Spontaneous trip to the coast

 We had planned to take a hike in the Mt. Hood forest area yesterday, but due to a big ol' fire, we decided against it because of smoke concerns. That left us with a beautiful day with nothing to do but chores (blech) and knowing that summer is coming to an end, we knew we had to do something. So, we got the idea to go to the coast for a few hours. When I asked Dalia if she wanted to go to the coast she looked at me like, "who are you and where's my Mommy?" She actually said, "No, it's too far." And when I said, "No, no, let's do it. Won't it be fun?" she said, "You're just joking." Eventually I convinced her I hadn't gone out of my mind and that Mommy and Daddy could be spontaneous sometimes and she got excited with us and jumped up and down and started collecting all the things she wanted to bring. It was hard for her to wrap her head around the fact we wouldn't be staying down there, but eventually she understood and had no problem making the most out of our afternoon at the beautiful Oregon coast. 

Eloise was equally thrilled about the fun outing, sleeping as she needed to and discovering the sand and surf. She's so mellow, it's just crazy. At one point a man behind me said, "Isn't that age great, when the just sit there and enjoy what's going on around them." I told him, yes, but that my first daughter never did that. She just made a mad dash on hands and knees to the waves when she was this age. He looked out at the ocean and said, "is that your daughter out there?" I looked out and, sure enough saw Dalia running into the waves, her dad a close clip behind.

On the way home Dalia asked if we were in a rainforest and we were able to confidently tell her that out of the 365 days a year, we were pretty lucky to be driving through there without any rain. It was an amazing warm and sunny day that we are thankful we took advantage of. Dalia exclaimed a little later, "we are so lucky to have got to go to the coast today." It was the first thing she talked about this morning, too.

We went to the Sellwood pool today for the last day of the season (our wonderful dear friends Rachel and Adele are here). It was a blast (totally crazy) and tomorrow we're hoping to try and take that hike afterall. We're trying to make the most out of our last days of summer. We seem to be doing a good job.


I hope we'll take this as a testament to doing things spontaneously more often.