The Armstrong Family made it to the beach!!!!

We found some business we had to do out there, of course, and then off we

went to play quite spontaneously!!

The Oregon beach is unique, I think. The Idea of "beach" implies the ocean and swimming or surfing... unless your a normal Oregonian family. Then you know to pack coats and extra shoes because you'll be bundling up against the cold wind and driving sand. If you plan on picnicing on the beach, you plan on eating a little sand - "sandy sandwiches" - because the sand never stays near the ground. That nice wind caries it right into the next bite your taking. Children always come running up with some amazing treasure to share and shake sand all over the picnic area, even if you hide behind a log. If you do find a nice log spot, pre-check for broken glass or some unfortunate find previous visitors forgot. Oregon beaches are clean, don't mistake me, I love them, but lots of people visit at all hours and you might have little ones, like we do.

We hadn't been to the beach for 3 1/2 years. I know! It's hard to believe! But there's a serious story behind that. When I was pregnant with Camten, Jeremy's dad had come to live in Portland near us for his last year because he had lung cancer. Looking back we wish we had understood more of the serious march of cancer. At the time we were frustrated with the grim acceptance of Jeremy's relatives, and we were trying to approach the situation with hope and, well, basically denial. The day he died we were at the beach. It just happened to be the weekend we went to the beach every year, and we had visited with him the day before... needless to say, we were caught off guard and the thought of returning to the beach to play was a little too hard to swallow for quite a while. That's how this little trip came to be Camten and Trinity's first trip ever.

Such a wonderful, fun place should not have such difficult mental connections, but sometimes life is hard and that's the way it goes. Our kids will never associate the beach with Grandpa Bob, but for Jeremy and I, it's not so bad to have such an amazing place as a anchor for our memories of him. It's definitely a majestic place. We won't push ourselves to play hard or stay long, but we already started building new memories. The beach is an important part of living in Oregon, and our children really enjoyed the visit. So did Jeremy and I.

The reason WHY we went to the beach was so important, I hardly know what to write about our trip!!!

We found a great spot that was super sandy and fun to play at. We brought a box of yummy food to eat that got all sandy, of course. We dug holes and found a bunch of shell treasures. We carried out a whole bag of shell pieces, I mean, Treasures.

We found a seagul... and then 50!! We had fun sharing the bread crusts left that we couldn't eat and watching the "me-me-me" crowd. One almost took a piece out of Jeremy's hand - I'm not sure which one backed off, but I think it was the seagul.