Family Reunion in Newport, Oregon

I was going to start out by saying last month, but it’s been nearly two months now! Typically for Christmas we alternate between who’s family we spend the holiday with but as our kids grew older and nieces and nephews were added to the family, it became harder to get everyone together for the holidays. Instead of meeting for Christmas, we all agreed to meet at a different time for a nice, stress-free vacation. After some deliberation on dates and location, the decision was made to meet sometime in July in Newport, Oregon for about 5 days. We rented a beautiful home which had an amazing view of the Pacific Ocean. (You can check it out here!) It was so relaxing to watch the sunset over the ocean and very entertaining to watch the whales come out of the water. 

The house had a trail leading from the backyard down to the beach. It was about a 5 minute walk to Beverley Beach. We didn’t spend a ton of time there, but it was nice to be able to have the beach a short jaunt away. On our first full day, we spent the entire day exploring around near the Devil’s Punchbowl at low tide.

All the kids had fun looking for crabs, starfish, clams and whatever else the could find.

Do you even know how hard I had to work for this group selfie? Those kids were too excited to stand in one place for more than 3 seconds!

This is a panorama taken right outside the Devil's Punchbowl. It was beautiful! And the weather was amazing too! I was worried about it being cold and windy the whole trip, since every time I had been to the ocean before, I was miserable. Of the several days at the coast, we only had one windy day!

I think HD would have held every creature if we would have let him. He loves hunting for critters that's for sure! While he was playing in the tide pools, JP and his cousin were buried in sand, while Ms.Gail and their other cousin dumped water on them. It was so fun to watch!

The next day we spent a good portion of the morning/afternoon at Agate Beach. When we first arrived, most of the kids ran off with Grandma to see if they could find any agates (Grandma likes to collect them!) so Perry and I were left alone on a nearly empty beach. I had never made a sand castle before and this seemed like the perfect time and spot to do so! We spent at least two hours on this monstrosity! The kids helped a little. Just a little. We were very protective of it!

Perry and I were both proud of how it turned out. I was mainly the moat digger :)

Another fun activity the kids and I took part in was jump roping! Or kelp jumping as the case may be. I forgot how much fun jumping rope can be! It was a nice break from the castle building!

This was our view of the ocean from the deck. No need to zoom or anything. Simply beautiful! Makes me want to move to the coast!

And my handsome JP. He was pretty quite the whole trip - most every beach we explored, he insisted on being buried.

In good fun, I had the boys pose like this for me. I love it so much. We had some passer-bys giving me strange looks, so when I was done, I ran over to them and showed them the result. They loved it too!

It wouldn't be a vacation without s'mores! I just love this little girly!

After a windy morning at the Devil Punchbowl (we went back because we enjoyed it so much the first time!) the mom's stopped in for a wine tasting at the Flying Dutchman Winery. I have never done a wine tasting so this was a first for me, and it was wonderful! I ended up purchasing a bottle of raspberry wine and a new stemless wine glass for my itty-bitty collection.

For our last dinner on the coast, Perry, his sister and I went to town to see if we could find live crab to cook. We lucked out on our search by running into an old fisherman who gave us directions to find the boat "Chelsea Rose". If there's any to be had, that's where they'll be, and he was right! Thankfully we snagged a cooler before we left and managed to fit 6 live crabs inside. I believe we paid about $120 for the group of them. Not too shabby! HD was in HEAVEN when we brought them back!

Uncle Colin taught Perry the ins and outs of cooking crab. We had a little incident with one crab not fitting in the pot. Unfortunately HD was in the perfect spot, with his shirt off, to get a nice splash of boiling water on his chest when Perry tried to flick the crab down. Panic in the kitchen!

We ended up with *so*much*crab* but boy was it tasty! I already want to go back and do it again! Ms. Gail slept through most of dinner prep. I woke her up when we took the crabs out to fight on the floor. All the cousins (except for Ms. Gail) had a blast with the crabs shuffling around the kitchen. 

It was so so nice to see everyone again. We hadn't seen Perry's brother's family for almost two years, and at least half a year had gone by without seeing his sisters family too. It was a bittersweet vacation! I loved spending time with everyone, but goodbyes were hard, especially for me because the boys then went alllll the way back to spend the summer in MT with Grandma and Nanny.