Beach Get-away

Heather and I decided a while ago that we both needed to get away from it all for a weekend, so we chose the beach for New Year's. We packed up the girls and headed to the Ocean Park beach house on New Year's Eve. We weren't sure if we'd make it, since Jillian had come down with a fever that morning. But, Jillian had been so excited about finally going swimming, and going to the beach, that we decided to load her up with meds and go for it.

On the way to the beach, we stopped at the Astoria Aquatic Center to go swimming, figuring to do it first. Unfortunately, it was closed for the day. When we told Jillian we couldn't swim today, she started welling up. It was a heart-wrenching look on her face. We calmed her down by telling her we'd come back the next day. Then, we headed for the beach house. In place of the pool, we tried going to the beach (it would turn out to be our only trip there), but when we went outside, it was so cold that Jillian was begging to go to the house. It was freezing outside, but it was nice and warm in the beach house, thanks to Otto turning the heat on ahead of us.

We thought it was going to be a quiet and relaxing trip, but it wasn't. Jillian's fever was still pretty high, even with the Ibuprofen. She was pretty miserable, and the congestion in her throat was causing her to gag and hurl, or "spit" as she called it. It was a long, long night. We didn't do much to celebrate the new year, other than try to sleep.

Thankfully, Jillian's fever broke on New Year Day. So, we at breakfast and packed up for the pool. The pool was decently warm, though we had to stay in the water to keep from getting cold. Daddy and Jillian played in the pool, while Mommy and Bridget took off for Costco and Starbucks. Jillian was very daring in the water, going into some pretty deep areas, and getting herself wet up to her head. She still doesn't like getting her head or face wet, but she sure liked to get Daddy wet. One of her favorite things was to push Daddy's head into the water. Jillian was in the pool for about 2 hours, and was still going strong despite being a bit under the weather. When it was over, she slept all the way home.

The rest of the trip was just laying around and watching TV, playing games, reading books and such. Bridget did something pretty cool, which is in the next post. We had a lot of fun watching, and Jillian thought it was kind of funny, letting us know about it each time it happened. We went to bed early, and got a decent sleep. Then, we got up, packed up quick and headed home to watch volleyball.