Labor Day Weekend: Rockaway Beach

Our neighbors have a beach house that they let us stay in for free once a year for watering their yard while they are gone. A pretty good trade off if you ask me. We just happened to pick the nicest weekend at the Oregon Coast all year. We're talking 80 degrees and no wind. People were in binkini's (not me, no worries!)

Because of the excellent weather report, we left on Friday evening after Ben got home from work, so we had 2 entire days to just have vacation. On the way to Rockaway, we stopped at Camp 18, and had an enormous and wonderful dinner. Saturday morning we woke up and the weather report was actually accurate: it was beautiful! We were at the beach by 9, and had SO much fun! Seth and Sam loved playing in the water and ran into and from the waves.

This is the house we stay in. Check out the wallpaper and see if you can guess what era it was decorated in :)

Seth, Sam: how cute are they? So hip!
 (thanks to our friend giving us all her son's cool clothes!)

The next day we headed north to the little coast town of Manzanita and totally fell in love with it! We definately want to rent a beach house there someday (ok, maybe buy and renovate, but that's a lofty dream, we'll start with renting)! It's a very calm and beautiful beach, and the town has great little shops. We continued our tradition of stopping at a candy shop to get the boys a treat. Seth and Sam walked around the store oogling and dreaming stating, "Ah...I need this." Ha ha, they've heard me grocery shopping apparently. They each got "thuckers" and proceded to smear them all over themselves. FYI: sucker stickiness and sand mix real well together.



We tried to teach the boys how to put their arms around each other.
Not the best at it yet.





Sam, Seth

After loving to play in the water on the first morning, the boys decided that the ocean was way too cold and didn't want to go near it again. Bummer. However, we found pools of water next to the jetty where the water had warmed up under the sun. They weren't very deep, so the boys could jump into, run through, and thoroughly soak themselves. They had a blast and I have to say, this is one of my favorite series of pictures I've ever taken! It was hard to post just four because there are so many cute ones:

 On our way back to the car, Ben and I were walking ahead of Seth and Sam. We looked back to find them engrossed in some sort of conversation we couldn't hear. The following pictures I adore: they show how wonderful Seth and Sam's friendship and brotherhood has become.

On the mission they apparently had decided on

Which included pointing and laughing at the grass

We're so thankful for the wonderful vacation we were blessed with! There is something about just being away from our own house that brings us together as a family. We have nothing to do besides just be together, play, talk, laugh, and make memories.

As a side note: Ben and I both did something a little crazy on this trip. First of all, Ben packed our 42" inch flat screen tv, because the tv at the beach house wasn't working. He HAD to watch the Ducks game on a good television. Yikes. But, to counter his craziness, I decided that I didn't want to watch the Ducks game, but would instead drive a good hour and twenty minutes (one way) to the Lincoln City outlets. Was it worth 2 hours and 40 minutes alone in the car through dark and curvy roads for two pairs of short and a shirt? Probably not. But, sometimes you have to be a little crazy on vacation, right?