Last night Matthew and I saw that the forecast for the coast was predicting sunny weather with temps in the 70's, which seems to never happen on our wet and windy beaches. We decided that we should make a trip to the coast to take advantage of the beautiful weather, and got everything packed up for this morning.
We headed to a nearby beach called Manhattan beach that an old friend had shown us a couple years ago. Its such a great little beach, just outside Tillamook and hardly ever crowded. In fact, today we had the whole place to ourselves! There were no other cars in the parking lot, and the only people we saw were ones walking the tide line. It was so nice and quiet!
The kids and Matthew ventured down to the water, I stayed back because I didn't want to get my bum toe wet. They had so much fun waiting for the waves to come and soak them:
They had so much joy in their faces, it touches a special place in my heart to see them all so happy! After a while they came back to our blanket and Matthew and I relaxed while the kids ran around searching for treasures and building sand castles. Rowan headed down to get some wet sand in her bucket, and took a moment to take in the greatness of the ocean:
She headed back to her abandoned bucket, and filled it with the best sand castle making sand that she could find:
While she and I worked on decorating her sand castle (which turned out to be a sand mound after a structural collapse), Killian found a 2x4 and some driftwood and started his own construction project:
(See - I wasn't lying about how empty the beach was...not a soul in sight!)
I love this picture of him, he is growing up so fast!
After a snack the kids were recharged, and headed out in search of dinosaur fossils:
Rowan found one! She said she thought this was the rib bone of a Triceratops, and she was surprised that no Paleontologists had found it before her. My little dino obsessed girl was SO thrilled with her find!
After a few hours at the beach, we headed into town to pick up sandwich fixings and had a nice lunch on the beach. It was getting late, so we decided to head home but couldn't leave the coast without making a stop at the Tillamook Cheese Factory! It was SO crowded that we didn't look around at anything, which was fine because we have been there so many times before. We got straight into the ice cream line, and then headed right outside once we got our order. The kids look forward to this stop every time we head to this part of the coast, and we are happy to stop and get them a treat. Rowan was cracking me up, she just could not stay ahead of the dribbles of ice cream streaming down her cone, but she gave it her best shot...getting very messy in the process:
The kids and I:
We had such a great time at the beach. I feel like we are so lucky to live just an hour and a half from the coast, especially on the rare days when its sunny and warm instead of windy and cold. We are hoping to make a couple more day trips and stay overnight at least once this summer...hopefully the weather will be just as beautiful then as it was today!
We headed to a nearby beach called Manhattan beach that an old friend had shown us a couple years ago. Its such a great little beach, just outside Tillamook and hardly ever crowded. In fact, today we had the whole place to ourselves! There were no other cars in the parking lot, and the only people we saw were ones walking the tide line. It was so nice and quiet!
The kids and Matthew ventured down to the water, I stayed back because I didn't want to get my bum toe wet. They had so much fun waiting for the waves to come and soak them:
They had so much joy in their faces, it touches a special place in my heart to see them all so happy! After a while they came back to our blanket and Matthew and I relaxed while the kids ran around searching for treasures and building sand castles. Rowan headed down to get some wet sand in her bucket, and took a moment to take in the greatness of the ocean:
She headed back to her abandoned bucket, and filled it with the best sand castle making sand that she could find:
While she and I worked on decorating her sand castle (which turned out to be a sand mound after a structural collapse), Killian found a 2x4 and some driftwood and started his own construction project:
(See - I wasn't lying about how empty the beach was...not a soul in sight!)
I love this picture of him, he is growing up so fast!
After a snack the kids were recharged, and headed out in search of dinosaur fossils:
Rowan found one! She said she thought this was the rib bone of a Triceratops, and she was surprised that no Paleontologists had found it before her. My little dino obsessed girl was SO thrilled with her find!
After a few hours at the beach, we headed into town to pick up sandwich fixings and had a nice lunch on the beach. It was getting late, so we decided to head home but couldn't leave the coast without making a stop at the Tillamook Cheese Factory! It was SO crowded that we didn't look around at anything, which was fine because we have been there so many times before. We got straight into the ice cream line, and then headed right outside once we got our order. The kids look forward to this stop every time we head to this part of the coast, and we are happy to stop and get them a treat. Rowan was cracking me up, she just could not stay ahead of the dribbles of ice cream streaming down her cone, but she gave it her best shot...getting very messy in the process:
The kids and I:
We had such a great time at the beach. I feel like we are so lucky to live just an hour and a half from the coast, especially on the rare days when its sunny and warm instead of windy and cold. We are hoping to make a couple more day trips and stay overnight at least once this summer...hopefully the weather will be just as beautiful then as it was today!