The Vacation Post: Part One

As promised, here's the first post about my vacation and exactly why our family ended up at Seaside, Oregon (and Cannon Beach too for a little while.)

Some background: My dad went to seminary with a future missionary. When our church began supporting them years later, we had NO IDEA that it would change our lives forever...
In November of last year, this missionary's son, Jesse Divakar, began the process of getting to know my oldest sister Sarah.
After he came up to hang out with our family during Christmas, the two of them decided to take it to the next level...official courtship.
In February, over Valentine's Day ironically, Mom, Sarah, and Max went to visit my oldest brother in Wisconsin and Jesse drove up from where he was working currently to join them and spend more time with them.
Then in April, Sarah and Margaret went to visit an old friend of theirs in Ohio and Jesse, only two hours away from where they would be, spent some more time with them.
Finally, they came up to Washington again and spent last week with us in Oregon and are now at our house as I type this out.

WITH THAT SAID...

Drum roll please...

*drum roll*

Thank you.

Here's what happened: ready?

Monday:
After packing ourselves into our van and car, we drove to the airport (I got through two books!) and picked up the Divakar family (Mr., Mrs., and Jesse) and drove to the ocean. Then we unpacked, rested, and took a walk.


Gorgeous weather, I know. ;)

We saw some cool houses, (which is YOUR favorite?)

Ignore the Oregon Ducks flag...that was NOT what made this house awesome.



Check out the staircase!



Classy. Cool and classy.

Those colors!!! Just...amazing.

and a dilapidated sand castle that looked like a scene from Star Wars.

And since no trip is complete without a history lesson, we stopped by the Lewis and Clark salt camp.

Somewhat boring I know...just wait.

Tuesday:
Feeling not quite ready for more driving, we shopped some in Seaside before lunch,
then ready at last, we piled into our cars and drove to Cannon Beach. There we enjoyed looking at the famous Haystack Rock, as well as a bunch of fifth day creation critters (birds and fish y'all),

The one and only Haystack rock...and yes, I took this pic.



Birds...




...and fish? Nope, that's a SHRIMP. But there were fish.

and I practiced taking selfies with a regular camera. It's trickier than you might think! Thankfully, Jesse offered to take one. Otherwise, you might not have gotten any actual pictures of me, because I was dubbed the "stealth photographer" of the trip (that means I was taking sneak shots of Sarah & Jesse), but I ended up just being the regular photographer because, well, my camera didn't act like a proper stealth camera. It beeped EVERY time I did ANYTHING on it. So, yeah.



It was pretty windy out there.
And even though the cloud cover makes it look not bright,
but it was very bright...hence the sunglasses.

We walked to Haystack rock...where we tried NOT to step on all the wildlife crawling everywhere.
 

The brother who dared me to eat those crickets. He didn't even try any himself! (coward)

I had some of the most gorgeous photo opps around the rock with the sea spray and seagulls.

After playing around the rock for a little bit, the parents (who had stayed a safe distance from the water) started across the rocks towards where Jesse and Sarah sat with siblings hovering around them. I was wondering what they were doing when I turned around and caught The Moment: (ON CAMERA!!)

He asked...

She said yes!

He put on her ring.

Isn't it pretty?

Congratulations were in order, then after all the picture taking and hugs, we headed to Mo's for dinner.

*cough* Sarah doesn't like getting her picture taken so much.

And then drove "home" and crashed in bed...well, ok so we stayed up until eleven talking. But THEN we crashed into bed.

Tune in tomorrow for the rest of our vacation! :)