The Ramos Family: Malachi's first beach trip!

Well, if you don't count when he was 2 months old! haha We headed to Lincoln City on Monday morning after my OB appointment. My parents were staying in a condo there and invited us to stay with them that night since it was Natalie's anniversary. Monday turned out to be stormy and crummy weather, so we went to Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport. I remember going there as a kid with my parents, so I thought it was pretty neat to be able to take Malachi there. We saw lots of fish and creatures, but his favorite by far were the three "Nemo" fish in a small tank near the beginning of the exhibit. He went back to that tank over and over again yelling (no matter how hard we tried to get him to talk quieter!!!) "Me-mo, me-mo!!!"...very cute! He didn't want to touch anything in the petting pool...I don't think he liked to texture of the anemone he tried first. We saw real crabs...very exciting!!...and he loved this little computer game where you were supposed to "catch" the crabs running across the screen, except he tried doing it with his hands and was yelling "go, go, go!!!" whenever one would appear. He sat in Grammy's lap for several minutes working at this one! After dinner, we headed back to the condo where Grammy had a new Lighting McQueen beach ball for him to play with and my mom and I went to the outlet stores to shop for baby clothes. Children's place was having a massive sale with $.99, $1.99, $2.99 racks. My mom got us next year's Christmas jammies for both Sapphira and Malachi for $1.99 a piece and lots of cute clothes for Sapphira! Our proudest achievement was a little flowered corduroy jumper for $1.99 that she can wear for Easter if she is here in time. So fun!!!
Tuesday, after Malachi's nap, we decided to go a beach with tidal pools that my parents had heard about. We ended up going to a different one, but who cared...we all had so much fun! Malachi hadn't been to the beach since he was 2 months old and everything was so exciting. The "oco" (ocean) was quite fascinating, as were the shells grammy picked up for him and all the rocks along the beach. This beach was mostly rocks instead of sand which was kind of nice since we weren't full of sand when we left!! :) My dad pulled a big long kelp out of the water and Malachi looked at the "snake" for quite a while. Malachi thought it was great to find the biggest rocks he could pick up and throw them into the water. We played for over an hour and came home with windblown cheeks. We headed home after that and Malachi fell asleep in the car...3 hours before his bed time!!! That's one tired puppy!! Here are some pictures...