First Mini-Vacation

I've been telling the kids since March or so that we'd take small trips over the summer to pass time before school starts. It seems our first part of summer has been dealing with not having Nathan so the other kids have not had much of a summer... it was nice that Geoff's brothers wife ,Gennie and 2 kiddos, Colton and Matti could come visit us the past 2 days. They invited us along to Sea World on Monday and Fiesta Tx on Tuesday. Stayed over night in a hotel on Mon so that we could just get up and do the other theme park. Yes...exhausting it surely was, but the kids had so much fun.  I wasn't sure exactly how I'd feel about doing a small vacation type trip this close to loosing Nathan. It did in fact feel odd at times for me at least anyway that I only had 2 instead of 3. We're so used to being oddly numbered to have an even number in our family was odd. Just riding rides. Geoff had a riding buddy and I had one. Just so odd and not quite right. Nathan enjoyed Sea World as our family goes every summer since with the Salute To The Hero's promotion that Anheiseur Bush theme parks offer allows us to go free so its something fun to do that has been tradition since we've been here. Of course I pick the hottest time of year to go, but the kids expect it every summer. Only I imagine that with Nathan's foot in pain like it was the last part of his life I'm not so sure we'd have gotten to do any of the stuff we've done this last part of summer. I'd like to think we'd have figured it all out and his foot would've been fine, but you know I'm not so sure. I had a few moments on different rides we did that I looked over expecting to see I dunno Nathan's face and my mind imagined a huge smile. As I sit here and type this I get teary thinking about that beautiful smile that when he smiled he did so with his eyes too. Where you knew it was genuine and you knew without a doubt he was having a good time. And following a smile you usually got a giggle/chuckle. Figuring out how a person lives without that is what is the hardest. Nick said to me a few times that Nathan sure would luv this...Yep...that he would. I totally miss hearing the kids argue about whos sitting with/by whom. I imagine riding rides would've gone the exact way...and having to tell them everyone will get a chance to ride with each other. But spending time with there cousins was so much fun. There also military with a dad who's currently deployed so I know Natalie and Colton from what Gennie has said had a conversation about that. I'm just glad they had a chance to talk and be around other kids in that exact situation before there Dad leaves. Its just an added bonus that there family and the kids felt completely comfortable to talk about it with one another. Definatly gonna be letting the skype or facetime as were in the day of Apple software..lol.. if they can over the next few months and I'm working harder at finding some other military kids around here as well. Geoff is off the next 2 weeks as we prepare for his departure on the 28th. The kids get to spend sometime with dad and he gets to take them to there first day of school on the 27th which is nice. Tomorrow night is Nathan's scouting presentation so I'll be blogging about that tomorrow night I'll also post pics of the kids on the past few days...