The Coast on the 4th

Since Matt had the 4th of July off, and it happened to be on a Friday and we got a check in the mail that made it possible;we decided to spend the weekend at the Coast. It was a last minute decision. I called close to 20 Motels, most of them were full, or they were WAY beyond our price range. I actually managed to find one that was a reasonable price; so I jumped on it. We decided to pack up on Thursday and head to the coast right after church. We got to our Motel around 11; which wasn't too bad. For the price we got it for (especially it being 4th of July weekend) it was actually nicer than I expected. There were 2 queen beds in a separate room and then a hide-a-bed, dining area and kitchenette in another room. It was kind of old, and the bed wasn't real comfortable, but I was pretty pleased with what we got for the price. It was a nice enough place to call home for a couple of days. The kids did amazingly well settling down and we all slept pretty good. After having breakfast at a really nice restaurant (where we couldn't even finish all the food we ordered) we stopped at a toy store to get some sand toys and then headed to the beach.

These pictures are backwards. I always forget that you have to put them on your page in the opposite order of how you want them on your page. Well these pictures are of us making sandcastles after getting good and wet; so we are getting good and dirty! Christian wanted to make his castle with no help from anyone or any castle molds. Ruby had help from me. The reason their eyes are squinty is because the wind was blowing pretty hard and they kept getting sand in their faces. Spellcheck is telling me that squinty is not a word, but I'm going to use it anyway!

We were all so dirty after playing in the water and sand that we didn't want to sit in a restaurant; so we ordered pizza and all took showers and then tried to take a nap. That didn't go over too well. It's hard for kids to sleep in that close of quarters; especially when its still daylight outside. I guess we got to rest anyway.

This is the only picture I have of Matt. Isn't that awful! I guess he was taking most of the other pictures.

Christian and Ruby in their soaking wet clothes. I wasn't going to let them get that wet. Just wade around a little, but the water was amazingly warm for the Oregon Coast and they fell in a few times; so I gave up.

Even though Garrison fell a few times and got a little scared; he always got back up and ran with a huge grin on his face to meet the next wave!

Here's Anthony having fun.

Here's me with all the kids except Garrison.


After our showers and resting time we went to a Chinese restaurant. Our kids actually really like Chinese food, mostly the sweet and sour. There were going to be fireworks on the beach about 3 miles from where we were. We were told we could see them from the beach at the town we were at rather than going to the really crowded beach 3 miles away; so we took the sand toys down to the beach again and let the kids play until fireworks time. This time I didn't let them play in the water; so they wouldn't get quite so dirty. There were a lot of people setting off their own fireworks; so we got to see them. A lot of them looked like illegal fireworks. Their were quite a few people on the beach, but not nearly as crowded as the other beach would have been. there were a lot of bonfires on the beach. Some people even shared theirs with us. That was nice. The bad thing about the fires is it was still windy; so if you were downwind from any of them (which we were) it was very smoky. The big fireworks show was disappointing because we could just barely see it. I don't even know if the kids even really noticed it. But they had fun playing in the sand and watching everyone Else's fireworks; so it wasn't a huge disappointment. We had bought some sparklers, but it was just too windy on the beach. we did those a couple of nights later at home.

The kids were so worn out that they went to sleep pretty easy. The next morning we worked on packing up. There was a watermelon that we had cut into the day before and we ate that for breakfast. We had intended to buy breakfast, but it was so late by the time we got out of the Motel it was so late that we just got lunch. Since you have to eat seafood at least once when you go to the coast that's what we had for lunch. We walked around in the shops for a little while. We bought the kids each a silly hat, but sorry, no pictures! There was a carousel in one of the shopping centers; so we all rode on it. It was fun. The kids threw such fits when we had to get off that we figured they were tuckered out and it was time to go home.

Looking back I see that I have rambled on a lot, but now you have all the details of our fun weekend. It was nice to get away and have fun as a family.