to propose this idea to me for a while, not for health reasons, but for budget reasons. He was just hesitant to mention it because he knew it meant I would be doing all of the work.

Admittedly, it's not the health makeover I was looking for, but it is a clever little meal program, and they have several different meal plan options for various family sizes and needs. See image below.

Eric and I are doing the low-fat Wal-Mart meal plan for 2, and so far we've been really happy with it. It does cost $5/mo, but if it does as it claims, it should still save us a decent chunk of money. It's tough to judge this early, but it seems promising. If anything, we'll just do it for a few months and rotate through the menus that we collect.

The meals are fast and easy to make. I enjoy cooking, but don't do it much. There was always an excuse - working late, missing ingredients, picky eater husband, etc. The great thing about this program is having your whole week laid out for you. In fact, the grocery list even lists the items with prices and organized by grocery sections! Genius. See samples below.

Nice, right? Eric, of course, loves it because suddenly I'm cooking dinner for him every night. We've tried to be brave too and at least try every meal whether it sounds good or not, and we really haven't disliked a meal yet. In fact, neither of us thought we liked salmon, but one of our favorite recipes was a zucchini salmon bake (revised a little bit with the help of martha stewart).

It's a fun little challenge for Eric and I to split up the grocery list and try and track down items we've never had or even heard of before - couscous, liquid smoke, bok choy, various obscure seasonings, etc.

Not sure how long we will keep it up, but so far, so good.