Disney - Guest Blogger Edition: Aurora

Now for some of Rori's favorite memories.  I put my comments in italics...

One of my favorite parts was swimming in the pool.  Which pool?  The ones at the hotel or the ones at the water parks with all the slides and stuff?  I like both.

I liked the movie theater one (Philharmagic), and Star Wars (Star Tours), and the shooting game one (Toy Story Midway Mania), and the one that we fly on (Soarin').

Dumbo was fun cause you went round and round and up and down, up and down.

I liked meeting Rapunzel.  She was so pretty and I liked to meet her.  I liked to meet Cinderella, Princess Aurora, and Jasmine, too.  They were so nice and they liked my red hair.  I liked wearing my princess dresses because I am a princess.  (Oh, gee... lol)

And Jessie and Woody!  You got to tell them that I love Jessie... FOREVER!  I met Jessie and she wrote on my paper and you said that I love her.  Jessie hugged me and she liked my red hair!

It was fun there with my sister, and my mommy, and my daddy, and we never be apart when we were there.

DisneyWorld was fun and I want to go there again sometime.


***As I was putting Rori to bed last night, she was tucking in her stuffed animals and told me, "When we were at DisneyWorld, Bolt was mad at Minnie Mouse because he doesn't like mice.  But he likes princesses and I told him that Minnie Mouse is a princess too, then he was nice to her." lol

Disney - Magic Kingdom at Night

Thinking about the castle, and looking at the pictures of it lit up at night made me think about Wishes!  But before we watched Wishes, we watched The Magic, The Memories, and You, and before that, we watched the Main St. Electrical Parade.  And before that... we sat and waited... for an hour... because we wanted a good spot... and we were hungry, so we just got food and sat there... eating... while we... waited. lol

Okay, so you know how whenever there is a parade (day or night), there are people going around selling dumb, over-priced toys that all the kids think are super cool and the parents all think are just plain obnoxious?  Yeah, I never let my kids get them.  I know, I'm mean.  But before we went on our trip, I had decided that this trip was not going to be a trip full of "no's", for myself, or the kids.  We wouldn't be able to go all crazy without thought, but in a case like this, the kids could get the obnoxious toys. ... And they did. lol

And they really did have fun with them, so I guess it wasn't that bad.  It helped to keep them occupied while we waited... at least, until Rori fell asleep. lol  Don't worry, we woke her up when the parade was starting. :)

I did not do very well getting good parade pics.  It's hard to take pictures of moving lights.  lol  So, I wish I had more, but I don't.

The parade travels through a lot of the park, but watching it on Main Street has a very big advantage... you are in prime position to watch The Magic, The Memories, and You and Wishes. 

The Magic, The Memories, and You is an AMAZING display projected onto the castle.  I mentioned in yesterday's post that I couldn't really get any good photos, however we did take video.  But I haven't uploaded any video yet, hey, its taken me this long to finally get all the photos done!  But, other people have, and I went and found a decent copy.  Now, for this, if possible, you are going to want to put it full-screen.  You might also need to turn up your volume just a little.  Of course, its not the same as being there, but this will give you a very good idea of how amazing it was.  This video is about 10 1/2 minutes long, so sit back and enjoy...



Now, keep in mind, every night, there are different photos and videos in that display! There are some that probably stay in there, but most of the photos, and some of the videos are new, taken just that day. We were told by a cast member that some of their PhotoPass photographers are specifically placed to get photos to include, then they have editors working as the photos come in, during the afternoon and evening, plugging in the new pictures they received. Amazing. In fact, one of the nights we were there, they showed a marriage proposal at the part right after Stitch says, "O'Hana".  Awww...  And I have to tell you... as I was searching for a good quality video to share with you, I came across one that was taken about a week before we were there, and the family that was recording it saw one of their kids in the video! It was so cool! But the quality just wasn't as nice as the one I just showed you, and I wanted you to be able to see it as well as you could. Yeah, I'm nice like that. ;)

Right after Magic, Memories, and You, we watched Wishes!  As far as fireworks shows go, it's pretty good.  But when you put it to the music... well, I tear up EVERY time.  LOVE IT!!!  I did get a few photos of the fireworks...

