Patriotic

Showing a little patriotism on July 4th. We had a nice little vacation to San Antonio, including a visit to see Shamu at Sea World (am I the only one who can't watch the Shamu show now without thinking nonstop about that poor trainer killed a year or so ago...one of the whales was being naughty and not listening to the trainer during our show, and I just kept thinking "not today, buddy, just not today!").

The kids enjoyed themselves, even though I'm pretty sure we all came close to melting and every one of us looked red or pink in various places from the sun. The hotel pool was the biggest hit, along with the nightly S'mores. I was thrilled when Liam and Natalie played a game of Dots on a restaurant menu. Seriously, it's those small moments I love. Jim doesn't understand why it thrills me to see them play board games or puzzles or basically anything that doesn't involve electronics. It is just one of those things that makes me happy whenever I see it. I would love to see Owen in a picture like that, but...well, that may be a few more years.

They all loved the water slide at the pool, and it was fun to watch. Natalie was much more daring than I would have imagined she'd be, and she even made a little friend about the same age. Liam loved trying to make himself go fast down the slide. Owen didn't understand how to lift his legs in order to make himself go fast, so he would slide down and then come to a stop right at the end and have to scoot himself off the end of the slide with a little Plunk! into the water. Go figure - he was the slow one on the water slide. Love it when vacation mixes things up a little.