The first morning, the kids woke me up yelling "It snowed, it snowed!" It wasn't too hard to believe because it had snowed back home before we left...hardly spring-like weather, but fun none the less. This is the view out our window.
Here is a close-up on the rock out crops in the bay.
The older kids kept busy inside making sand castles out of craft foam while Hayden enjoyed climbing the stairs and exploring the loft.
Once the weather cleared, we put on our warm coats and played on the beach...until the hail started up.
The kids (and Dan) all had fun playing and making forts in the driftwood. There were a lot of logs washed up on shore, probably due to the high winds we had this winter.
Here is a view facing north towards the pier and Mo's restaurant, which was only about 500 yards from our condo. On the other side of the pier is the ocean.
One day, while the sky looked "clear" we decided to go on a family walk to see the ocean.
Just across the bay, before we got to the pier, we saw about a hundred harbor seals "sunning" themselves. Good luck finding the sun!!! You can see two seals in the water swimming. Sorry it's hard to see, but this is the best my camera can zoom.
This was taken under the pier. I just love how weathered and "beachy" it looks.
Here is Dan with Zander on his back seeing how close they could get to the water before they would have to run out of it's way. (Notice the blue sky!)
On our walk we saw more snow in the foothills...a very rare site at the beach. This was taken near the Inn at Spanish Head. At this point the kids walked back with Dan and I continued on to that rock formation you see in the distance. I wanted to shoot some photos, but sadly my camera setting had gotten bumped and they were all over exposed. Not being able to preview my photos (since my camera broke) has really been a problem for me!
This was really the only shot that turned out. On my walk back, it started to rain, then hail. Being a true Oregonian, I had no hood and no umbrella, so I just accepted the fact that I was gonna get wet. It was actually quite a nice, but wet walk back.
When I got back, everyone came out to see me. I think they were excited to see me cause they knew I would soon be making them some hot cocoa!
Here is another tree that washed up on shore.
Thought this was cute of Natalie.
On the last morning, I woke up and noticed a seal had swam over to our side of the bay and was stretched out. It would sit up and then lay back down and didn't seem to mind it when people were walking by. After breakfast we all went down to see the seal up close. The kids were very good to keep a safe distance and were careful not to make any noise. At this point I had run out of pictures in my camera and without my display working, I was faced with a tough decision...blindly delete one photo so we could photograph the seal, or just leave it alone and not take a picture. The kids voted to take a picture with the seal, so I crossed my fingers and deleted one photo. As it turns out the photo I deleted was of the bon-fire from the night before where the kids were roasting marshmallows. It was taken just as the sun was setting and would have been cute, but I think this is cool too.Before we left to go home, we learned that the seal was in fact sick. Apparently the colony that we saw on our walk was experiencing some kind of sickness from something in the water (eeek). I kind of thought this was the case because any other time I have come close to a seal (usually while I'm paddling in a kayak), they keep their distance. When we were able to walk right past it and it didn't flop back in the water, I figured something wasn't quite right.
Well, we had a great trip. It was relaxing and very enjoyable to spend quality time with the kids.