But I wanted to show you the video, too. Again, my video's not uploaded yet, so here's someone else's.  This time you probably don't need to go to full-screen, but still make sure you've got your sound on.  Without the sound, it's just a decent little fireworks show.  The video is just over 15 minutes long, but the fireworks are only for 12 1/2.  The last 3 minutes or so are of a song that was played over the speakers right after the show, but there aren't any more fireworks.

I have always said that Fantasmic is my favorite Disney night show, but I have to say, I think I'm switching teams.  This trip, The Magic, The Memories, and You, combined with Wishes was my FAVORITE!  I LOVED them and probably could have watched them every night and still not have gotten tired of them... and I probably would have cried everytime, too. lol 

Definitely, one of my favorite things to experience at Disney. :)

Disney - The Castle

I don't care who you are, castles are cool!  This one is, too. :)

I love Cinderella Castle, it is the main symbol of Disney World, at the very heart of the Magic Kingdom. And, hello... Cinderella lives there! lol

I always like to take pics of it, especially from the sides. It is just so beautiful! And when you're there, its even more cool. I don't think anyone can help but to take a moment to admire the castle.

Guests can even go inside it.  Anyone can walk right through the center (when they aren't doing a show on the stage in front), and those who make reservations far enough in advance (like, 3am in the morning exactly 180 days before your visit) can eat a meal in the castle with Cinderella and several of her princess friends (more on that later).  Fairy Godmother also has a Bippity-Boppity Boutique where her fairy godmothers-in-training will get little princesses all ready for a ball (or for just playing around WDW, same difference, lol).  There is even an apartment that is sometimes used as a special treat or prize for a family to stay the night, but I don't know how often that is done.

Anyhow, it is COOL! 

And it gets even more cool at night!  It starts to change colors!  And when its time for Magic, Memories, and You (right before the Wishes fireworks show), it becomes a canvas where photos and videos taken that day are projected for everyone to see.  It really is a beautiful display.  What they think of and can make happen is absolutely amazing!  There was no way to get a picture of it, but at one point during that program, they make one of the turrets take off into space! lol 

This castle is just... really cool.

And I love it!  :)

Disney - Guest Blogger Edition: Acadia

I invited my family to share their favorite memories from our trip and our first guest blogger is Acadia...

Hello!  Some of my favorite moments in DisneyWorld were when I got to meet my favorite Disney characters: Eeyore, Winnie the Pooh, Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Pluto, Stitch, Tinker Bell and being able to see Dug, even though we didn't get to meet him.  I liked being able to interact with them.  Stitch, Chip & Dale, and all of Cinderella's step-family were really funny!  Then when we were with Woody and Jessie, we were playing around with them and it was fun, I kept poking Woody!  Vidia was funny, too!  She kept calling Tinker Bell, Stinker Bell, and she also kept complimenting herself!  And since I was wearing sunglasses on the top of my head, Vidia said I had racing goggles on, and then Tinker Bell said, "You have eyes on top of your head?!?"  They were a lot of fun!

I also liked riding the roller coasters.  My favorites were Rockin' Rollercoaster, Space Mountain, and Expedition Everest.  They were fun!  They had sudden drops, went upside down, were super fast, and one even went backwards!  Another one of my favorites was Toy Story Mania, you got to play games while you were on the ride!

I really liked the fireworks shows.  Fantasmic was my favorite.  I liked how they did the projection on the water and I really liked the music.  Philharmagic was another really cool show.  It had all sorts of special effects, like when their was water splashing on the screen, we got sprayed with water for real!  Soarin' was another great ride with neat effects.  When we were flying over the orange orchard, it smelled like oranges!  And when we flew through the forest, it smelled like pine!  That was cool.  The music was beautiful, too.

The DisneyWorld trip was an amazing time where I got to hang out with my family doing things I love and I hope I get to go there again sometime soon!

Disney - The First Morning

I know I said I wasn't going to post chronologically... and now I have been, so far... but most likely what I said will be true.  Pretty soon, posts are going to get way out of order.  It's just that when I think of all the fun and excitement we had, I think of the very beginning of the trip; when everything was so new and exciting, we weren't tired at all, we were JUST getting there after waiting for so long, and we were so stinkin' excited!!!

