A Week at the Beach

We spent five days on the Oregon Coast last week and I was having too much fun to stop and write about it. Since we’ve been home I’ve been in hyper-mode trying to get the house and yard ready for our house sitters who came last night. Time goes by way too quickly.


I’ve decided whenever we head to Oregon (my old stomping grounds) we need to stay at least a week as there is just so much to do and we love to do our favorite things over and over again. We have friends to visit, which could use up all our time if we let it, but then we wouldn’t have time to collect sand dollars at the beach or fly wooden airplanes off the Astoria Column.

We hit low tide at the South Jetty and managed to scoop up about fifty pounds of sand dollars. Kory still shakes his head every time I pick one up, wondering why I do so. We’ve yet to find a good use for them but it’s always such a thrill to find a whole one, I can’t fight the compulsive urge to pick it up and bring it home.

The little boutique next to the Astoria Column sells three flyers for two dollars. We’re too cheap for that so we head off into the nearby woods and look for the airplanes that the winds have lodged into treetops, then fallen after another wind has cast them down. It’s like a year-round Easter egg hunt. We found about thirty of them last week, along with several parts. Kaleb took several of the spare parts and made some new and improved airplanes and had a great time with the test flights, seeing how well they flew. Some of them did even better than the original design, so that was our homeschooling for that day. (It’s hard to crack school books when on vacation at the coast.)

We were in Oregon to attend a shareholder’s meeting of a bank we invested in a few years ago. They are doing pretty well, considering today’s economy. We also looked into buying a coffee shop down there, run by a friend of mine. It’s for sale, but there is another person in front of us, wanting to buy it, so we’ll see how God leads. We always appreciate open and closed doors that guide us into and out of all kinds of ventures.

We’d spent the day down in Cannon Beach prior to going to the shareholder’s meeting in Seaside. We were out of gas when we left Cannon Beach and didn’t find any gas stations on our way to the bank so we decided to get gas afterwards. I was also almost out of cash and needed at ATM. After the meeting I forgot to get cash as we headed north back to our friend’s house, where we were staying. We were running on fumes so I drove slow and steady, hoping to find a gas station. We miraculously made it to Costco to fill the tank before we were stranded and had to call for help. As we were getting gas, we were trying to decide if we should stop somewhere to get dinner as we were all a little hungry, but since we were nearly out of cash at the moment, we decided to just skip it and head back to our friend’s house. We’d snacked a little on the food they had at the meeting, but it wasn’t like it was dinner or anything. As I was pulling out of the gas station and on to the Costco side street, I saw a Costco pizza box lying in the middle of the road. I slammed on my brakes and told Kaleb to jump out and see if there was anything in the box. Sure enough, there was, an entire pizza, and it was still warm! We took it as manna from heaven and headed back to our friends and ate a road kill pizza for dinner with them (it hadn’t been run over or anything). I’m not sure what was more amazing -  that we found a pizza in the middle of the road, or that we ate it. I imagine someone set it on their car roof and took off without putting it in the car, and there it was, fresh from the oven. God provides in mysterious ways. We’ve had a few good laughs about that one all week.

We stayed with our friends, Jan and Larry, with Kory and I in their spare bed and Kaleb on a mattress on the floor. One night Jan woke me up about 12:30 with a frantic tone in her voice saying, “Kaleb is in our bed!” It was the funniest thing. He got up to use the toilet and apparently sleep walked into the wrong bedroom. He just climbed over the top of Larry and settled down between the two of them. Jan said she just laid there wondering what she was supposed to do, until she finally decided it was my problem. I carried him back to his bed. He had no memory of the entire incident.

At a union meeting a few weeks ago, Kory won tickets to a play in downtown Seattle. We had to get home from Oregon in time to attend the production of “On the Town” at the 5th Avenue Theatre. It was a musical with lots of dancing - a very lively production – which was good because we were tired and I could have easily fallen asleep that late at night after having driven most of the day. Kaleb spent the evening at a friend’s house and we didn’t get home until early Sunday morning.

It feels like we live this feast or famine social life – either we are booked up solid, or we are just sitting around at home wondering what the day will bring. I’m not complaining, because we have it good and in five more days and we’ll be back in Norway! Woo hoo!!