It is time once again to celebrate Ryan Garner Day. Every year we celebrate the day we finalized our kids' adoptions. Ryan's adoption became final in July. In the past we have left Abby with a sitter so he could have a special day alone with Daddy and Mommy, but this year we made it a family celebration.
We gave Ryan a couple of options and let him choose which he wanted to do. He chose going to the beach. Usually when we go to the beach, we go to Seaside, Oregon, but this time we decided to try Long Beach, Washington, instead. It's about the same distance from our home, and there are lots of things to do there.
Holding a fist full of fish food.
We had a yummy breakfast at Hump's, a favorite local restaurant. Then as we were driving, Daddy made an unplanned stop at the Gnat Creek Fish Hatchery. There are tons of hatcheries in the area, but we have never taken the kids to any of them. It turned out to be really fun. They had some huge sturgeon to see and lots of good sized trout too. The best part was feeding them!
We arrived at Long Beach at about 11:30 and approximately 61 degrees...burrrr. It was overcast and a little windy, but actually the cool temperature didn't feel too terribly cold. It didn't faze the kids at all, of course. They dived right in to the sand with their shovels and bulldozer. Daddy built a cool sand castle, with Ryan and Abby's help. The tide was out when we arrived, and it took four hours for it to get to our castle.
We had kept the kids out of the water most of the time (the tide was WAY out there, fortunately), but they got into the water the last half hour, and they had a blast! It was still only about 62 degrees and the wind had picked up. They were shivering and getting goosebumps, but they still didn't want to leave. Ryan was very brave about getting in the water this time. Daddy took them out so they could jump the bigger waves, and they all ended up getting wet up to about their waists.
Finally our sand castle was gone, and though the sun had at last came out, the wind and cool temp sent us back to the van. We changed clothes and went to dinner. We got wonderful clam chowder, along with fish and chips at our favorite local seafood chain, Doogers.
inside the lines of kites coloring page.
Now that we had food in our tummies, we got our second wind and went to play on some rides. Ryan said he wanted to ride the carousel, but after he got in there, he kind of freaked out about getting on the horse. He's terribly afraid of being up high. He managed to make it through the ride, and then we went on the bumper cars, his favorite! Mommy and Abby rode too, so we didn't get any pictures.
but Daddy did manage to get a smile out of him.
After the rides, we took a walk and browsed through a couple stores, and one of the store keepers gave both Ryan and Abby their choice of a blue glass decoration. Ryan chose the starfish. Then we walked some more and let Ryan chose dessert. He chose Elephant Ears, so we ate our dessert and headed home. It was a full day, but we all had a wonderful time.
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