Even though we were still on West Coast time, we had no problem waking up bright and early to get to Magic Kingdom right away.

One of the perks of staying at a resort are all of the extra hours you can spend in the parks.  On our first morning, resort guests were allowed into Magic Kingdom one hour before it opened, and that's how we were able to take pictures like this, that looked like no one was there with us...

Here are a bunch of other photos we took as soon as we got in the park...

(Gosh!  Did you spot Mickey???  How'd he get into that picture???  lol)

In all my research, I had learned one very valuable piece of infomation (Well, really I learned many valuable pieces of information, but this one was critical! lol):  If you want to ride Dumbo, you better head there first!  For some reason, it always ends up with the longest lines!  We decided to take the advice, especially since I don't remember if Acadia even got to ride it the last time we came, and after taking our pics, made Dumbo our first stop.

The girls soared over Fantasyland on a flying elephant as we began our first wonderful day at DisneyWorld, and we just knew this was going to be one amazing trip!

Disney - Our Resort

One of the very first questions people ask when they hear(d) we went (were going) to Disney World was, "Where did (will) you stay?" 

The last time we went to WDW, we were going with my sister and her family, and we used a time share, split it (and everything else - car rental, groceries, etc) with them and it was a very good deal!

This time, however, we were going alone and after pricing out the cost of staying off property vs. staying with Disney, we decided to go with Disney.  And to be honest, I don't think we'll ever go back to staying off-property.  The cost ended up being about the same (factoring in we would have to rent a car and then pay for parking and gas) and we got some other really cool deals that made it totally worth it!

Disney has several resorts and we chose to go with their newest (for now) value resort, Pop Century.  (They are building a new value resort right now.)  Staying at a value resort is the cheapest (besides camping at their campground) way to stay at Disney, but you still get the same benefits as other resort guests. All of our transportation was covered, even to and from the airport), we got to go into the parks early and stay late by using Magic Hours (available only to resort guests), whenever we bought anything, we could have it delivered to our hotel instead of having to carry it around all day, and we were able to use their meal plan (more on that later). There were other perks, like getting a free round of golf that I encouraged Ryan to use, but he didn't want to leave us girls behind (awww), and discounts at some of the activities you can do on property, but we didn't really get into those this time.

All of the Disney Resorts are elaborately themed and decorated.  Pop Century features HUGE icons from the past few decades.  Roller skates, juke boxes, hula hoops, walk mans, etc.  It was fun!  I wish I had taken more pics of the girls in front of some of the icons.

One of the reasons why we went with a value resort, besides that it is so much less expensive, was that we knew we really wouldn't be spending a lot of time there and we didn't feel like we needed the fancier pools and nicer restaurants that the moderate and deluxe resorts have.  And this was the right choice for our trip this time.  We had a good time while we were at the hotel, but we really did spend nearly every waking moment away from it.  In the future, I would like to stay at one of the nicer hotels because I hope as the kids get older that Ryan and I will get to have more of a relaxing trip together, and I can see wanting to be at the hotel more if its a more relaxing atmosphere.  Pop Century was more of a party atmosphere. lol

One thing we really had fun with though, and I don't think this would be any different at any of the other resorts, was the "mouse"keeping.  If the girls left their stuffed animals/dolls out, the cleaning lady would "play" with them and leave them set up for us when we got back to our room that night.  It was so fun! 

Here they all are, watching TV while we were out:

Sometimes the toys were just waiting for us, facing the door, staring... and waiting... lol.  Another one of my favorites was when Cadi left her book out, too, and while we were gone Perry read to the rest of the toys. lol

We really liked staying with Disney, it gave us access to perks that really helped us not worry about anything while we were there.  We just sat back and let them do all the worrying/managing for us while we just focused on having a ton of fun! :)

Disney - Getting There

Getting to Disney takes a whole lot more than just enduring a long flight across the country.  For us, it started four years ago. 

We were planning out our goals for the next few years, specifically in trips we wanted to take.  Most of our vacation time and money is spent on going to see family, and we were planning a lot of that, too. 

