Life at the Beach

Yesterday, we went to this aquarium down in Newport that is run by students from OSU. It was actually pretty cool. There was no admission, but you could give donations at the door. There was this display where you could touch sea anemones. The kids loved it, except Mariah and Brinlee. They liked to look, but refused to touch. It was a really cool exhibit. They also got to watch them feed this octopus. It was really cool. They do a little show and talk about the facts about octopus'.
After that, we stopped in Depot Bay at this candy store called Depot Bay Candy Shoppe. I remember that we used to go in there every time we'd come when I was little. It has homemade salt water taffy and they are all divided into separate bins by flavor. You can stand in this little tiny shop and sample as many flavors as you want. It was SO GOOD! I love the peppermint and cinnamon flavors the best. We let the girls have $10 of their own money that they have been saving so they could buy whatever they wanted. They were thrilled!!! Of course, Mariah wanted to spend every last penny. Brinlee was very frugal and only spent a couple dollars. Asia did, too and Tatum only wanted a handful of Jelly Belly's from a 50 cent candy dispensing machine. LOL!
It was raining pretty hard yesterday and very cold, so we didn't even consider going down to the sand. At one point there was a little snow mixed with the rain and even hail later in the day. SO WILD at the beach!!

Roxelle was just taken by watching the fish.




The "touching" aquarium

Mariah "I don't WANT to touch it" hmmph!

Today we went to the Lincoln City Ward. I saw Ray Lunt, whose son (Evan) I graduated High School with. It was a total surprise to see him. Also, his other son, Paul, was there visiting. It was nice to see familiar faces! The guy sitting in front of us overheard us talking about visitors and he leaned back and said that from the 3rd row back from the front, there were only 2 regular members sitting there, all the rest (and the pews were nearly full) were visitors!! I thought that was so awesome! How cool is that, that we are on vacation and decide to go to church and that many other people decided the same thing?! There was also a couple there from Mary Lou's ward in Rainier. The guy conducting said that they love the "holiday" times because their normal number of around 120 swells up to 400. WOW! Our 8 primary kids nearly doubled their primary today. It was all a great experience!
After our turkey dinner, we decided to take advantage of the sun and go for a walk on the sand. It was freezing!!!! FREEZING COLD! The kids flew kites and touched the sand, but Tatum was totally FREAKING OUT! She was so scared, she didn't even want to look at the water.

Mariah and Roxelle

Brinlee flying a kite.

Asia digging her toes in.

Tatum freaking out!