Topsail Island

July was filled with our wonderful family beach vacations.  We were lucky to have beautiful weather for our time at Topsail Island with Mimi & Gawa, and the kids humored me by donning their crustacean outfits yet again.  

We arrived at Topsail on Saturday before we could check in to our beach house, so we scampered right down to the beach to play.  Luke found his dune buggies and 'struction vehicles in our bag of sand toys, and my heart melted as I watched my big boy play with the same toys that he has loved since he was little:

Mark insists that he's "too tall" to find sharks' teeth... (something about not being able to see all the way down to the ground...) but he had great luck on his first attempt looking for them this year!

On Sunday morning, I woke up in time to watch the sunrise from our deck.  There's nothing as peaceful and beautiful as this sight:

The kids played and splashed in the water, collected shells, and entertained themselves for hours on the beach each day:

These two beach bums also enjoyed quiet moments relaxing and reading on the deck, 

...hunted for sharks' teeth using Gawa's "Florida Snow Shovel", 

...walked along the ocean's edge,

...and built sand castles (they called this creation "Atlantis"):

We also enjoyed playing our new washers game and had several family tournaments:

If one picture could accurately sum up our vibe at Topsail, this would be it.  Life is GOOD!

Next year, we'll make sure that Daddy has a coordinating crab shirt:

Thank you, Mimi, for such special beach memories and another great time at Topsail!

Chincoteague Island

On our way home from Rehoboth Beach, we stopped for an overnight visit on Chincoteague Island.  Earlier this summer, our family read Misty of Chincoteague, and we wanted to see the famous Chincoteague Ponies.  We stayed in a hotel on cute, historic main street and toured the Chincoteague Museum, which contains much of the island's history:

Original Misty of Chincoteague books from the 1950s.

We've read several of Marguerite Henry's Misty sequels, too, and love these sweet stories!

This area is known for its oysters.  Some of us (Luke and I) ate them for lunch AND dinner!

The Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company is in charge of the annual pony swim and is the home of the Saltwater Cowboys.

Posing with Stormy!

This is the real Misty.  The kids didn't quite understand taxidermy (but that's maybe for the best 😂).

The barn on the Beebe ranch burned down in a fire the week before we visited, but we drove by and saw the property that was made famous from the Misty books.  Thankfully, no animals were injured in the fire.  

We also read about the yummy Island Creamery (which is the #1 spot to eat in Virginia according to this list), so we had to stop by for a taste!  The delicious ice cream and milkshakes did not disappoint! 

Next was the highlight of our visit!  We took a boat tour of the island, which we all loved.  Leah exclaimed, "I was BORN to be on the water!", which made us laugh:

Sea gull perched on our boat dock.

Summer Livin'.

This house used to be on the island, but tides have changed and it's now in the middle of the water.

We saw so many ponies on our boat tour, and I have way too many photos of them.  However, it was hard to resist taking pictures, and we didn't realize how fortunate the timing of our visit was.  The mares give birth to foals each spring, and these sweet babies were right beside their mamas, nursing and playing.  This means that the herd had 60-70 more ponies than its normal number, and will be thinned out drastically after the Pony Swim at the end of July.  There were so many gorgeous colors, sizes, and shapes of the ponies, and our first glimpses of them were along the shore as they frolicked and ate:

The ponies diet primarily consists of the salt water cord grass that grows in the marshes.  Due to the high salt content of the grass, the ponies drink twice as much water as a normal horse, and appear to have bloated bellies:

Many of the foals were running in circles and playfully kicking.

Another sweet baby.

Next, our boat captain drove into one of the channels so that we could get an up close view of a band of ponies.  A band is a smaller group of ponies with one stallion and all of his mares (and foals).  Riptide was the stallion for this band, and we thought he looked like a surfer dude:

Riptide.

There were SO many precious mamas and babies in this band, and they allowed us to come quite close to them:

We saw many other types of wildlife on our boat ride, too, including several species of birds.  We also had a pretty view of the Assateague Lighthouse:

Assateague Island Lighthouse

Flock of brown pelicans on Assateague Island.

The kids each took a turn driving the boat, and this was the BEST thing ever, according to both of them!

In the evening, we drove through the Chincoteague Wildlife Refuge and over the bridge to Assateague Island National Seashore (which is a National Park and the largest natural barrier island in the mid-Atlantic).  This 37 mile-long island is uninhabited and consists of marshland and beaches.  I don't have any photos of our driving tour through the paved trails on Assateague Island, but it was beautiful and serene.

It was such a neat experience to learn more about Chincoteague Island and its ponies, and I'm so thankful that we were able to see it in person this summer during our travels!