Ocean Shores

My sister, Tami, lives in N. Carolina, she was at my parent's house until last Sunday when she went home. This last week was the first week my dad was alone at his house since my mom died ( I have a hard time saying the polite word, passed, I feel like saying she died is more blunt, and I need to hear that in my own head to completely wrap my head around the fact that she's gone).

Anyway, we thought at least one of us should be there for my dad this last weekend, and I was going to go. However, on Thursday my dad decided he needed to get away and invite my other 2 sisters and me to go to Ocean Shores with him. So off we went.

I had to take Maddox because I had no one to watch him on Saturday, so it was the 5 of us.

This trip was the first step in healing ( if that's possible) and moving forward without one of the most important people in our family unit.  I don't have a lot to say about the trip, so I guess I'll just put up the pictures. 

 The first morning we were there I walked out to the beach to watch the sunrise (well, the sun rose behind me, but the sky was beautiful over the ocean in front of me).  While I was standing there, 2 eagles flew right over my head. 

 My Mom loved to geocache.  If you don't know what it is, it's like an adult version of a treasure hunt.  People put out tokens (or coin) in caches, and then you go find them. If you find one, you can register that you found it.  You can also take them out and put them in a different cache.  They also have traveling tokens (I know I'm not using the right words), that's where someone puts on in a cache with the intent on it getting to a specific destination.  My dad sent one to my sister in N. Carolina once.  In fact, my dad put one in my Mom's coffin, he had the coin number on the memorial "brochure" for the people from their local geocaching group that came to the funeral. 

Anyway, my dad made 3 tokens out of some bath toys that were whales, my Mom loved whales.  My sister in N. Carolina took one and put it in a cache there, my dad put one in a cache in eastern WA and then we went looking for a cache in Ocean Shores to put the third one in.

 While we were eating lunch we noticed some tshirts around the pizza place for a fun run.  We asked when it was and we were told it was the next day . . . and we were there during packet pickup.  So I registered for the 10K.  =) 

 We spend some time on the beach.  Maddox bought this moose hat a month or so ago for the school's Dr. Seuss week.  Maddox loves it.  He also spent a lot of time digging in the sand.  It started out as a treasure hunt, then he was a dog, then he started putting "treasure" in the holes he was digging (rocks or shells).  He did it so much I was surprised his fingers weren't raw the next day. 

 We went to Sharkey's (a store) to see what it was about.  The store wasn't really cool, but the door outside was pretty cool.

My Dad

Maddox

 We spent quite a long time at the beach at sunset on Saturday evening.  There were a lot of tears.  And a lot of silent moments. 

 After the sunset we came back to the hotel and there were some deer behind the hotel.  The baby deer got pretty close to Maddox, but when it realized Maddox didn't have any food it ran away. 

 My family was nice enough to wait to check out of the hotel until after I ran my race.  My dad went to the start of the race with me while my sisters packed the hotel up.  The first half of the race was on a street paralleling the beach and the second half was along the beach.  I was a little worried about the sand, but in Washington you're allowed to drive on the beach (which I'm not a fan of), so with that and the off and on rain all weekend the sand was pretty packed and it was super easy to run on.  In fact I ran the second half faster than the first half. 

Overall, the weekend was good.