My Life in Pictures: The White Room [dun dun DUN!]

Lucky for us, I've got a story to draw about today! It is short and sweet and sure to make you believe that I am a dork.

The time when I legitimately thought I was going to die.

My family owns a beach house here along the Oregon coast. It is a place of refuge from the drudgery of daily life and the noises of suburbia/city life. The Ericksen's Beach Abode houses family reunion, birthday celebrations, and even a Christmas morning or two. We have created many memories and look forward to all of the memories our family will make in the future. People come from all around America to also take refuge and enjoy what our little beach home has to offer.

However, I am slightly scared of sleeping there.

My life is such so that I had to get used to sleeping in noisy situations. Oldest child, roommates, traveling, living next to a busy road, etc. In fact, I now can only sleep with background noise. I can't be the last person to go to bed because it's too quiet in my apartment/house. I sleep with the window open so that I hear the cars/dogs/nature noises. I take comfort in people snoring in the next room over. This is my problem with our peaceful beach house. It's a little too quiet for this city girl. No cars. Well-insulated walls. Quiet neighbors. Even with the window open at night, it is silent. That gets into my head and I can't sleep at the beach house. I look forward to big family reunions because I get to share a room with someone. Get the picture? If not, I drew some for us.

A couple of trips ago, I begged my sister and mom to let me sleep with them, but they are those weird people who like the solitude and silence of sleeping in the beach house. Weirdos.
So I sucked it up and charged my iPod, ready to create noise and sleep like a big girl all by myself in the White Room (it's called that because white people like to name everything).  The White Room is the second scariest room in the beach house, next to the Red Room, which is freaky just in its name, but that's for another post.
Here is what normal people see when they see the White Room:

And here's how I see it: 

The first night, I'm delaying my sleepless night by reading and following my family around as they get ready for bed, which is their favorite activity to do with me. I finally decide that it's time for bed and should stop annoying hanging out with my family, so I get ready for bed, which includes making a sweep of the room to make sure there are no murderers. You know, like every normal adult does. I'm half-bracing myself to see something in one of the nooks of the room, so you can imagine what would happen if I were to actually see something. 

Well while I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth, my loving mom and sister, who know of my fears and heighten them by forcing me to sleep by myself, decide to not only make me sleep in the White Room, but then think it would be funny to hide in my closet. So I come back from the bathroom, make my sweep, then get to the closet. I open the closet, and this is what I see:

I scream bloody murder, scramble like a skittish cat who can't get traction on the wooden floors, and bolt out of the room. I collapse onto my mom's bed, in tears, heart racing. My grandpa stumbles into the room, still working on his pants, ready to kill the person who could possibly make me scream like that. By now, I realize that the two demons in my closet were actually my super supportive mother and sister and so I start to calm down. 

This is what they claimed they did:

..but we all know how it really went down.

Needless to say, I slept in my sister's room that night.

NYE 2012

I had my last day at my nanny job on Saturday the last and so my family went to the beach house after Church the next day until New Year's Day.  The activities were the usual: Just Dance, movies, walks on the beach, etc. We brought in the new year with poppers and sparkling cider.
We <3 neskowin="neskowin">

Sydney, the bird whisperer

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

los angeles

As I said earlier, I was a sub-nanny in LA for my awesome friend Anna while she celebrated her birthday in Europe.

view from street, south side

if it was dark, you could see everything all lit up

different day, view from street, north side

The first week, I took a little trip to the Getty Museum in Malibu.

inside courtyard

If I had one color to describe this trip, it would be blue.

Then, a trip to Santa Clarita.

Then, a trip to San Luis Obispo, with the nanny family.  The kids didn't have school on Monday and so their mom decided that she wanted to take a short trip up north to check our this little town.  We stayed in this hotel called Madonna Inn.  It is the love child of an architect who married an interior designer whose favorite color must have been pink.  EVERYTHING was pink: the walls, the soap, the key cards, etc etc.  And each room had a theme of some sort, like a safari room where everything was animal prints.  We stayed in a Sir/Knight room.

So it has a feel of an olde English home.

We ate at the restaurant that night and it was a yummy steak house with an explosion of pink.

huge pink flowers and cupids

the kids goofin in the huge pink cushioned chairs

surrounded by pink pink pink

The next day, we swam in the pool and then explored SLO.  It's a cute little college town that also caters to the tourism.  It has a gum wall alleyway like the one in Seattle.

me and the kids

It was a cute town and it made me miss my undergrad days.

