Thanksgiving Beach Trip

Happy belated Thanksgiving everybody! I hope that everybody's weekend was relaxing and filled with people and things to be thankful for - I know that mine was.

This time last year we were living the good life on beautiful Maui. With chilled vibes, warm weather, and amazing surfing - I definitely think that Hawaii is my spirit place. As one would imagine, taking a trip to Hawaii is the experience of a lifetime, and definitely one that I will never forget. That being said, I was very skeptical how this year's holiday would measure up in comparison to palm trees and turtles. Thankfully, however, our beach house turned out to be better than I could have hoped.

On Wednesday the 21st of November we packed the car, had some lunch, and began the 2-hour journey to the Oregon coast town, Manzanita. Hayley had a soccer tournament in San Diego over Thanksgiving break so she stayed home until her early morning flight the next day. While it was sad and weird not having her there for the holiday, it did leave Thorfinn and I more space in the car to spread out and sleep. After a winding and rainy drive, we eventually got to our beach house. The views were really beautiful and the beach-side location was amazing. I did get sliiiightly worried about what would happen if there was a tsunami but then I thought it was probably best to just not think about it. Always the best strategy, right?

After we were settled in, we put the fire on in the living room and sat chatting for a while. The first two days were really nice and cozy because we constantly had the fire on and it was pouring with rain outside. I don't know what it is about sitting curled up under a blanket with a fire while it's raining outside that feels so comforting, but it was really really nice. It was really relaxing and felt good to be able to chill for a bit. As part of my bucket list for my gap year (see my first post), I'm trying to read at least 50 books - I've only read 13 so far so I have a lot left to go. I had brought Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman with me to read next to the fire while I was there and it was actually pretty good. If you haven't read it yet I recommend it. It's based in Glasgow about a socially awkward woman who has a traumatic childhood and how she unearths the truth about what she has suppressed for years. If you're looking for a quick read, this one is perfect.

On Friday, after going for a walk along the beach, my dad and I drove up to the cliffside overlooking Treasure Cove and the length of the Manzanita coastline. The views were stunning but being as it had just rained, choosing to wear flip flops to walk through mud was not one of the better decisions I've made. But we got some nice pics so it was worth it (mostly).

Dinner that night was, I would say, a liiittle hectic and uncoordinated as my mum and dad had just gotten back from a distillery and wine tasting. I think you can probably guess where this story is going since alcohol and responsible decisions don't really work well together, so I'll let you infer how dinner making might have gone.

Two burns and some dropped chicken later, the food was ready... and was surprisingly good! I'll give
them credit: while they might have been uncoordinated, clumsy and easily distracted, they were somewhat functional and rallied pretty well to pull off a pretty good meal.

On a more fun note, I've decided to rewatch all of Game of Thrones before the new season comes out next year (yay!). For those of you that don't know, each episode is an hour long and filled with some pretty intense and awesome things - if you haven't watched it, you're definitely missing out. I watched 15 episodes during those 4 days. 15 precious hours of my life... gone. But it was totally worth it. There can never be too much Game of Thrones. Anyways, along with my antisocial tv watching, we played a lot of games of Uno, Go fish (Thorfinn's favourite game), and Bananagrams as a family. Since I'm leaving on the 3rd of December for the Netherlands, it was nice to be spending time with everybody (except Hayley) that I'm thankful for and to chill for a bit before the hectic Christmas and New Year celebrations start.

Well I hope you enjoyed my brief, somewhat unstructured description of our beach trip! I really appreciate you all taking the time to read this! More uncoordinated posts coming soon :)