Reyes Family Time: Ocean Shores vacation

Mario, Miriam and I just returned from our 4 day vacation to Ocean Shores, WA and had a fantastic time!

We left on Saturday morning, right around Miriam's naptime. She slept almost the whole way there (2.25 hours). My mom had found us a place to stay in Ocean Shores that was about 4 miles from the heart of downtown Ocean Shores. It was a small cabin (about 400 square feet) with a direct path to the beach. The view from our cabin was gorgeous, and it was nice to be able to walk out the door to the beach if we didn't feel like getting in the car.

Speaking of the beach, we spent a lot of time there. When we first drove on the beach (literally, on) Saturday afternoon, I remarked to Mario that WA may be one of the only places where people visit the beach dressed in long pants, hooded sweatshirts and jackets, and huddle under blankets while sitting outside on their camping chairs. The wind is always gusty at the beach and we saw a lot of kites flying. We saw one in particular that we really liked (a stunt kite that looked like a miniature para sail) and so we went to the local kite store in town and bought one for ourselves. Miriam also got a (miniature) kite.

I'd never flown a stunt kite before, and my memories of kite flying of any kind are few and far between. Mario had a stunt kite from some years ago that we got rid of, and he hadn't flown a kite in years either. I had a hard time getting the hang of flying the kite, and would often over correct and crash the kite into the ground. Luckily, with the kind of kite we got, you don't have to reset the kite before it will fly again...just give it a couple tugs, and once a bit of air gets into one of the air pockets, it will take off again on its own from the sand. As you'll see from the pictures below, the wind can be pretty powerful, and we both got dragged around in the sand a bit while we were flying the kite. It was a good workout for the arms/back muscles though, as I woke up pretty sore the next day! Mario and I both took turns flying the kite, which was a lot of fun. Once I got better at controlling it, I had a great time making figure 8s in the air and flying the kite low and fast to the ground.

Miriam also had a lot of fun at the beach, although only a small part of it involved flying her kite. She has a bunch of sand toys, so we took those to the beach and she was really happy to sit in the sand and dig with her shovel, or put sand in her bucket, or even dig in the sand with her hands and then try to put her hands in her mouth. She absolutely loved putting her feet in the (freezing!) water, and kept wanting to go further and further into the water. When we thought it was getting a bit too deep for her (knee height), we'd carry her back towards the sand, only to have her "run" (really fast walking) back to the water as soon as we set her down. She thought it was really funny to "run" away from us towards the water, or run away from us on the beach. She gets a huge grin on her face and starts giggling, which is pretty adorable. Since we were always on fairly deserted sections of beach, she had a lot of room to roam around freely.

Our cabin came equipped with a full kitchen and a grill, so we cooked most of our meals ourselves. Miriam is at an age where she doesn't enjoy sitting in restaurants patiently waiting for food, and the meals aren't very relaxing for us when we go, so we opted to relax and eat at home. She did do VERY well the one night we went out for pizza, since the service and food was very slow and we were there almost two hours. Otherwise, we took advantage of the grill and our beautiful view and grilled at the cabin.

We also took some time to relax, watch movies and play games. We made Miriam a bed on the floor (see picture below), and when she was napping or sleeping at night, we'd cover her bed with a blanket, like a fort, and we'd watch a movie and/or play games. Mario and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary on this vacation, and we talked about what an amazing day we had, and the fun celebration it was with family and friends. We feel so blessed and thankful to have each other and now to have Miriam in our life...these past 6 years have been amazing, and we are looking forward to many more years together!

Mario, Miriam and I have never been on vacation with just the 3 of us, and it was great to get away and enjoy some "down" time before I go back to school for the school year and while the weather was still nice. It was foggy every morning (and much of the afternoon some days) while we were there, but the fog eventually burned off and the weather was nice and sunny.

I'm sorry in advance for the multitude of pictures. You know we always take a large amount of pictures, and we had so many good ones this time I had a hard time choosing which ones to share.