• We went back east to see Ryan's grandma before she would reach a point where she was incoherent or wouldn't recognize him.  It turns out, she's a fighter and now, three years later, she is still coherent and would recognize him! lol  So, we are once again looking at going back to see her again, as well as his other grandma whose health appears to be more stable but he hasn't seen in a few years. 
• We planned a big road trip visiting church history sites that had to get postponed when our transmission decided to leave us stranded in the middle of a blizzard 260 miles from home two weeks before Christmas.  Remember that?  Well, we decided that road trip would be better when Rori's a little older anyway, so we'll revisit that idea in a couple years. 
• We included several smaller trips, drives down to Sacramento that we do every year to see our family there. 
• And then, we planned to take a big family vacation to DisneyWorld. 

We knew Disney would cost a lot, but we really wanted to do it.  Okay, I really wanted to do it.  And when I really want something, I can usually find a way to make it happen.  I'm a pretty good bargain hunter and I began bargain hunting.  For four years we saved and I planned.  A year before we were to go, we tightened our belts even more and started to really cut back on things we normally would have allowed ourselves to do so we could make our goal.  Whenever we felt the desire to spend on something else, we thought of Disney and it was easier to make that choice.  We talked with the kids about the choice we made and the goal we set and what we needed to give up in order to reach it.  Acadia began saving all of her money, and very carefully budgeting it during other excursions (like to Yosemite and the beach) so she could still spend a little at those places but reserved the main portion for spending in Disney.  It was a great opportunity to help the girls understand the importance of giving up things we like for something we want even more, and patience - it took a long time!

For months before the trip, we read travel books about Disney, watched documentaries and other dvds about going to Disney, I shared with the family a lot of the information I was finding as I scoured the internet for tips, tricks, deals, etc.

The one thing I (and Ryan) didn't share with the girls, was that when we went to book this vacation we had been planning and saving for, it didn't feel right.  I just couldn't do it.  I knew something was wrong.  But I didn't feel like we couldn't go, we just couldn't go when we wanted to.  I really wanted (and still want) to go during the holidays so I can see Epcot's different countries during the Christmas season.  I want to see Christmas around the world, hear their stories and traditions, see their nativities, etc.  But for the trip we were planning, that would mean taking the girls out of school for two weeks and I knew that wouldn't be smart.  But like I said, when I really want something, I can usually find a way to make it work.  I started to look at other options and found that the last two weeks of OUR summer vacation is usually the first two weeks of school for much of the country, including Florida, and that meant those two weeks were a "value season".  Value season = major discounts.

"Discounts" is one of my favorite words.  "Free" is better, but "discounts" is really good.  I found out we could go in August and save a lot of money.  Since we had been really working to save up the last bit that we needed, that was a great thing to find out!  I began planning for August.  Ryan and I decided that we wouldn't tell the girls about the change.  They knew we were going, they could help plan, but this way we could sneak attack and surprise them with the trip when they weren't expecting it.  I was envisioning the reveal video and how fun it would be to catch them off guard.  And Ryan and I were having fun being "partners in crime".  heehee :)

Well, finally the time had come, far sooner than the girls expected.  We had planned as much as we could plan, saved all that we needed to save, the trip and everything related to it was all paid for, the bags were even packed without the kids knowing it (for the most part, we told them in enough time for them to finish helping so we knew they would have all of the things they wanted with them), and finally we let the mouse out of the bag and told the girls we were going to be leaving in two days, instead of 3 months.  Needless to say, they were shocked, a little confused, but then VERY excited!!!  We all were!

We had to wake up super early, 3:30am!  We left the house at 4am and my very good friend and neighbor drove us - can you believe that?  She was sweet and excited for us and didn't even mind.  That's a good friend. :)  Our flight was just as the sun was rising and it was beautiful!  Here are some pics:

The first leg took us to Vegas.  We had a lay-over there, which ended up longer than it should have because of some maintenance they needed to do on the plane, but eventually we were back in the air and on our way.  While we were waiting in the airport, Rori started dancing around this pole... um, yeah... pole dancing in Vegas.  This girl is going to keep us on our toes! lol  During the flight, Cadi reached back to hold hands with Rori.  They were so sweet! 

