Veteran's Day at the Beach

Josh and I decided a while ago that sometime this fall/winter season we would head to the beach for a night just to get away before our daughter joins us. We didn't really have a date picked out, just sometime before she gets here. Well, Josh played in a golf tournament with work and won a putting competition which got us a free night at any Shilo Inn... so... we decided to put the two together and visit the Shilo Inns in Seaside. Of course with the free night came a few restrictions... cannot use between Memorial Day and Labor Day... cannot use on long holiday weekends, cannot use on Friday or Saturday nights... well. We didn't want to take a lot of time off of work, since I'd rather Josh use that time when our daughter is born, so we called and found out Shilo Inn didn't count Veteran's Day as a holiday weekend. Worked for us.

I had the day off already, and took the Friday after off anyway. I waited for Josh to get home from work and we headed off to Seaside. It poured on us the whole way there, but mostly stopped by the time we pulled in. We had dinner at Doogers and headed back to our room. It was great, 3rd floor, king size room with a kitchen and fireplace overlooking the ocean. I could have stayed all week! When we woke up Friday morning it was gorgeous out! The sun was shinning and it was getting warmer. When I say warmer of course I mean mid to high 50's, but still for an Oregon November it was great. We wondered around Seaside, did a little Christmas shopping, had breakfast at Pig n' Pancake... my favorite, and headed in to wander around Cannon Beach. I didn't wear a jacket all day, it was amazing.

On our way home we decided to head to Tillamook to tour the cheese factory and get some yummy ice cream. Then it was off to home, which of course is when the rain started again... not until we were in the car for 5 minutes. While we were originally planning on doing some storm watching on our little get away when we thought of it months ago, this ended up working out quite well... and we're sure the storms will still be there for another time.

Halloween at the Japanese Gardens

Every year I've been wanting to go see the Portland Japanese Gardens as Autumn hits... although we've never made it until this year. It was hard to wait until the leaves were changing when we had such gorgeous weather before all the rain hit. Well, yesterday, Halloween, just happened to be a dry day even with a few patches of blue sky. Hard to believe after such a gray rainy day today. We we not the only ones who had the idea to go to the gardens, but either way it was great to see all the fall colors, I love the Japanese Maples... the only time I like shades of orange! Here are a few pics from our outing.