oregon coast overnighter

 On Saturday, September 24th, we squeezed in one more "summer vacation", even though it was officially Autumn.

 We drove to Newport for lunch at Mo's.

 The blonde side of the table. 

(Kenton counts cause he used to have blond hair)  ;)

 The brown haired side of the table.  :P

 After lunch, we went to the Oregon Coast Aquarium.

 We had bought tickets for our families from Living Social & were running out of time to use them before the expiration date.

 Apparently, we were not the only families that had waited until the second to last weekend to use our tickets because it was packed!

 We still felt like we got to see everything we wanted to see & didn't let the crowds ruin our visit.  :)

 Passages of the Deep

Jesse took a photo of Finn doing this same thing at the same age.

(Photo by Jesse)

 Finn's reflection kind of freaks me out.  It looks like a 16-year-old version of himself.  It actually looks like my brother, Erik.  I'm not ready for my almost-5-year-old to look so grown up!  :\

 Everyone but me pictured here, in the reflection.  :)

 Deep sea diver Finn!

And Cedar, with shark teeth! :P

 Shark family!

 Our boys with Jesse, Carolyn & baby

 The jelly fish always photograph beautifully at the aquarium!

 Finley

 Cedar & Kenton

 Wing span of a two year old compared to that of the great horned owl.  :)

 Submarine Cedar

 And Finn!

 After the aquarium, we drove down to the beach.

 It was beautifully sunny but oh, so windy!

 I dumped out the sand toys & they all started blowing away in the wind.

 We had to weigh down the buckets with sand, if we wanted to leave them on the ground.

 The boys had a lot of fun digging & running from the water.

We all got worn out fast from the wind & we didn't all escape unharmed as we walked back to our cars.  Finn got sand in his eyes when we were walking over the dry sand.  :(  He declared that he never wanted to go to the beach again.  Hopefully he'll forget about that eventually.  :\

 After a napless day for Cedar & lots of activity, I thought these two would go right to sleep.  But it was just a little too exciting for Cedar to be sleeping in a big boy bed with Finley.  We had to put Cedar back to bed many times & were up in the middle of the night several times too to help our youngest.  But I suppose they did pretty well, considering they were sleeping in the same bed for the first time.  :)

Breakfast at the Green Salmon on Sunday morning.

 Photo by Jesse

Finn looks pretty grown up to me.

 Photo by Jesse

 Jesse & Carolyn

 Hungry boys!

 Back at the beach house.  It was super stormy the night before & the wind was still blowing strong this morning.

The wind-blown Henry family

Self portrait.  :)

Our group photo.

 We managed to fit in some board games after bed time & while the boys watched a movie.

 Reading books with Carolyn.

 

Building Duplos with Cedar.

We feel pretty lucky that we got to visit this beach house two times this year!  Last time was with Stu & Jacque, without our kids, which was pretty special.  But this time, it was fun to share the experiences with our kids.  Also, Stu & Jacque were on their honeymoon in Europe, so we knew they were having a great time without us!  ;)