More part two, more of the coast....

Wednesday morning dawned with.....well you guessed it.....more rain. Despite Mom and Jack's scoldings that I needed to stop worrying about the weather, you could tell that everyone kind of thought it sucked. I mean, rain is part of the Oregon coast. You totally expect some rain. You don't expect a dousing downpour that lasts all day and doesn't even let up long enough to let you go beach combing. That sucks no matter how you spin it.

However we persevered. After a yummy breakfast of Mom's scrambled eggs, bacon, and fruit, we headed for the Coast's shopping mecca - one of the largest outlet malls in the state. And remember folks, there's no sales tax in Oregon. Sweet. So we shopped till we dropped, had ice cream (seeing a theme yet?), mom bought the girls adorable rain coats, and we generally had a good time and even managed to say fairly dry. Then we scrunched back in the van and headed South on 101 to Newport - the Oregon Coast Aquarium was next on our agenda.

The coast aquarium is really neat. It has both indoor and outdoor exhibits and focuses mostly on sea life from around the Pacific Northwest. The bummer is that it's hard to visit the outdoor exhibits when it's pouring down rain. Which of course, it was. It did let up briefly during the seal feeding so that was nice but otherwise we spent the next few hours feeling perpetually damp and running in and out of the building trying to see everything. The kids thought it was rockin' and they didn't even seem to notice the weather, so honestly in my eyes that made it all worth it. I even managed not to shudder when the girls played with the crabs and who knows what else in the touch tank - and AGAIN, if you missed it the first time around, the one and ONLY time you ever want to hear anyone say that they have crabs is at the aquarium touch tank. Rules to live by.

After the aquarium we were honestly pretty tuckered out so we went back to our glorious little beach house and Skippy made spaghetti. The girls watched The Wizard of Oz (and giggled through my Mom's awesome dance renditions), the sofa bed tried to eat us, and everyone generally had a great evening.

Tomorrow I'll tell ya all about Thursday and our kick ass trip to THE LIGHTHOUSE. Brace yourselves folks, it just gets more and more exciting.