The pilot kept having to fly around storms, so our delayed flight was getting later and later, we even had to divert to Jacksonville until a thunderstorm passed.  Finally, about two hours later than scheduled, we arrived!  We were using Disney's Magical Express, so that meant we skipped baggage claims and went straight to the buses that would take us to Disney.  It was a little bit of a wait before we left because our flight was the first of several that the bus was taking, so we had to wait for the other passengers to get there, too.  But we had a nice visit with another family (with two girls) from New England that would be staying at the same resort as we were. 

It had been a long day, but finally, we were at our resort and checked into our room.  (More on the resort/room late.)  We were pretty tired and wanted to be well-rested for the next day, so we just grabbed some dinner, did a little unpacking, and then went to bed. 

Those four years are part of my treasured memories.  The feelings we had of working together to achieve a goal, the planning process (which I LOVE), surprising the kids, the anticipation... it was all so fun and exciting and I loved it.  I can't wait to do it all, and start the process, all over again! :)

Let's talk blogging... and Disney!

It's true that when you go on vacation, you need to plan at least the amount of time you were gone, to recover.  So, if you're gone a week, figure it will take another week for you to get back into the swing of things and feel like life is back to normal. 

In August, between the beach and then Disney, we were gone for almost the entire month.  And it is taking me all of this month to recover!  I just barely finished blogging the beach trip and I start to feel overwhelmed when I think about blogging Disney.

Usually, I blog chronologically.  That will just not be possible this time.  We were there for almost 2 weeks and I really do not remember what we did each specific day.  What I remember are tons of fun times and lots of good memories, so I've decided that I'm going to blog Disney that way, the way I remember it.

It will be a little scattered.  Pictures will be all out of order.  I might forget something about what I'm saying and then revisit it to tell that part of the story... I really don't know how it will turn out, but since this has been my goal, the whole time, to just create and treasure MEMORIES together, I don't really care if it's a little bit of a jumbled mess.  All I want is to try to preserve some of the MAGIC that I've felt as we experienced this amazing vacation together.

So, stay tuned for lots of Disney Magic, as Mickey would say, "*Ha-ha*See ya real soon!"

The end of our week at the beach.

Friday was a nice, slow, quiet, lazy day!  The boys went golfing again, so Mary Jane and I took a little morning trip into Canon Beach for brunch, just the two of us.  While we were gone, Chad took all the girls into Rockaway to see some of the shops.  When Mary Jane and I got back, we let the big kids go in to Canon Beach for some more shopping and we waited at the house with Rori for the boys to get back from golfing.  We may or may not have spent some of that time "waiting at the house," down at the beach... I'm just sayin'.

But because I was so far into the *just relax and go with the flow* feel of the day, I have very few photos of any of that.  This is what I do have:

Another beautiful sunset and another awesome bonfire on the beach...

Sometimes (and by sometimes, I mean all the time) when these girls get together, it's just plain SILLY!

But they are all good, sweet girls that know what's truly important:

...Truer words were never written... in sand.

And that's why we keep them around.  Plus, they are really entertaining. ;)

Saturday was our last full day at the beach house! :(  My Aunt Kris and cousins: Adam, Alisha, Scott, Ayva, and Jack all came over to spend our last night with us.  We are making them come for longer next year, one day just wasn't enough! 

Being our last day, we spent a lot of it on the beach.

The girls had fun body surfing.  They wanted me to take a picture before they headed out, as well as after... I don't know, can you tell the difference?  Do you think they may have had a few wipeouts? lol

I didn't get very many pictures during the rest of the day (that must have carried over from the day before), but here is what I did get...

We celebrated Trey and Joy'el's birthdays since they were both that month... and we like cake. ;)


Basically, I love my family and I love the beach, so when I get to have both at the same time, I doubly love it!  We absolutely treasure the time we spend together at the beach because we are all unplugged from other things that life is always distracting us with.  No work, no school, no chores (well, maybe some minor ones), just family, love, fun, and happiness.  The perfect vacation. :)

Monster Sand Dune

During our beach trip last summer, we discovered, for the first time, Kiwanda Beach in Pacific City.  More importantly, we discovered THE MONSTER SAND DUNE!  It is huge!  And tons of sadistic people (ourselves included) come to it with one purpose and one purpose only:

To make it to the top. 

And the sadistic idiots (ourselves included) return again for another go at it.

