My husband pulled off an epic surprise Christmas present to me this year: a 2 night getaway to a mountain cabin near Mt. hood.  He even arranged for my mom and her twin to come up from Texas and take care of the boys while we were gone. The “cabin” (which I totally imagined a rustic bare minimum camp cabin when he revealed the surprise lol) was actually a really nice modern mountain retreat “small house” through air bnb. My first thought when arriving was, “Umm…. I’m definitely coming back!” It was on a secluded lot that backed up to a beautiful creek, and was equipped with a hot tub under the stars, and wait for it… a gorgeous gas fire place next to the bed. It was the perfect size and very well thought out.  It stormed the first afternoon we arrived so we were lazy and rested (yay quiet adult time with no kids!!), played scrabble for the first time in decades, watched a movie and drove like 4 min to a local pizza joint for dinner. The next day we had a slow morning and cooked brunch before embarking on one of our favorite hikes along the Salmon River (which was only a few miles from our cabin!), and then raced up to Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood just as the sun was setting to snap a few remote shutter pics of us in the snow. It was the coldest I’ve been in years.  Honestly, the bones in my hands felt like minor hypothermia. And we were only in the “snowy elements” for a few minutes lol. We definitely earned the BEST hot chocolate Oregon has to offer while warming up next to a big fire at Timberline Lodge.    Our final morning, we hit up Dragonfly Cafe, a local diner like brunch place before heading back home.  You know it’s a good place when they’ve got Law & Order re-runs playing for the entire restaurant to view.

I just can’t get over that we can drive an hour East to play in the snow and less than 2 hours West to play at the beach.  There’s an overwhelming amount of things to do in Oregon and we’ve barely scratched the surface (depending on who you ask- hah)!

Each morning I did my daily yoga stretches in the little bonus room of the cabin, with windows cut out like picture frames, framing the forest that was just outside our door, and a skylight above. It felt like I was stretching amongst the trees, but was in a warm room :).  On the way home, we also stopped at the Tualatin National Wildlife Refuge  to pick up a couple stocking stuffers for Brady from their little store and got to view some of the waterfowl from the telescope setup inside.

I’m so grateful for the adult time away and can’t wait to return to the modern mountain retreat again soon. 🙂