Road Trip - Cannon Beach!

A couple weekends ago we set out on a mini vacation with the kids. We moved the seats in the van around so all the kids were separated in hopes of keeping the arguments to a minimum. I also let the kids decorate their snack containers (Huggies wipe boxes) with stickers. Each morning I filled them with their snacks for the day. They knew that the snacks in there were all they got for the whole day and they could choose to eat them as fast or as slow as they wanted. This worked FABULOUSLY! Never once did we hear, "I'm hungry!" Their snack containers were filled with wheat thins, grapes, chocolate covered pretzels, fruit leather, granola bar and vanilla cookies. I would also supplement with another piece of fresh fruit from the hotels continental breakfast.

 I also made the kids each a travel binder with lots of activity pages in it...tracing letters, coloring sheets, mazes, I spy and stickers. This is something I learned from...first off Ella's lap is too small to hold up her binder. I've since been finding all sorts of ideas on Pinterest to make her a little lap desk. I'll probably make them for all the kids. Second the kids scream through all their pages in one day. Ella was really the only one that looked at her book each day. So I'm thinking when we go on our Disneyland trip I will have a main binder with new pages for each day.

We also of course brought along every type of electronic device we have...Leapsters, Leapfrog, Leappad and of course the van has a DVD player.

We left home and went to Astoria. We told the kids we were going to go over a LONG bridge. While on the bridge Ella said, "This is too scary!"

We ate lunch in Astoria and then headed to Cannon Beach. I had only been to Cannon Beach once before and the weather was dismal. On this particular day it was gorgeous. Our only complaint was signage. It didn't seem like there were any signs pointing to where the public beach was. We just ended up turning down some random street and parking at the end. The funny thing was the street we turned down was the street where The Stephanie Inn was...Christa I thought of you.

I thought about bringing the kids sand toys, but knew we couldn't be there very long and I figured the surf would keep them busy.

Such a beautiful spot!

I felt like we were trespassing coming down the inns steps, but there were no signs saying so.

Zeke got to hitch a ride on me. This was the first time I wore him on my back and the first time I wore him at all in months. He enjoyed it!

Beautiful!

I was correct...the water keep them entertained enough!

What I didn't plan for was my kids tolerance for the cold water. I didn't think they'd actually want to get wet....wrong!

Run Ella...Run!

I love the water!

Cute Shoes!

This girl had the time of her life! I don't think she quit laughing the whole time we were there....until the end when she fell and then she cried the whole way back to the van.

In the end they all had to be change and rubbed down with baby powder to get the sand off. It was a blast and now we keep hearing, "Are we going to Cannon Beach?"