We decided to take a mini-getaway in Sandy to stretch her tires so on Friday (8/21) we decided to head down to Seabrook to see how it has been developing.  We stopped in here two years ago as we had heard some good things about it and it has come a long way in those two years.  They probably have close to double the houses now, or at least working on double the houses, plus a grocery store and cafe.  We ate at the cafe and while it was not the cheapest fish and chips we have ever had, it was good, and we enjoy them with an Organic Fishtail Ale.

We took all of our multitudes of toys, blankets, kites, and baby gear down to the beach.  They really do have a lovely beach there and even though it was cool and overcast the sand was nice and warm.  I sprayed down Lauren with sunscreen and automatically she was a sand sculpture, the sand stuck everywhere.

We flew kites, and Lauren crawled everywhere.  She had a blast.  She even ate a few handfuls of it.  She hated the water though, didn’t want anything to do with it.  We look forward to going back and staying someday.  Lauren slept so well that night, we just wore her out with all the fun.

So the camping gear has mostly all come out of the van, kitchen items gone through the dishwasher and been repacked into their respective plastic totes.  Our friends Jess and Steven has borrowed our larger tent for a camping trip over the weekend and we are left trying to figure out the easiest way to organize the remaining items so we can find them when our next camping trip calls.  We think our next trip may be a kayak based trip over to Hope Island, we would love to do it this summer, but we will have to see how things pan out on that front.

My dream would be to create a storage bin that fits in the back of the van on a roller system as when the back door is up there are two small cupboards on the left and right and then a large rectangular opening that is a T shape, but getting anything into the top of the T, behind the cupboards is pretty hard.  So a roller system that would pull out into a large rectangle with a drop down leg so you could pull it out, pack it, push it in, then when you are the camp, pull it out and unpack it, plus then not have to worry about things getting caught in the guides for the seat (that turns into a bed) which is the problem we had before when we had our sleeping bags stored in the top of the T.  If we also had certain things packed into bins (like our camp kitchen) that fit easily into the pull out system it would make packing the van for a camping trip so much easier.  Now to do some measuring and see how it could easily, inexpensively, and strongly manufactured.  If it was easier to do we might actually do it more often as well, at the moment it is a bit of a chore to pack things up for camping.

She called yesterday and they arrived safely in Kansas on Monday.  The truck broke down in Oregon and they sat for 6.5 hours until it could be fixed.  They hit snow and below freezing temperatures in Colorado and were nervous with the roads and the very large truck.  They had high winds that were blowing the truck around a little.  On Sunday Wichita had tornado warnings and flooding, so when they arrived mid-day on Monday they had to go through detours to get to the house, but they are there, the truck is unloaded and so far the only  broken thing is one of her large pots.  It wasn’t broken on Sunday so mom thinks because of the  bumpy roads and freezing temperatures it got too cold and popped when they hit a bump, that is really too bad too.

She said most of the boxes are where they need to go and are being speedily unpacked, which is good, she did a lot of purging of stuff before she left so hopefully they just took the sentimental, important and essential items.  I forgot to ask how the cats did, she didn’t say anything about them so I am assuming they did fine and are glad to be out of their cage.  So three solid days of driving to get from WA to Kansas, good to know.