The Oregon Coast -Days 1-3

Over a month ago, we took a fabulous much anticipated trip to the beach. It was rather last minute.
It was rather worth it. We took a whole fabulous week vacation away from home to do it. We had so much fun and made so many memories!

We left Saturday afternoon and drove to Grandma and Grandpa Bishop's house. We got there well past midnight. We were tired! But excited!!
  The next morning, Sunday, we got up and went to 9 am sacrament meeting at a different ward. We went back, ate and re-packed the car and slowly (and hotly!) made our way to our motel in Hermiston, Oregon. We got a free night at the Comfort Inn. They even upgraded our room for free!! We loved that place. Awesome staff. But gross eggs for breakfast. :( And no sausage. LOL

 Monday morning we got up and going by 10 am! It was finally beach day!
      (These are our excited faces, in case you couldn't tell. LOL)

 We drove all day by the Columbia River it seemed. We couldn't check into our rented beach house until 4 pm, so our route there, we stayed near Tierra del Mar, was via my childhood beach. Cannon Beach. We got there around 3:45 and boy were we ready to get out of that car. Reed had been convinced that we would never get there!  
       I was still familiar with the area, so I walked us from the public parking to the public restrooms, yuck, to the public access road that goes onto my beach. Right next to the homes we always stayed in when I was young. I was so so so excited to get to share my beach with my family. Reed's reaction was my absolute favorite. As we walked up over the berm of sand that takes you onto the beach, Reed said "This is AWESOME!". I couldn't wipe the grin off my face. I sat my kids down in the sand soon after and took these pictures.

What else would you expect but for her to be eating sand. It was a wet day and the whole time we were there, Mirren's hair was in tight little curls. LOTS of random peope commented on how cute her curls were.

This makes me heart so happy

So so so happy.

Of course we had to go get our feet wet in the ocean. Our older girls have now been in both the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans! The tide was out so we walked over to Haystack Rock and looked at the tide pools to see if we could find any sea life.

There were lots of crabs hiding in the water under some of the Needles of Haystack Rock

 

Family photos by Haystack rock!!

            

           

We went into town and had some ice cream. We wanted to go and look in some of the shops but most of them closed at 5 and we literally made it into town 5 minutes after 5. :/  Oh well. None of the town was the same from my childhood. Kind of sad. But still nice to see.

We drove to Cape Kiwanda where our house was located, had to stop in Tillamook at Fred Meyer to get food for the next 4 days. We didn't get to our house until 9 I think and by that time we were all exhausted and fell into bed.