8.17.10 -- Hello, Nostalgia!

When I was a junior in high school, Donna and Craig (the parents of the children I nannied for since I was 12) entrusted my girlfriends and I with the keys to their beach house. I will never forget our first trip to the beach. We were 16 years old and we thought that it was AMAZING to have such freedom. We were not what you would consider a wild and crazy bunch, but we thought we were pretty cool. Their beach house was in Tolovana Park (near Cannon Beach). We got lost the first time we went for a walk on the beach (we hadn't bothered to pay attention to which set of stairs led back up to the house) and had to walk on the street to get our bearings and figure out how to get there. After that walk, we learned to pay attention to the hippo-monkey rock (a psychological test for every person we would ever allow to venture on a trip with us) and we never got lost again. On the same trip, we had talked to friends who were going to be at the beach the same weekend. As this was time before cell phones, we gave them the number to the beach house to meet up with them at some point. We decided to take the phone with us out to go in the hot tub in case they decided to call. Being that we are girls and tend to scare easily, we had compulsively been locking doors. When we got out of the hot tub we realized we locked ourselves out of the house...oops. This would turn into something I would still hear about a decade later. We had to call a locksmith who came to the house to find three girls in bikinis staying warm in the hot tub while he figured out that the locks were too rusty to get in and he had to put new locks on the house...and this was just the first trip of many to the house.

Going to the beach became common place for us. We spent a few weekends there each year at the generosity of Donna and Craig and it always was our retreat. It was a place we could go and relax and just enjoy time away. I have some of the best friends in the world and some of my best memories all come from that house. Sitting in the chair in the living room reading a book, listening to the ocean and looking at haystack rock made me remember all of those good times today. I am so blessed and fortunate to still be close with the friends who gave me these wonderful memories. No matter how much time goes by or how infrequent conversations may be, these are going to be some of my best friends for the rest of my life and I am so incredibly fortunate.

I made a discovery when I went to lock the doors -- Donna and Craig replaced all of the doors in the house so they only have deadbolts. I guess they didn't want anyone else to lock themselves out :)

I taught Lucas to play Blockis today. He beat me.
In high school and college, this bed could fit at least three of us. Last night, Lucas proved to me that apparently he needs a king sized bed to sleep comfortably. He was kind enough to give me about 8 inches to sleep on. I don't understand why he insisted that we share the big bed...I think he would have been happier having a bed all to himself!