Day 1 on the Oregon Coast

We arrived in Lincoln City, Oregon last night so today was our first official day of vacation.  Can I just say that I LOVE the ocean?  For those of you who have never been to the great Northwest I need to explain that this is not your average trip to the beach.  Notice that the locals do not call it the beach, they call it the coast.  That is because there are pine trees instead of palm trees, and the average summer temperature is around 65 degrees.  It is the beach with coats.  It is gorgeous.  The sound of the waves, the wet, salty ocean air, the fine sand under feet, the endless view of sparkling waves and the uninterrupted horizon-it all feeds my soul.  We are here with all of David's six siblings with their families and David's parents which comes to 22 people.   We are staying at the best beach house.  You can see it online here.  Some of us went to church this morning.  It was an amazing meeting-they changed both the RS pres. and the YW pres.  the bishopric came in to the end of RS and set apart the whole presidency.  It was a very spiritual meeting, and I felt privileged to be a part of it.  I also ran into a sister from my home ward.  Isn't that funny?  Later we went on a quest.  It is supposed to be like a scavenger hunt for letters and the clue at the end takes you to a box that has a sign in book and a stamp for your quest book.  Well, the hike was beautiful through some forested wetlands.  Here we are getting ready to begin.

  We searched and searched for the letters.  Here is Aunt Teresa leading the hunt. 

And the rest of us searching for letters.

Unfortunately most of the letters and the box at the end were no longer there. 

Cousin Hailey standing under the "ghost trees"

  We did get to take a great hike.  At the end Anna said, "maybe there never was a box and a stamp and the people who wrote the book just made it up so we would take this fun hike." This is me, Anna, Hailey, and David at the end of our hunt.

After dinner we had a chocolate fountain for dessert, thanks to Mike and Jen, that was delicious and way fun.  This is the way a chocolate fountain should be used, where you can get down and dirty (not like a wedding reception where you just succeed in dripping chocolate down the front of you). This is Holly holding the newest family member-Jillian while the rest of us stuff ourselves silly at the chocolate fountain :)

 

We finished up the evening with a walk on the beach.  This is cousins Connor, Hailey and Whitney with Anna waiting to go down the stairs to the beach.

 David with nephew Caden.

I don't think it gets much better than that.