Anna came home Tuesday night and we played when we didn't have the kids.

Wednesday, we went to Century Mall on Santa Monica to see "10 Years" and then talked about what it would be like at our 10 year high school reunion over Pinkberry.  

Here's what we were trying to figure out:

1. Who would be the one who was popular/a party-er in high school, but then went on to be a nobody?

2. Who would marry their high school sweetheart?

3. If you had the chance to "hook-up" with any guy from high school, who would you pick at the ten year reunion?

4. Who was the "one that got away," or the friend from high school you'd like to connect with?

Anna and I graduated from the same high school and same graduating class, so it was fun trying to remember the people we went to high school with and stories from those days.  I can't believe our reunion will only be in 5.5 years.

Thursday was the dad's birthday, so I made a cake and Anna made dinner.  

that kid just cracks me up.

Thursday night, Anna and I people-watched on 3rd Street Promenade and then saw "Premium Rush" (we like to watch movies...).  And then I wanted to pick up and move to New York.

Friday, we hit up the beach (which, if you couldn't tell, was a 5 second drive away from their house).  The water was awesome, even though I was afraid of getting eaten by a shark and we enjoyed ourselves even though Anna was afraid of all of the pigeons.  

I love the beach mostly because I love being warm. And so this day was perfect :)

you can see LA/Santa Monica in the distance

I was so so so so so sad to go and I can't wait to go visit Anna, again!!! 

bumpin' birthday bash at the beach

For the next couple of weeks, I'm stepping in as a sub nanny for the kids Anna takes care of in Pacific Palisades, CA.  I have to admit, I enjoy this weather a bit more than the weather up in Anchorage ;)
Speaking of good times on the beach, a couple of months ago, my mom's side of the family had a reunion at our beach house.  I pretty much didn't have my phone with me much during that week and, being that my phone is also my camera, I was waiting to get pictures from others before I put up a post.  So the following pictures are from my uncle's gf, Megan.

horseback riding on the beach with the girls

 my sister, Syd~my grandma~my cousin, Nicole~my mom~Megan~Me~my cousin, Kimberly~my cousin, Claire

The next day, we ate at Grateful Bread, a cute little bakery/cafe in Pacific City

my cousin, Dan and my uncle Mike just crack me up

Then on full stomachs, we climbed the sand dunes in Pacific City

I chose this picture to prove how good my uncle Chris is at smizing

 my family as little dots as we climb all the way up

 the view from the top is worth the scramble

 my dad's in the back with Dan~action shot with sand of cousin Bart~Chris~Claire

 uncles Mike and Chris~Bart

top of the dunes

Now for my pictures!

view from my walk: 2000 year old ghost forest preserved by the sand and just discovered within the last 10 years 

feeding 16 people made meal times a fun time! 

family time with horseshoes and croquet

and, of course, fun on the beach 

we had a competition for who could find the most whole sand dollars. Nicole won!

I hope we don't have to wait for the next 70th birthday to see everyone again!

to the beach on a whim

Annie texted me yesterday to see if we could meet up for lunch today and I was like duh so this morning I was like hey Annie where are we going to eat and she was like today's Bryce's last day before staring law school. wanna go to the beach after food? and I was like duh.
And that, my friends, is a run-on sentence.
And these are pictures from my fun day.

preggo!

proposal rock beach, neskowin, or

it would have been nice and warm if it wasn't so windy!

uhh...which way are we supposed to go?

Bryce's first time at the Tillamook Cheese Factory. I may have taken multiple cheese samples and I can't confirm that I ate a lot of ice cream.

eccentric small coastal towns. gotta love them. like Jesus loves you.

Christmas in Neskowin

What a loverly break it has been.
Christmas day, we woke up and waited for my dad to stop getting ready (not so favorite tradition), opened gifts from Santa and the family (a more favorite tradition), and ate a yummy breakfast. We had our Christmas program at Church, which I sang in with my momma. It was really a great service.
That afternoon, we headed out to our beach house in Neskowin for a couple of days.  Very relaxing.
One of the days we were there, I took some time to take pictures since I haven't done it in awhile. I literally was the only one on the beach for a couple of hours.  Here are some picts from my solitary shoot:

Then we had some family pictures.

more about my break to come!