Lincoln City ~ Day 2

I didn't take a lot of pictures (by my standards) at the beach this time.  There were a few days that I took quite a few, but when we were at the house I just spent a lot of time in the moment, enjoying the day.

Dan picked up the camera and snapped this one of me while I was reading one afternoon during "cocktail hour" which ended up being at around 5pm daily.  I was sipping a Lemon drop, reading a book, and enjoying the view and the sunshine.  A little piece of heaven.  It makes me think about how I need to carve out more moments like that.  It is so good for the soul & restorative.



We decided it might be fun to do a late celebration of Mom's birthday at the beach since we'd all be together.  So we had a steak dinner, and I made strawberry shortcake for dessert.  Simple, but fun.  The children ate at another table/kitchen bar nearby so they aren't in the photo.  I think we all loved the dinner arrangements!

Sunglasses were necessary at the table from the sun setting on that side of the house.  No complaints, we'll take sunshine any way we can get it!



We ate very well on our vacation, considering each meal was for 16 people.  We rotated responsibility for dinner so that no one was overly burdened and it worked great.  We have some good cooks in our family and dinner was something to look forward to.  Dan gained 12 lbs on our trip!  (And has since lost it).



Happy Birthday, Mom!!



Nana and her grand kids + Grand niece and nephew.  Noah was happy, he is just going through a bit of a phase with the camera after a not so great experience with school pictures.  It's so unfortunate as he has such a great smile and he was so joyful this trip.  This isn't representative at all of how he was on vacation.



Mom said one of her favorite parts of our trip was her birthday gift, which sadly, I can't share as we are giving Winnie the same thing for her birthday and she reads my blog!  :)  Don't want to ruin the surprise!

I have some great shots of Mom's expression opening the gift.  And would you believe those are all the photos I took on this day?  I think that's a beach non-picture taking record for me!  It was really nice just to soak in my time and relax.  A really great start to the week.