Over the weekend our family had a nice little getaway. My family is pretty big (on my mom’s side) and we used to do a summer camp out party and then a Christmas party every year. This year my cousin Di organized and coordinated a fantastic new Christmas party!
She found a giant house on the beach in Rockaway, OR. It was a giant house, big enough for the majority of people to stay there. I think there was something like 4 or 5 bedrooms (several rooms had bunk beds) so tons of people could sleep there.
We decided to rent a house in Rockaway with my parents. Our house that we rented was on the north side of town, the other house was south but it was literally 7 minutes to drive to the party, so no big deal.
You can see pictures of the vacation house we rented on my Instagram. It was really cute! It was big with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, the garage was converted to another bedroom/playroom. There was a fenced yard for Bella (fabulous) with a fire pit and picnic bench. The decor was super cute and kind of modern/retro. Check out the photos I took.
Plus, there was a GIANT closet stuffed full of toys for kids of any ages! Logan had SO much fun playing with the toys. What a great surprise!
Our house was one block from the beach, too! We had easy access to the beach. The weather was perfect this week–sunny and not windy and fairly warm. It was in the 30’s in the mornings, though!
We all arrived at the house Friday afternoon and then went for a walk on the beach. It was gorgeous and we basically had the beach all to ourselves.
After Logan went to bed, my Dad and Michael went to pick up pizza and Caesar salad for dinner and the four of us had pizza (Michael and I had beer from Buoy) and we played card games. It was so much fun!
Saturday morning my parents played with Logan and Michael and I went for a run. It was a very cool, cold morning but the sun was out and we warmed up pretty quickly. The sun felt nice! We ran around the neighborhood and by the beach. I ended up running around 2.75 miles. Then while Michael was making his famous mac n’ cheese for the potluck, my dad and I went for a long walk on the beach while Logan napped.
Bella was LOVING the beach! I have some cute videos on my Instagram if you want to see.
After lunch on Saturday we packed up the stuff we needed for the party and went down to the party house.
Here is a video of the BIG house everyone else was staying in! It was huge and right on the beach! It had a hot tub and a fabulous view. Lots of room for a big group.
How nice is that deck?! What a cool place to stay in the summer time. The party was fun. My cousin brought her 14 month old twins so Logan had a BLAST playing with his little cousins! It was so cute!
Logan is all about giving high-5’s and fist bumps. 😀
Logan did so good. There were a LOT of people (30? ish?) and he was a bit shy and unsure at first but he warmed up and had so much fun. It was so cool to see him spending time with family we don’t get to see often.
How cute (and hilarious) is the below photo?! HAHA
There was a potluck dinner. After dinner my dad and I took Logan back to the house we rented because he was fading fast. My dad stayed with the baby and I went back to the party for the white elephant gift exchange.
This is the gift I brought for the gift exchange. 😀
Have to say, the sweater might be the best gift!
Then a bunch of us went down to the beach for a bonfire. Nothing better than that!
The next morning we had breakfast and packed and then went for one last walk on the empty beach.
I didn’t want to leave. I love the beach. We checked out of the house and headed home. Rockaway is about 2 hours from Portland. Logan slept for a good chunk of it, which was nice.
Home to unpack and I went swimming. It was a great weekend!
We were supposed to go a few weeks ago, but something came up and they had to reschedule. Which turned out to be a blessing in disguise because the weekend we rescheduled it to was hot as hell and at the beach it was perfect–70 degrees and lovely. Michael and I both got off work a little early on Friday and packed up the car, then picked up Logan and we headed to the coast! 
We were expecting a mass exodus from the city to cooler temperatures and were fully prepared for the usual 90 minute drive to take 3 hours. We were kind of leaving during rush hour traffic on a Friday. But, we somehow lucked out. The worst traffic was trying to get through downtown and once we passed the zoo, it was smooth sailing. 
Logan took a little cat nap in the car (like for an hour) ooooops! But that ended up working out in our favor! We got to Manzanita to our friend’s house, they made a great dinner (grilled chicken and steak and baby potatoes) and we ate outside on their deck, a block from the ocean. It was getting late (it ended up taking 2 hours to drive there, so NOT three!!!) and we just relaxed a bit, then Logan went to bed (way past his bedtime) which meant he actually slept in on Saturday! WOWZA. Double lucky for us! We got to sleep in on Saturday until 7:30am. 
We got up, had breakfast, packed up some beach stuff and walked a block down to the beach. Logan had a blast! And so did Bella! She loves the beach. 
Those two pictures above were taken by our friend Christi (who is a professional photographer and who has done our newborn and 1 year old photo shoots). How funny are those poses Logan is doing? Haha! So Logan had a blast playing in the sand, watching Stu build sandcastles, and filling his bucket with sand. Then it was getting kinda past nap time so we headed back to the house to clean up and Logan took a nap. 
We did manage to get a few family photos for the weekend, which was nice. 🙂 I’m usually the one taking the pictures! 
Usually I would work out on Saturdays, and if we were on vacation somewhere I’d figure out a way to get in a workout. Either I’d go for a run or we’d go for a family hike–something. But this time I decided to take it easy. I’ve been feeling like I needed a break lately. My body has been hurting in weird ways and I’ve been feeling burned out. I haven’t been doing anything super extra-strenuous, but I’ve just been feeling like my muscles aren’t recovering like they should. So I took an extra rest day and the only “exercise” I got was hauling crap to and from the beach. 😉 It was kinda nice!!! The rest of the day was very relaxing. Instead of our usual go-go-go, we just chilled. Stu and Christ stayed at the beach for awhile and we hung out at the house while Logan took a nap. Michael made us lunch and we sat on the deck in the sunshine, listening to music and the ocean waves in the distance. i read my book a little bit, I took a nap. It was divine. A few hours later they came back and we hung out for a bit and then I took Bella to the beach, just us girls, for a little while. It was nice to hang out and just run around on the beach with my dog. 
The morning had been overcast but kind of warm, and then the afternoon brought sunshine and the clouds burned off. It was actually fairly warm for the beach. We grilled outside again for dinner. Michael and Stu went to the store and picked up dinner. We did some local Bratwursts and grilled up zucchini and had leftover potatoes from the night before. 
It was really delicious! Then we stayed up for a few hours playing cards and finally it was time for bed (for Michael and me) because we knew Logan would be up early Sunday!
