So lucky...

I just have to take a minute to brag about how insanely lucky I am. My mom watches my kids, she has an in home daycare, so not only do my girls get incredibly well taken care of by grandma but they also get the social interaction of being with other kids.
In the recent months, the two other "big kids" have graduated on to pre-school. Natalie is still a bit young for pre-school and with Dan still not working it just isn't in the cards for us right now, so we're keeping her at grandma's house. But this has made her a little bored (and made me feel a little guilty). But my dad has totally come to the rescue. My dad retired about 5 years ago from his career as a Fire Fighter, and has been enjoying his retirement by relaxing and playing copious amounts of online poker. But seeing how bored his little granddaughter was he decided to start taking her out on little trips.
He takes her to the park a couple times a week, and on walks to see the horses up the road, and this week they had an outing to the Mall. Which Natalie calls the mill. He let her walk around the Disney store for an hour and then took her to lunch at the food court. She couldn't stop talking about how much fun she had with "gampa". Then today I talked to my mom and hear that he took her to yet another park today...but not their usual park, today he took her to a cool park across town.
It just made me realize how incredibly lucky I am to have such great parents, and how lucky my girls are to have such amazing grandparents. I didn't have grandparents (it's a long story), and never really knew what I was missing...but seeing how much my kids love their grandparents makes me a bit sad for what could have been.
For the time being, I am just basking in the joy that is Natalie's special relationship with my dad and hoping that she will remember these fun outings as she gets older.