We remembered that it was hard, but I think we somehow thought that it would be easier this time.  Well, let me tell you, it wasn't. lol

But we did all (eventually) reach the top.  And that's when we remembered just how awesome it is to stand on the top of this huge pile of sand, with your lungs burning, and the wind whipping sand against your skin, and to look out and see such a beautiful view...

Somehow, we didn't all make it into that group photo.  Darn.  But we were all there and we all had a lot of fun playing on one of the ledges, jumping off for fun pics...

Then we ran (yes, RAN) back down to the bottom.  So much fun!  And that's how you know we'll be sadistic enough to do it again next year. lol



Back at the cars, we ate our packed lunches (Check it out: my "baby carrot" totally looks like a pipe! lol) because we all knew what we would be driving past on our way back to the beach house...

We made it back home in time for a nice walk along the beach before dinner.

And then, once again, we were blessed with a beautiful sunset!

As the sun slipped into the ocean, Chad and the girls had fun playing (and planking) on driftwood:

... and playing with that beautiful ball of light.

Beach Bums

We originally planned to drive down to Pacific City on Wednesday, but when we woke up to such a beautiful day, we decided to stick around and play at the beach here instead.  (Besides, the boys were out golfing and by the time they got back it would be a little later in the day than we really wanted to go.)  So, that's just what we did.  It was a beautiful, relaxing, fun day!  We played in the sand and in the surf.  It was sunny and warm, and just perfect!

After playing all day on the beach, we came back up to the house to relax, eat, and just enjoy the view.

We were blessed with another gorgeous sunset!

And the guys built another bonfire so we could end the day back down on the beach. 

It was a great day, super relaxing and lots of fun! 

Short Sands

Waking up Tuesday morning and seeing this:

... was awesome enough.  But Tuesday got even more awesome when we took a little trip up the coast to seek out and find a long lost beach.

Warning: Flashback commencing in 3, 2, 1...

20 years ago, almost exactly, our family (on my mom's side) held it's first Family Reunion.  It took place a little north, at LongBeach, Washington.  My grandma lived there at the time, so we used her location for most of the week and most of the reunion.  However, one of those days included a journey south, into Oregon, to this quaint beach off the highway.  It was a nice summer day when we went, but the beach was totally empty when we were there.  I remember having to park off the highway and then walk in a good 1/4 mile or so.  Then we had to climb down to the beach; my uncle fashioned a ladder out of wood laying around and rope someone had with them.  It was a beautiful beach and I thought it contained on it the best of every world.  On one end of the beach, there was an enormous pile of driftwood, some of my cousins went to climb and explore there, but I headed to the other side of the beach.  The whole beach was a sheltered alcove, the direction I headed had a rocky wall sloping down to the water, topped with tall evergreen trees.  Along the wall there were small caves, rock formations, and best of all, a waterfall!  I explored the tidepools, climbed on the rocks, found starfish, watched the waves, and just marveled at how incredibly beautiful this beach was.  I kicked myself for not having my camera with me.  I headed to where the main group was so I could get it, but when I got there I found out that it was time to leave.  I was really disappointed not to have a picture of this place. 

For years I have thought of this beach.  Have you seen Contact?  The part where, as a girl, Jodi Foster draws her idea of Pensecola Beach and later, the aliens use that place to help her feel comfortable when she goes into space to meet them... that's what this beach has been to me for my entire adult life.  When we moved here and I stayed with one of my aunts for a couple of months while we house-hunted, I asked her if she knew where it was, she didn't.  Then I asked another aunt, she didn't know either.  It seemed the only one that knew was my uncle that most of us didn't have much contact with anymore.  Every time we went to the coast, I would watch along the highway, hoping to see something that I would remember or recognize.  But all I remembered was that there wasn't a marker where we pulled off, and that all it looked like from the highway was another pull out lined with trees.  So, for 8 years we've lived here, within easy distance of this perfect beach, and I could not find it!  I even searched for it on-line, but apparently, the name Short Sands was actually more of a nick name or local name or something, there was no actual Short Sands to be found.

