oregon coast -- for real

okay, so i want to do a small post about our great vacation to the coast, because it was GREAT!! we left early saturday morning and drove to my parents' house (where my brother trevor & his family live), about 9 hours away. i'll just say this: for a vacation that requires 4 full days in the car, the kids did AWESOME. thanks to some "surprise" activities that i had gotten beforehand to bring out just when they were about to kill each other, and also to a wonderful little invention called a DVD player.

so, we spent the night saturday at my brother's, and it was great -- two other brothers and their families came, too, so it was a mini family reunion, complete with the evening sit-around-and-talk-about-embarrassing-and-funny-memories-and-family-stories gig. so great, and it was fun for our kids to play with their cousins whom they don't get to see very often.

sunday, we drove to some other friends' house (ryan & andrea -- it was SO good to see you guys! and thanks for lunch!), which was on the way to the coast. they live in the sticks, and it is beautiful. you know you're hard-core mountain people when you're raising your own chickens, you spot bears from your yard, you own 20 acres of pristine mountain/forest land, and it's mandatory to own a 4-wheel-drive vehicle in the winter. anyway, it was great to see them, then we headed to lincoln city.

the house we stayed at was so very cool. private access to the beach, which in our area included our own little tidal pools area with hermit crabs and huge starfish and agates and shells and just a lot of cool stuff. there was a hot tub, which we were happy to take advantage of, every day, sometimes several times a day (especially carson & layla).

we went on a whale-watching boat, which caused some seasickness for some but not for most of us. carson and layla LOVED the ride -- it was like an enormous roller coaster, out in the middle of the ocean, and they would shriek with delight at each stomach-dropping plummet from wavetop to bottom. carson even saw a whale, close-up, and the rest of us saw a bunch. paul got drenched about 2 seconds after he ventured to the front of the boat. poor guy. anyway. it was beautiful and chilly and exciting and fun.

we explored newport docks. some people went clamming on the beaches nearby. some went crabbing one day. (carson & paul went with a bunch of the guys, and carson was loving his life. paul told me later that he [carson] saw a boat pulling out of the harbor where they were, and he stood on the edge of the dock and waved and yelled, "hey! we're crabbing!!!!" to which a crusty, sea-hardened replied, snagging the cigarette butt out of his mouth, in a gravelly chainsmoker voice, "us too, kid." carson also wasted no time in lecturing a group of unknown teenagers about the dangers of venturing too close to the edge, or down the ladder heading to the water...lectures he himself had been the recipient of many times.)

while the menfolk were crabbing and clamming, my girls & i had "girl time," where we played games at the house, explored the beach, hot-tubbed, went shopping at the outlet mall, and just had a girly time.

carson got a new baseball hat (an old-school one with netting on the back) with the number "81" on the front. he never took it off--even wanted to sleep in the dang thing. he was known as "ocho-uno" for the rest of the trip.

we spent one day at the oregon coast aquarium in newport, which is very very cool. our favorite (i include addie in this, too, because she was mesmerized) was the "passage of the deep" display, which includes a huge tunnel surrounded by glass (including the ceiling and parts of the floor), where sharks and fish and anchovies and rays and all sorts of fish are swimming around, over, and under you. we stayed there for a long time, just kind of spellbound. awesome. we also got to watch them feed the sea lions and seals, and that was super fun. lots of cool stuff there. neither carson nor layla was really into the "touch and feel" parts, where you could touch live rays or certain fish or sea plants...but on our way out of the aquarium, carson found a little lizard (about 4-5 inches long) and wasted no time in petting it. ???

such a fun vacation. i could sit and watch the ocean waves for a long long time and not feel like i'm wasting life. so beautiful.

oregon coast

i'm a sucker for the sound of waves. i really am. rushing water -- in waterfalls, at the ocean, on a river's edge -- LOVE that. i even have addie's noise machine set to "ocean" because it's so relaxing. (i'll post, on another day, about our oregon coast. one word: fabulous.)

anyone else find it ironic that a sound so beloved by me could cause paul's (and my) hearts to fill with dread? i say "dread," because it's that sound that we heard promptly upon our arrival home from our weeklong oregon coast vacation. porbably because the watery sounds were coming from inside our house. running down the stairs. dripping from the caved-in ceilings and engorged walls in our basement. squashing up with every footstep.

hey, we've been wanting new carpet downstairs anyway. now we'll get new carpets....everywhere. and new walls. and baseboards. and a dining room floor. and ceilings. and furniture. and shelving. amd lights. and bathroom fixtures. and and and...

makes you all want to rush over and buy our house now, doesn't it?

WE SOLD OUR HOUSE!!!!!

i never thought the day would come, but we recently had a VERY interested family come and check it out, they fell in love with it, and we've gone through a whirlwind selling fiasco. it's very sudden, very exciting, and a little unnerving.

april fool.