Beach Surprise

We had a last minute really great invitation to go with our friends to their beach house this weekend.  We almost didn’t get to go because Alyosha had the freakiest illness Thursday evening that led me to calling missing persons and the pediatrician on call in the emergency room.  Well, it turns out that Roma was out ‘socializing’ with his professor and Alyosha hallucinates when his fever gets over 101. 

Friday morning everyone wakes up like they are fresh picked roses and my mind was still spinning from the drama of motherhood.  We had to keep Alyosha home because of the swine flu rules—24 hours no fever—and turned down our invitation to the beach.  But, by next morning, we realized that the illness was only a Thursday night one to make me crazy and was totally gone so we packed up in an hour and headed to Lincoln City to spend the evening with friends.

We stayed at Sky and Itzel’s house which is on a little bay in Lincoln City.  The bay is shallow enough to almost wade across and is littered with huge tree trunks each with a great maze of roots showing off their complexity. 

The cool thing about the view and the landscape is that from the windows of their house, there is always a new view to observe.  Either just the tides coming in and out, or with each storm bringing in 100 mile an hour winds that move around the huge trees—every venture is a new discovery.

 For the girls this was a mermaid castle and for the boys it was a pirate ship with 3 captains—neither boy or girl had any qualms about climbing to the top.  I think this makes a better jungle gym than the artificial ones on the playgrounds in the city.  I say we do an experiment and place a huge tree like this next to the playground at Chapman and see which one gets used more.

Kids get to eat first-shell pasta macaroni and cheese with peas and broccoli.  The adults had the real thing; Peter made clams with linguini.   I can’t personally say that it was delicious because I have a mental block towards most slimy things that come from the sea, but looking at the stacks of emptied shells around me, I can assume that Peter did another amazing job in his capacity of chef.

Here you can see the view from the picture windows.  In this picture, the tide has come in and the beach we were playing on earlier disappeared.  Niki assumed his new position on my back.  I think he likes it in the front better because he can see more, but he'd better get used to my back because I think he will be spending the next year or so there! Family portrait with a bit of the Pacific in the background. You can’t see it here, but the waves were huge and our brave Luka was afraid for anyone who was more than 2 steps away from him.Kelp tug-of-war.  The kelp won, it is one tough plant!