Cannon Beach 2011 - Day Three

On Thursday - our last full day at the beach - was spent mostly on the beach. We went back to the place we took our wedding photos to snap some with Elli. I set up the tripod to get a photo of all three of us like we got for our wedding. :) Next year there will be one more! :) 

Sorry this post is mostly photos. I need to take notes on vacation so I can remember what to blog about! :) 

Such a happy girl running through the sand!

The us shot we always have to get.

Max was in heaven!

After running on the beach, the kiddos ran some more in the grass!

We had lunch at Bill's Tavern and enjoyed sitting outside so Max could join us! Ray enjoyed one of their brews while I enjoyed more water and another salad. 

After naptime we went back out to the beach to check out the tide pools. Elli wanted to hold Max's leash so she had a blast walking him. She laughed and giggled the entire time!

The tide pools were pretty cool - next year will probably be more exciting for Elli. She did slip here and hit her head on a rock - at least she didn't fall too hard!

I have no idea why she is super grump here but it was making me laugh. 

I love these shots. She goes from super happy....

to sad face...

to hiding her face and crying...oh so dramatic!

This girl could've spent hours in this freezing water! Her legs starting getting red she was so cold yet she still didn't want to go inside!

This night for dinner we tried out the new mexican restaurant in town. It was very slow - we were the only people there when we showed up at 6pm but the food was pretty good. I even bought the family dinner with my Scentsy money! :) 

Cannon Beach 2011 - Day Two

On Wednesday we took our time getting ready and out the door to enjoy the town. We did a little window shopping still since most of the stores don't open until 10am. While walking we stopped at this place, on of the only open, Bella Espresso. With all the years we have been coming here we never stopped here...we were missing out! I enjoyed a little coffee and Ray got this delicious cinnamon roll! 

 We spent most of the day just walking around town shopping - my favorite thing to do! :) We love Bruce's Candy Kitchen and got some yummy candy! They had an adorable clock that was perfect for Elli's room but I didn't want to spend $45 on a hand painted piece of wood...I guess I'm a little cheap.

We stopped at lunch at a new place in downtown - Cheri's Cafe. It was a nice lunch with a lot of beautiful artwork all over the walls. All the prints and paintings and art were for sale also so was like more lunch while shopping! :)

This was my lunch at Cheri's - a shrimp melt with a side salad - DELISH! The roll the shrimp melt was on was fresh and homemade at the store and really made the sandwich!

 I had fun putting hats on Elli - she didn't enjoy it as much though.

 Oh how I love this girl! She played in this fountain for close to 20 minutes!

 Time to walk the beach!

 This was right before a huge wave came in and drenched us! Elli didn't care about being cold though! She didn't want to get out of the water!

One of my favorite purchases of the trip! These handmade aprons are sewn by a 91 year old woman! This one was adorable and perfect to do some baking with my Elli!

Cannon Beach 2011 - Day One

We go to Cannon Beach, OR every year to celebrate our anniversary. We started going in 2006 as a birthday present for Ray and after going in 2006 and 2007 we decided it was the perfect place for us to get married! We didn't get to celebrate there in 2009 since I was 8 months pregnant - I didn't want to be in the car for 4 hours!

This year we were especially excited to go because Ell is at such a fun age right now! We left on Tuesday morning about 10am and stopped first at Southcenter to pick up Ray's new ring and lunch. By the time we finished with that it was about noon. The drive there was pretty good. Elli slept for about an hour and woke up when we took a stretch break at a rest stop. She has fun doing everything - even just walking Max around for 5 minutes! The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful - although we did have a few fun times signing and dancing like crazy to Elli's music!

Walking in our front door

We stayed at The Ocean Lodge this year which is a sister property of where we normally stay. And all I could say at first was 'OH MY!' This place was absolutely stunning! Our room was so large! It had a separate bedroom, good size bathroom and a living room with a kitchenette. The view from our room was gorgeous! We were only 10 steps from the beach! Since it was almost 5 by the time we had unpacked we took a quick run to the beach so we could put our toes in the sand! Elli took a few minutes to figure out that she loved it but soon she started shoveling away and burying her 'piggies'.

View from our room!

That night we went to dinner at our favorite restaurant, Morris' Fireside Restaurant, which is in the heart of downtown. This is where we had dinner with our family after our wedding. Last year I ordered too much food and was uncomfortably stuffed so I played it safe and only ordered clam chowder this year - seriously the best clam chowder I've ever had! Ray had his favorite, fish and chips, and Elli had a grilled cheese sandwich. A great dinner out and very relaxing night.

Vacationing with a little one is a little tougher because we have to be in the room to get Elli to bed so after Elli was down Ray went downstairs to borrow a DVD so we spent the evening in front of the fire and watching 'Due Date'. Our first day was wonderful and I was glad we didn't overdo it when we first got there - it felt nice to relax a bit!