Brian’s vacation – I loved it!

EDITED TO ADD ANNA’S LATEST DEVELOPMENT MILESTONES:
She is ADEPT at picking at things with her finger and thumb like pincers.
She is AVERAGE at pulling herself to a squatting position or onto her knees from sitting.
She is POOR but rapidly improving at pulling herself to standing from sitting
She is EXCELLENT at eating or wanting to eat anything we eat
She is more interested in standing than crawling
She is ADEPT at rolling

A blog by the vacationer’s wife.

Brian didn’t go to work on Wednesday. He didn’t have to. Work was closed. I like his job. I don’t remember what we did Wednesday, that was a long time ago. I’m pretty sure than Brian did a boatload of work in the garage. Yes, that was it. He finished the ENTIRE FIRST COAT of mudding/taping in the garage. Yahoo!!! Or maybe he started it and finished it Friday. Something like that.

I’ve already blogged about the holidays so I won’t go there now much. Thursday with the Chapman’s was fantastic, especially since Neal and Hollye DIDN’T miss out after all! Friday I got to see Emily and little Guy! Woo-hoo! That night, Grandpa Davis (Anna’s great-Grandpa) took us all to dinner at the Olive Garden. Anna likes breadsticks. Saturday was more good food and family at the Davis’!

Sunday we went to church. It was good. Well… umm, what we attended. See, Anna has a nice phlegm-y cough and the nursery is a well nursery. It didn’t take much persuasion to ask Brian to stay home and us just go to the grown-up Bible study part at 10:45. We were both still reeling from two Thanksgiving dinners. This week’s class was a “spiritual gifts” test or inventorying of sorts. You know, are you gifted in hospitality, teaching, etc.

Hollie, I just realized that speaking in tongues and prophesy weren’t even on there, were they? In my hopes of promoting discussion, I was going to dive into those. Diverted. Rats! 😉 Brian and I kind of enjoyed this, but I confess that my favorite part was having some good, deep theological discussions with Hollie. Thanks for saving me a seat, Hollie.

As we were driving away on our way to the beach, Brian and I talked about these tests that people take to reveal what gifts they possess most strongly. We both think that it could be done way better. Instead of just talking about what you’re good at and wondering about it rather lazily and comfortably, why aren’t we practicing stuff and just seeing what turns out best? I suggested we set up tables with a role-playing exercise at each. Whatever things are easier and that you do better, you are more gifted in. Whichever tables are more difficult, you are getting practice at. We all need practice.

At the hospitality table, you can be given the chance to pretend introduce yourself to a new friend who you are inviting into your home. At the administration/governments table you can be given real problems to solve. Heck, they I think there should be real problems at the table that the church is trying to solve! They say that the church body are servant leaders or something like that! Wisdom and knowledge would be fun tables to set up too. I’m not quite sure how we’d do the one for tongues…

MOVING ON!

We went to the beach! We went to Cape Lookout where we had reserved a Deluxe Cabin which comes complete with bathroom, heat, tv/dvd, electricity, beds, chairs, paper towels… but no plates. Man, we were missing those plates!

Here are a few pictures of us in our cozy cabin.


Anna was a little tipsy on the futon:

One thing I never noticed when I went to the Tilamook Cheese Factory some years ago; Tilamook stinks. Really bad. And the weather wasn’t stagnant either. It was full-blown November weather some of the time we were there and it still stinks! Waaaaay too many cows in that valley, I’m tellin’ you! So we didn’t go to the Cheese Factory this time. Weren’t too excited about going back through Tilamook.

Sunday was lovely! The sun was out and it was pretty and not windy. We happily unpacked into our cabin which I was thrilled with. There was room for Anna’s floor blanket! I had worried about that. Anyway, we bundled up a little and went for a walk on the beach. The beach is kind of neat in that there is a wide strip of rocks along the land before the sand. I think it is probably man-made to slow erosion. When the tide is in and the waves crash against and then run down those rocks, it really rumbles as the rocks roll.

Here are some pictures from our first beach walk.



This is a strange/cool little bubbling spring in the beach:

Brian on his log:

Me on my rock… I got there just in time.

It’s a beautiful place:

We discovered that our cabin had a nice gas grill. We were expecting a cheapo briquette one. It had a picnic table and fire pit too, but the weather didn’t really hold for that. We decided to buy some steak and other yummies for dinner instead of eating out. Yum! We wisely bought almost 2 lbs. of steak, a bag of carrots, two tubs of ranch dip (they were buy one get one free!), some crackers, some cream cheese, some sharp and pepper jack cheese (not Tilamook, Lucerne… it was cheaper, strangely!) and some grapes. I was disgusted to find out later that we had spent over $8 on those grapes. ARGH! Why didn’t i look to see they were like $100/lb. before we bought them??? Stupid grapes.

We enjoyed our dinner. Without plates. We ate our steak in bowls. We shared the knife. We ate it with crackers and cheese. Waaaaay better than eating out, right? Ok, so that’s enough of that for now. We slept just fine. Anna had a coughing fit the following morning during her early-morning feeding (she wakes up about 5 and then goes back to bed). This isn’t that big of a deal… unless you have to let out a huge feeding belch at the same time. Yeah… she spewed her entire breakfast all over me. EEeeeew!

Let’s see. That was Monday. The weather looked ok, gray and breezy, but not rainy. We spent the morning writing letters, reading adoption and parenting books, and working on our adoption homestudy “Personal Information” packet.

We were getting a little antsy just sitting around (especially Brian) so we decided to go on a hike. About a third of the way up the 90% vertical 5 mile hike we have a decision to make. Mama’s pooped. Anna’s starting to fall asleep in the carrier on her chest. The rain is starting to get serious. We decide to make it to the end of the leg but instead of coming back down the treacherous trail (hard for me to see over Anna’s bulk when going downhill) we would walk back on the road. Probably faster too.

Thank goodness Anna slept. It was a long and very, very, very, very, very wet hike. We made it. All 5 miles. (about) I was wet and cold and hurting. Brian was soggy. Anna was toasty, warm and rested. The little stinker wanted to play when we got back! I had her wrapped in her snowsuit and Brian’s jacket and covered with the top of my scarf!

Here’s some pictures from this hike:
Me and Anna just as we were heading out:

Video of us on the way home:

That night we took the 40 mile way to Pacific City for dinner. Brian said he hadn’t seen rain like that since he was in Africa. It was impressive. On the way home we picked the right road and went back in less than 10 miles. There was a big tree down, but somebody official was already working on it.

This is taking way to long.

Tuesday we did a lot of the same stuff in the cabin but enjoyed leftover Thanksgiving food for dinner. We went on a walk on the beach in the sun and got SOAKED when the blue sky poured rain on us. I’m serious! We ran back to the cabin and vowed to stay there since the coastal weather obviously was angry at us.

Wednesday we packed up fairly early and trekked home.

We had a blast.

Here are more pictures!

Before the rain… see, BLUE SKY!!!:

Awwww:

Here we are again at the end of the trip:

Hi Papa! Look at me in my snow suit! They finally took me out of the carrier and this is fun!

Watching the waves:

Reflected waves are cool:

Anna just hanging out and daddy turning the camera:

Just standing around: