There's someone missing...

I took a picture with the kids yesterday for Easter.  It hurts my heart to take "family" pictures without John.  Its like there is always someone missing from the picture.  I can pretty much just see him right in there, where he should be- next to me.  But there is no John there.  There will never be John there again.  I hate that, its not right.  But I dont want to not have group pictures for occasions, so we took one anyway. 

As usual, I had a couple of kids who didnt cooperate because with 4 kids, its *almost* impossible to get everyone to look and smile at the same time.  In fact pretty much all of them but me are doing something that make this picture less than awesome, but thats how it goes with a lot of kids.

But I did get a good picture of just the 4 of them.  I was smart and took ones of just them before I got in there and got my mom to try to get one of all of us.  So they cooperated and I managed to get a decent one.

I usually was the one who put their easter baskets together every year, so that wasnt much different.  But John usually would go out and put the eggs in the yard for the kids to find before they were up or he'd sneak out to do it.  I didnt have it in me to do that this year.  I knew I'd be out in the yard, bawling. 

The kids kind of questioned why we didnt do it at home but I just sort of brushed it off and they didnt really push it.  Luckily my mom still hid eggs for them in her yard so they got to do it, but even walking out there with her watching them made me sad.  John would always help them find the last ones that were a little tricky to find at my mom's. This year my mom helped them find those last few ones.  Even though I try to keep things normal for the kids even when I'm hurting so much I dont think I can stand it, or I feel like I'm suffocating from putting on a good face, sometimes I just cant bring myself to do certain things. 

I do think I managed to keep from crying the whole time we were there.  I was sad, but I think I saved the crying for later in the day.  Its hard to remember sometimes, since I basically cry every day- sometimes multiple times a day, sometimes almost all day.  I dont know if that is normal for only 8 weeks out, but I dont care.