15 hours of driving later...

This weekend, my Portland friend, Courtney, planned a "friends with kids" weekend at the Oregon Coast.  She doesn't have any kids yet, but decided it would be fun to have all her friends with kids get together at a beach house at the coast.  She said that all the families with babies always had to miss out on fun things because they didn't want to be the one couple with a baby on weekend getaways.  So, this weekend was a "babies only" (plus Court and Sean) weekend and it was so much fun!!!  We loaded in the car on Friday (10:30 departure) and arrived in Lincoln City at around 6:00 pm.  We thought we were going to go insane from traffic and couldn't believe how well Evan did, but we were excited to be there.  The house was awesome.  It was a huge 4 bedroom house complete with a hot tub, brand new flat screen tvs (since the old ones had been stolen as part of a break-in earlier that day), plenty of space, and some pretty extravagant mint green paint throughout the whole house.  (There was also a pesky raccoon that lived outside the front door that we were a little worried about, but were lucky to not see lurking in the middle of the night).

Court and Sean were already there when we arrived and, in true Sean style, some delicious organic Potato/Leek soup was brewing on the stove.  We got settled, ate our delicious dinner, talked, caught up, put Evan to bed and got into our competitive evening of game playing.  Courtney and I got beat pretty bad at Milles Bourne and then again at Trivial Pursuit, but we had a great time!

In the morning, the other couples and their kids arrived and we made our way down to the coast.  Evan loved the water and loved seeing all the dogs down there.  It was a little cold, a little windy and the Hawkeyes were playing Michigan so we headed back to the house.  After a good football game and a nap for the baby, we had another yummy, homemade soup, made -with love- by Sean.  It was tortilla soup with beans, corn, tomatoes, onions, chili's, and something else spicy.  It was the chunkiest soup I have ever seen and, I have to admit, I was a little nervous about it when I saw all the ingredients going in.  For the record - I do not like tomatoes, onions, chili's or something else spicy.  Or at least I didn't think it did... When the soup was dished up, I decided that I needed to stop being a baby (after all, one of the babies was actually eating the soup!) - CHUNKS and all.  Sean dished me up my vegetarian version, I put a thin layer of cheese on top to hide the ingredients underneath, dug my spoon in, closed my eyes, and took a bite.  DELICIOUS.  Bite after bite, I loved it.  It was a weird moment for me.  Mentally, there were so many things that I don't like in the soup that I was convinced I wouldn't like it - and if I looked at it too long my head started taking over and would make my spoon pick out big chunks of onion and casually sneak them into Steve's bowl.  BUT after all was said and done, I ate a huge bowl of the soup and was astonished that I had done it.  As I sat there thoroughly enjoying the soup, I made a silent vow to myself to stop being so lame about food and to start trying things with a little less hesitation.

That night, we re-visited the trivial pursuit game - (lawyers vs. non-lawyers) and we redeemed ourselves!

It was an awesome time and I am glad that we made the trek down.  I am also glad that I have a friend like Courtney who plans fun things, and that she married someone like Sean, who makes chunky soup that tastes really good.