This summr, however, my aunt went on a quilting beach retreat and while she was there, she mentioned this beach to her friends.  (My aunt and I had talked about this beach and she was trying to remember where it was, too.  It was her ex-husband that had known where the location was and she remembers going there with him, but couldn't remember exactly where it was either.)  One of her friends knew it!  And on their way home, she showed my aunt!  So FINALLY, after all this time, we knew where it was and on our very first full day of our beach trip, we all went!

It is no longer (if it ever was) called Short Sands, it is now known as Oswald West State Park.  Beauty wise, it was JUST as I remembered it, maybe even better because we went on such a gorgeous day!  But one thing that was different, was the crowd!  It was so much busier than I expected.  But I'm not too surprised, who wouldn't want to go visit a beach like this?!?

(I intentionally took pictures that left out other people, so I know it doesn't look crowded from these shots. lol  It wasn't "packed", so that was nice, but there were lots of people there.)

We headed over to the side that I hadn't explored the last time, first.  There wasn't nearly as much driftwood this time, but there were still lots of washed up logs.  We were interested in the caves, so we headed directly for the tree covered wall and found tidepools, a dried up waterfall, and yes, a cave!

The girls got to the cave first but were too chicken to go explore it. lol  It was narrow, had water up to our knees, and was very DARK.  Several people said, "I'll go!" but got only a step or two in, then turned back and said, "Someone else go first!" lol  Then Ryan caught up with us and called everyone "pansies" and marched himself and Rori into the cave.  Everyone followed at that point and we all walked back as far as we could go, til we were back out of the water standing on a small rocky section.  It was pretty cool!

After exploring the cave and tidepools on this side of the beach, I headed to the other side, the side I had been waiting to see for so long, and soon, everyone else followed...

It was spectacular!  It was just so beautiful and everything I remembered about it was still there!  I had been worried that all these years of thinking about this place had changed it; that I may have added to it or built it up in my memory into some fantasy beach that doesn't exist, but it was all there!  Every element I remembered was still there, just waiting for me and my camera!  The waterfall, the rocks, the caves, the tidepools... and we loved it all!

While we were enjoying it all, we started watching the waves and the birds.  The pelicans would fly up, circle, and then dive into the water!  It was awesome!  There were tons of starfish, the more we looked, the more we saw!

One of the things I was happiest about was that EVERYONE loved this beach!  Everyone else was just as pleased with going there as I was.  I had started out feeling a little guilty and selfish because I knew everyone was going just because I wanted to go so badly, but thankfully, every single one of us was so glad we went!  It was kind of hard to leave when it was time to head back, but this time I had taken my camera, had been able to share it with the most important people in my life (I had told Ryan about this place several times, wishing I knew where it was so I could take him to it and share it with him.), and now I knew how to get back.  I can go anytime I want!  I love this beach!  And it's less than 2 hours from my house.  You can bet that I'll be back. :)

This post is longer than I planned, so I'll just quickly share a few more photos.  On the way back to the beach house, we stopped at this vista point.  Isn't it beautiful?!?

More fun back at our beach house...  We came upon a starfish washed up on the sand, so Joyel threw it back in the water, something that would be particularly meaningful later that night, but that's for another post. ;)  The girls also downed an entire jar of Nutella during this week! lol  Most of all, we just all had fun, wherever we were, whatever we were doing. :)

And that night we had our first bonfire on the beach.  We all love the bonfires!  It's so fun to just sit around the campfire talking, singing, laughing, playing games.  One of the favorites this trip was Mafia.  Man, what a fun game, especially when we've got Spencer with us!  We had fun staying up late, milking every last moment out of such a beautiful day. :)

The Beach!

Okay, so I told you it was beautiful...

Our house was beautiful too, but nothing beats this view!  We didn't waste much time getting out to see the beach we would be calling home for the next week.

The girls had fun playing in the trees behind the house and... planking. lol

And when we sat down to dinner that night, and realized the view we'd get every evening, we just loved it!  As you can see, this beautiful location was easy inspiration for the artists in our family.

Sometimes when you go to the beach, you get lots of fog, clouds, and rain.  We were so lucky to have such beautiful, clear days each day of our trip this year, and each night resulted in gorgeous sunsets, like this one from our first night:

Beautiful!  Peaceful.  Relaxing.  It was the start of a great week at the beach!