Ryan's Day 2008

The kids look forward to their special day every year. It's a special day where we thank God for putting them into our family, and we celebrate it each year on the day we finalized their adoptions. Ryan has been saying for months that he wanted to go to the beach for "Ryan's Day," and so when we asked him if he'd like to go camping at the beach too, he was very excited!


Unfortunately, Daddy struggled with a migraine most of the weekend, but Saturday (Ryan's Day) was the worst. After the kids and I got up and had some breakfast, we decided to ride our bikes over to a large sand dune in the campground and let Daddy sleep off the shot he had given himself and hopefully the migraine too. This was the first time we have taken the bikes with us, and it was fun to ride around the campground. (Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera with me!)


We met Daddy on our ride back to the campsite. His head was still hurting, but he felt good enough to take a ride into Tillamook. We drove into town and hit a few of the local spots (we were doing a multi-cache geocache which took us to the main attractions in town), one of which was the Blue Heron Premium Cheese Company. Daddy and I had been here before, but this was the first time we'd taken the kids. We quickly browsed the gift shop (okay, the kids had to use the bathroom), sampled some smoked brie (yum), and then headed out to the main attraction for the kids...the petting farm and old machinery.


We have noticed an interesting phenomenon with Ryan: Whenever we go camping, he seems to push away his fears and be braver than usual. Last year he slept in his own tent, and this year he climbed trees (he's usually terrified of things like that) and willingly fed the farm animals and alpaca (he typically is very skittish and stays away from them). Go figure.




We managed to pry Ryan away from the heavy machinery by letting him choose where we ate lunch...McDonald's. After eating lunch, they played in the play place for awhile. Once we dangled the Tillamook Cheese Factory & Ice Creamery in front of Ryan, he was ready to leave MickeyD's and go have some dessert!


See, I was there too!
The place was packed! We even had to park in the overflow parking, which we'd never done before. Despite the crowds, the wait in line wasn't very long and we even found a table fairly quickly. We ate our ice cream, looked at the Morning Star ship dry docked in the front of the creamery, and then we headed back to the campground.


Ryan wanted to go back to the beach, so that's what we did. I stayed in my jeans because I about froze the last time we went down there, but the kids assured me they needed to go in the water this time so they wore their swimsuits (so did Daddy, who regretted it later). We dug a long trench, Ryan played with his bulldozer, and Abby pretty much just dug in the sand the whole time.


Despite the temperature being in the 70s, the wind was blowing so hard off the ocean that it was really chilly (typical of the Oregon coast). Dismissing my warnings that they would get REALLY cold, the kids decided to get into the water. They had great fun...for about 10 minutes before Abigail decided it was entirely too cold (didn't I say it would be?) and she wanted to go back to the campsite!


Ryan, however, was undaunted by the icy water and blowing wind. He happily ran in the waves a while longer. I finally had to take Abby back to the more sheltered campsite and build a fire to warm her up (I confess, I was happy to go!), but Daddy and Ryan stayed a bit longer, playing in the water and sand and building a sand castle.


We ended the day with a hot dog roast, which is one of the things Ryan most wanted to do on his special day. It wasn't exactly how Ryan had planned the day to go, but he had a great time nonetheless. We are so blessed to have him for our son, and it is fun to make a big deal of it each year. We love you, Ryan!