We rented two houses on Topsail Island. One house held my parents, my brother and his family, and my aunt and her family. Our house had my family, and for part of the week, another brother and his family, and my sister and nephew. It was absolutely wonderful. Our house was a duplex, so we only had half of it, but it was still very large and wonderful. Here is a photo of our house:

I grew up on an island off the coast of New Jersey (Long Beach Island).  We had an ocean front house, and my brother and I basically lived on the beach.  Our front yard was sand, and then there were the dunes, and then there was the beach and the ocean.  It was the most wonderful way to grow up.  We were one of the few year round families, and my brother and I practically had the beach to ourselves all winter. We would spend tons of time under the life boats that were left upside down on the beach.

I really miss the ocean.  Sometimes I find it very hard to believe that I am actually living in the midwest, so far from the ocean that I adore.

This was the first time my children have spent any real time in the ocean, and it meant so much to me that they just fell in love with it.  The surprising part of the vacation (to me) was that Jim spent so much time in the water.  He basically lived in the ocean, and rarely came out.

Our first night there, I said to the children, come on, let’s go down to the beach.  They all wanted to know, “Why?”  To play, of course.  Well, they were all very confused how you could play on the beach when you couldn’t go swimming.  They quickly figured out how to play in the sand (yes- just like a sandbox but a million times better), and the little ones cried when it was time to leave.

Here’s a clip of Greyden and his sand castle:

Hewitt came down to the beach without a shirt on and quickly got cold. Aunt Tami let him wear her jacket, but it took a bit of manipulating to make it “fit”, and even then there were some spots that weren’t warm:

It was a great start to one of the best weeks of my life.