Mid-January Beach Vacation!

Summer in January?! That's what it felt like last week in Seaside! My parents gave us a gift of nearly a week in Seaside at the WorldMark Resort for Christmas. It was so relaxing, fun and WARM! We played in the pools every day, sometimes twice a day, played arcade games, rode the carousel and played on the beach. It was just nice to be together as a family after a busy season of being in and out of the hospital with Hannah.

 The kids had so much fun in the pool! Caleb would have breakfast every morning and immediately ask, "when are we going to the pool?!" It would often turn into whining and complaining if we were choosing a different activity so we had to work with him on that. ;) One morning, the others were all still sleeping and I peeked into his room and he was standing at the window looking down at the pool. One of the final mornings, Joel woke up and took Caleb to the pool all by himself--first thing. He came back a happy, content little boy! 

Caleb's really into doing a "silly-face" when I take his picture. I've found that if I take a silly one first, I can get a nice one without complaint afterward, and it's often an authentic smile because he's laughing from making the silly face! ;) 

 
Elijah learned how to do flips into the water from the side. Hannah would go back and forth from the kiddy-pool to the big one. She's pretty fearless and would jump in, twirling as she did it. The kiddy-pool was just 1'6", so it was fine, in the big pool, she had a floaty around her waist. She also learned how to jump out of my hands and land in the water. Abby spent her time doing flips in the water and swimming around, including swimming across the 5' deep section. Joel and I spent time being with the kids and occasionally jumping into the hot tub to relax a little. ;) 

The kids were thrilled to discover that there were TV's in every room! There were 4(!!) altogether and the older kids asked--multiple times--if they could eat in their bedrooms, of which they could not! ;) A couple nights I unplugged the TV in Abby & Elijah's room so they would actually sleep in, in the morning. I think they were so very excited about being able to watch TV in bed that they couldn't go back to sleep once they woke early in the morning.

One of the days we drove up to Astoria and let the kids run around the old Fort Stevens. I remember running around it as a kid with my brother and a couple friends, so it was fun to be there with our own kids. They let me take some fun pictures too, so that was fun for me! ;) We ate Fish-N-Chips at a restaurant on the river, watched an enormous barge come down the Columbia, smelled the stinky Sea Lions hanging out on the piers and Joel snuck a quick viewing of the house that was in the movie, the Goonies, a movie he watched a lot as a kid. It was a full and very fun day!

 We also checked out the rusty old shipwreck on the beach near there. It's like a little boy's dream play ground...they jumped right in, calling it a Pirate Ship!

 

 

  Joel surprised the kids and brought his X-Box so they had fun playing games on the one rainy/drizzly/cold day we had. It was so fun to see their smiles and hear their giggles and as they laughed at crashing their ATV's or Snowboarders. Elijah caught on quickly though and was starting to score some high numbers.

It was just refreshing to get away and play for a few days! Hannah has a corrective surgery scheduled for this Monday. It's going to eliminate the reflux that is happening with her urine traveling back up to her kidney. So this week was a perfect little window of opportunity to take a family break ....just refreshing. Thank you Lord--your timing is always good!