"The real meaning of travel, like that of a conversation by the fireside, is the discovery of oneself through contact with other people, and its condition is self-commitment in dialogue." -Dr. Paul Tournier
Thursday was to be our last full day in our beautiful beach house. We did our best to ignore this inevitable fact and to just cherish our last day in Newport.
Jonah had purchased a kite at our favorite kite shop in Lincoln and was dying to get out on the beach to try it out. He was up bright and early, with kite in hand.
Neil tried to teach Jonah the fine art of kite-flying, but Jonah is the poster child for "I'll do it myself". So Neil and I spent a lot of time chasing down a fallen kite.
Spencer and Sabrina went on one last sand dollar expedition. This was a beautiful morning!
Everyone was hungry for breakfast, and we had not yet ventured over to our favorite pancake house. Pig N' Pancake. It wouldn't be Oregon without it. We love that the place was founded by Scandinavians and that it offers authentic Swedish pancakes, complete with lignon berries. That's usually what Mom orders. The kids were a little skeptical about the lignon berries, so they opted for a good substitute for Swedish pancakes, that being crepes.
Jonah was all about the sand dollar pancakes.
Once we had finished gorging on pancakes and sausage, it was time to check out the Newport Aquarium, another Oregon Coast must see.
We never get bored of watching those cute little sea otters. You can't help but want to take one home with you. But we resisted since the signs said that it was mating season, and as a result the otters were all a little on edge, and would we tourists kindly not provoke them by trying to play with them through the glass? Apparently, you don't want to mess with a horny otter.
There were sea urchins and star fish to touch and jelly fish to marvel at.
And exotic fish to behold and hope never to encounter outside of a safe aquarium environment. There are some creepy critters floating about in the depths of the ocean.
We got back to the house and chilled for the afternoon. Jessica drew in her new sketch book.
Sabrina played with her favorite Lincoln City souvenir...we lovingly refer to him as "Super Monkey". You haven't lived unless you've been unexpectedly hit in the face by flying Super Monkey. The beach house was alive with his monkey call. It was an appropriate souvenir for Sabrina who is fluent in monkey. Not only can she speak it proficiently, but she can sing any opera in monkey, and can spit out a mean rendition of Eine Kleine Nacht Musik in her monkey voice. She and Super Monkey were kindred spirits.
Angie was craving some good Chinese food at the end of the night. We got the kids some fast food, then we adults snuck away to Bayfront Newport for some real dinner.
The Noodle Cafe was one of those hole in the wall type establishments that serves amazing food. I think the seating capacity was about 14 people. Good thing we left the kids home. Our party of nine might have caused the cute Asian hostess some anxiety. And the food might have caused the kids some anxiety. Let's just say that my children don't have very mature palettes.
But we adults had a delightful evening. The view was lovely.
And the food, delicious!
We stopped on the way home so that I could get a picture of my favorite bridge. There's that evening light again. I'm telling you, it's the only time to sight-see.
We got home in just enough time to hot tub with the kiddos. We had wonderful conversations that cool night with the big dipper looming above us and the ocean roaring beneath us. We tucked Jonah into his special loft bedroom for the last time. One thing we knew, it was going to be hard to watch all of this come to an end.
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