Well, it was a little sad to miss out on our regular festivities for Canada Day like our Parade and Family Fun Day - but we still shone a little Canadian Light down South - with our little t-shirts and by telling some of the people we came in contact with... oh, and the reason we did plan our vacation for right after school's end was to be able to get down to the States on our annual travel insurance we buy rather than in August when it's just expired (2 for 1 trips in a sense) AND we were hoping the same group of Chinese Students would come again this year from July-November and if they were coming this would be out of the way... well, luckily they have arrived and it's really convenient that our holiday is done!
You should have heard the owner of the hotel sing his rendition of
O Canada - it was to the tune of
O Christmas Tree! It was pretty funny!
So we packed up and checked out of our hotel in Seaside and headed South down the Coast. We stopped at a great Outlet Mall in Lincoln City, Oregon. And then continued South to Florence where we had planned on visiting
The Sea Lion Caves...
this is looking north out of the cave -
Heceta Lighthouse is shown, if you squint!
here, you don't have to squint so much in this photo:
It was extremely windy today - like sooooooooo windy... we've never had it so windy... so I got the kids to take off their hoodies for a quick picture of their little t's
looking down from the lookout:
Here's proof of the wind -
From here we headed East-inland...
We went here 4 years ago when Elijah was not even 3 years old yet and Sam was just a baby! We thought it was time to go back for a visit before Elijah gets too old to have fun! We had a great time... in the water-play area
(including Jason who is playing with the pieces of this water table like a puzzle)
and in the rubber pit:
and self-face painting!
and Elijah was old enough to participate in the "Build It" area where he used a hot glue gun for the first time...and used all sorts of recycled materials to create:
then Jason and the kids re-built a cabin using these "homemade" lincoln logs (long cardboard tubes painted brown and cut to fit together)
Sam is such a hard worker and loves his wheelbarrows; we'd love to find him one small like this for our house to help with yard clippings as he usually does
and finally since we spent so much time building, we had 15minutes left in the "grocery" area which is too bad because that was totally not enough time to buy groceries, fix up food in the restaurant and serve Daddy his plastic sandwiches
Very fun!
