Surfing into 2014

Instead of getting each other Pez dispensers and fruit cakes for Christmas, we decided to forgo this thousand year tradition and go to the Coast together for New Year's Eve. We made a reservation for the Elizabeth Street Inn in Newport, and after arriving New Years Eve, quickly decided that this was how we should have been doing it for years! (What were thinking when we were five?!)

Our quick two day trip included dinner at a beachside grill (best garden burgers in Newport), Ben and Jerry's ice cream while we watched a Red Box on the big screen TV (all while the fire burned and waves crashed down below -- I was in heaven), a much-too-long game of Scrabble (I refuse to play that game with the man anymore -- he took five days just to play one word!), cran-apple sparkling cider in plastic cups, and watching the ball drop in Times Square as Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin giggled on CNN. On New Years day we woke up to beautiful sunny skies out our sliding glass door and ran down to the beach for a quick jaunter to the jetty. We then sat around and read our books by the fire until it was sadly time to check out. We just might have shed a real tear or two.

I heart fireplaces.

From our balcony.

On our morning jaunter.

Crabbing?

Did someone lose a tree?

I stalked this web-footed friend...

until it ran away.

Trust me. I don't have a thing for birds.

And then we found this "something-ray." We have no idea what it was, but something decided it wanted to take a bite out of it, nonetheless. It was squishy. And it smelled.

Tyler drowning his sorrows just before check-out.

 Before heading out of town we stopped by Yaquina Head and took a couple of hikes. The sun was out and the wind was nowhere to be found, so we were walking around feeling like it was the middle of June. And loving every minute of it. We scaled a small hill that overlooked the ocean, the lighthouse, and the Bay. The sun shimmered off the water as the waves crashed against the big lava-formed rocks. It was breathtaking. Tyler and I had purposefully not taken our camera with us, so that we would be forced to just enjoy the moments for what they were, and not for what we wanted to document later on. And they were moments I was reluctant to leave. There is just something about lighthouses and the ocean that get me every time. I told Tyler the same thing I say every time we go to the Coast. "Let's move here." And he always replies the same, "Ok."

In to 2014 we go.