the second (and longer) half of my july vacation took place in rockaway beach, OR with the fam. every time i share this information my head starts singing,

Rock a bye baby on the tree top

When the wind blows

The cradle will rock

When the bow breaks

The cradle will fall

But I will save baby

Cradle and all

this was almost distressing as the shortcut via national parks i took to get to the beach from medford. though a lot less pretty, i suppose. shel silverstein has it correctly when he says:

Rockabye Baby, in the treetop

Don’t you know a treetop

is no safe place to rock?

And who put you up there,

and your cradle too?

Baby, I think someone down here

has got it in for you!

rockaway really had nothing to do with treetops or babies. toddlers, yes, babies, no.

we were there from sunday to saturday which is a really long time at the beach. i’m not complaining, because it was awesome and my lovely friends nuala and kristen took turns playing with my kittens to appease my fear at leaving them alone. still though, 6 nights. looooong. i read sooo many books. i took an entire paper bag up with me and read all but 2 of them. plus i bought several more and read 1 of those so far (‘lucinda, darkly‘ by sunny.) and i’m almost done with verne’s ‘journey to the center of the earth‘ [$1.75!] which i’m pretty sure has no relevance to ‘journey to the center of the earth 3D‘. i’m seeing it in all its 3D glory tonight anyway. so excited.

we took turns cooking too which gave us the chance to sample others’ culinary skills. i made curried crab nests and nectarine galette on the night my mom and i made dinner. she made everything else (flaky phyllo halibut, corn on the cob, and apple-cranberry salad.) sure there was a disproportionate amount of cooking on her side compared to mine. but my appetizer and dessert were a smashing success!

there was delicious trips to the tillamook cheese factory where i had fresh ice cream, cheese samples, and fudge. and we went to astoria and cannon beach both of which i love. there was kite flying and dam building and hot-tubbing. it was an excellent vacation with some of my favorite relatives (i wish adam, erin, and evan could have come too. and my uncles dick and dave and their fams were supposed to come but didn’t end up making it. still we had the mary fam and the peter excellence so it was pretty sweet.)

rest of the pictures here.