Midtour

So I started writing this a while ago and got totally sidetracked.
It's kind of pointless to write about it all at this point, but I'm hoping to have this to look back as reference if anything!
So anyways!
Oh midtour, how crazy you always are.
Our first midtour? Got married.
Second midtour? Got to meet our newest, one day old, niece Emery and ski Breckenridge.
Third, well....a lot.
The only thing they all have in common is Colorado. :)
I guess it's pretty obvious it's our home and we've made more than memories here, if it weren't for the Army, our lives would be here.
For Christmas, Brynlee "made" her daddy a stack of tickets to be spent on midtour and/or when he got home. Each ticket was an 'Admit One' to a father/daughter activity listed on the ticket.
So we spent the midtour spending his tickets on all sorts of family and father daughter activities and although they weren't all spent, we got pretty darn close!
Everything is pretty much flooded on Facebook but there were some major highlights for sure.
Such as:

Getting her first brainfreeze at FOTF-Whit's End--and John laughed.

John and his best friend getting to hang out with their little girls for the first time together. We all went to high school together so just seeing things come full circle is crazy awesome in itself.

Dates with both nieces at the park and for sushi!

Attempting a pool visit that didn't go so great, but was still fun.

 Riding a Harley.

A trip to Denver to the Aquarium and to introduce John to the wondrous world of Ikea. He wasn't as impressed as we were, except for the meatballs.

Finally, some new family pictures with our favorite CO photographer, Holly Pacione.

In between all the madness we had some fantastic family down time. Since my parents were gone for a good chunk of the beginning of his leave we had the house to ourselves and it allowed for some amazing memories of doing nothing but sitting and playing as a family.
It's something that you can totally take for granted if you don't know what it's like to be without.
Although I'm fully aware I signed up for this lifestyle, it's hard for me at times to see pictures of a lot our friends out on their weekend family outings and not totally be envious!
I think any military spouse can relate to that.
But, here for two weeks, life really was that great.
All the pics posted were really how awesome things were for the time he was here.

I have to say that I was SO proud of Brynlee.
She did SO great hanging out with her daddy.
I was so worried that there was great potential for her to not respond to him in a positive way and she was SO great.
Can I say SO enough, sigh....
I just have to give her amazing props.
I think she actually knew who he was, and although she was shy at first, by the end of midtour things just felt so normal, like he never left.
I was also really proud of John.
We were both mentally prepared for her to possibly not respond well and he was so patient with her and it was a beautiful thing to see.
She has the best daddy, and I really have the best husband.
We may only get to be a family every other year, but when that year is here, especially now with Brynlee joining the mix, we're so blessed and we know it and appreciate getting to share it with you.