Well...
Before our most recent stay we would have said that this was our favorite b and b bar none with or without kids. The continued good points are: large rooms that are clean, easy access, great breakfast for adults, quiet even with the highway facing rooms (the traffic dies down at night anyway). We have been so happy in the past--no problem giving it a five star rating.
Why have we changed our minds and have decided NOT to come back? Here's why....

Our first difficulty was with changing the night we wished to stay. We decided to get home a day earlier, so we called the proprietor. He talked a little, decided to get back to us and did 10 minutes later, with a "we are all booked". We were changing from a Wednesday to a Tuesday and we did it with a two night notice. With a 14 room inn in a small isolated coastal town for a midweek booking, that was a bit suspect. But--o.k.

We arrived at 5:30 on our original day, to a harried looking man rushing out the back door---"Oh, you are the___?" Here's you key. I'm___. Then, he left. Is 5:30 too late to arrive? Were we being rude? We didn't think so, but the proprietor never gave a time that he needed us to be there, so we thought this was a pretty decent arrival time. O.K. not so bad, you say. We shouldn't be complaining. But, it would have been nice to know when breakfast was served,(we only found out after we checked the inn's homepage on the web access downstairs) and after we got to the room, it would have been nice to know that there was no ice to be had on the second floor landing like there used to be. Nowhere else for that matter, and it always had been in the past. A sign that says "Contact the front desk for ice" was too little too late. Where was _____who just left? The desk was locked up tight for the night at 5:40 p.m. Never saw him again until the next morning. Ice isn't a biggie unless you have been on the road all day and would like to chill that nice, locally purchased bottle of wine to consume on the night of your 20th wedding anniversay, which it was that very day.

Gosh, the internet access really was nice, but it was sad to see that the tea/coffee/ hot chocolate for guests to have in the evening was no longer available in the small common room on the ground floor. Still, that's not much to complain about, you say.

So, are we being picky, maybe. But it continues......
We arrived next morning to a very nice breakfast. We had a four year old with us, but we anticipated adult fare even though two out of three guests the night before had children, and the innkeeper was aware of this. The proprietor didn't have milk. That's sad. However, our four year old had a blast slurping up all the half and half that was available to wet her cereal. Maybe that's selfish to expect milk, but a mere four days earlier, we had stayed at a b and b that knew we had a child, and they had some milk in their fridege. They knew she was coming, and accomodated accordingly, at $20 cheaper per night with a quieter and nicer view.

The one thing that really nails it for us here is that I spied on the reservations ledger when we checked out the next day. They were not full the night we wanted to change to, not by a longshot. Maybe I was misreading, but a friendly chat with the one other family and the only other customer (a business person) who stayed that Tuesday (the night we wanted to change to) confirmed that tthe b and b was not full.

There were many small things to be picky about and gloss over, but the combination of being lied to for whatever reason, a less than hospitable welcome on the last lodging of our trip that we definitely drove out of the way to get to (we could have stayed on hwy 101) for a "special day" in a place that has given us definite good memories and good feelings in the past, lack of a tiny breakfast accomodation for a child when it was made known she was coming (and the fact that there was another family with children there as well), and the lack of information on the basics that anyone might want when settling into a place made the stay a general let-down for us, especially when the standards were so very high in the past.

Perhaps we caught the proprietor on an off day. Maybe we weren't the effort because we were staying for only one night. This inn was a destination for us in the past, for one, two, even three nights, and we never had felt so cold a reception and service as we did this last stay.....so sad. I almost didn't want to write this review, especially when other people signing the ledger seemed to have a good time, as we had in the past.