Category: Military

Today we cleaned and did school. I’m not a big fan of Saturday school, I know one of the benefits of homeschooling is flexibility, but I personally like a day off of doing homeschool.

I’m also not a big fan of cleaning, but I like a clean house so that’s what we did today.

Today was rather boring. I haven’t had boring in a long time. It felt good.

Apparently I need to turn the heat up. She wore earmuffs all day.

My husband has been deployed to the Middle East for 274 days.  These are my real thoughts expressing my heart during his absence.  I appreciate your prayers and kind words as we cope, adapt, and carry on without him until August 2014.  To read from the beginning, click here.

Today was a sunny 44 degrees so my kids wanted to play outside all day in the “hot” weather.

I’m learning to go with it on these days instead of forcing them inside for school. They played outside until the sun went down and then came in and did school work until bedtime.

For a few kids this worked really well. For one of them, this was a terrible idea. When I was in Tampa someone asked me how it was going. I decided to be honest and tell them it really stunk.

Deployment was  easier when the kids were little. I know everyone who has little kids and is dealing with the same thing wants to slap me right now because being a single parent with babies and toddlers is exhausting.

But being a single parent of teenage boys who have hormones going crazy and are trying to figure out how to step it up and be the man, but still want to be a regular kid, and still do incredibly stupid stuff on a regular basis is ridiculous.

Ridiculous.

I love my kids. They are pretty much the best kids in the world. Most days. But it is really hard to love them through the stupid, hold them accountable, be relatable, be encouraging, and help them walk through all their deployment issues every single day.

When my kids were little I was physically exhausted. I collapsed in bed every night and fell right to sleep, I did’t worry much about how the deployment would affect them because they were all little and didn’t know the difference between two days and two months.

This deployment is mentally exhausting. There are days when my head hurts from life.

I never thought I would say that Cora would be my easiest kid during the deployment, since she is usually my hardest. But she is. Dealing with sharpie on the floor and earrings falling out are easy peasy compared to teenage boys.

This has been a very long week.

My husband has been deployed to the Middle East for 274 days.  These are my real thoughts expressing my heart during his absence.  I appreciate your prayers and kind words as we cope, adapt, and carry on without him until August 2014.  To read from the beginning, click here.

There have only been two days during the deployment where I was done. Today was one of them. Today involved a nasty sinus headache, two tow trucks, and a few other things.

At one point I handed my daughter’s boyfriend cash and some gift cards and asked him to take all the children out of the house.

He took them all to Chipotle and the bookstore. I had no idea if he could even handle them all by himself. But he did, they had fun, and I was able to spend some time trying to sort everything out.

It still isn’t all figured out and the headache is still here (and I’m losing my voice). I hate being defined by my circumstances but that’s where I’m at right now.

I want to look back on this and see that we all grew and benefitted from the challenges we walked through.

But I’m not there yet. Not at all.

My husband has been deployed to the Middle East for 274 days.  These are my real thoughts expressing my heart during his absence.  I appreciate your prayers and kind words as we cope, adapt, and carry on without him until August 2014.  To read from the beginning, click here.

I spent the last two days in Tampa. As some of you know I work from home and one of the companies I work for is Valpak.

You know, the blue envelope people.

I spent the last two days not being cold as I shared my knowledge of the web and social media with their sales team.

Work trips are good and bad. If I’m on a work trip I work a lot. Usually 12-15 hour days because I wake up early to work on other projects and then work after I’m done working at the office. If I’m being honest it is also nice not have to get food for anybody else or even wash my own dishes.

It also stinks because I miss the kids and I’m always concerned something will happen when I’m gone. This time I was tossing and turning in bed and then checked my phone. I realized I had a missed call from my son at 12:17am. Even though my son is a night owl, a call at 12:17 is not normal.

I immediately called him back and I could tell by his voice something was wrong. He proceeded to tell me that he had popped a tire in one of our cars while driving home.

Popping a tire is probably the best news you can get from your kids at 12:17 in the morning when you are away. But my adrenaline was running after the call so I tossed and turned until 2am, which does not make for a good second day.

Thankfully I was presenting in front of the group so that kept me awake. 😉

I got home in time to see my boys before they went to bed and heard heard about their day.

Have I ever mentioned I hate ironing? My daughter (aka fashion consultant)  helped me pick out my clothes for the trip and the pants I was going to wear had that crease in them from being on a hanger for six months.

I was tired and had to get up for an early flight, so instead of ironing them I tried this little trick.

 

It worked great! I highly recommend you try it.

My husband has been deployed to the Middle East for 274 days.  These are my real thoughts expressing my heart during his absence.  I appreciate your prayers and kind words as we cope, adapt, and carry on without him until August 2014.  To read from the beginning, click here.

So today I managed to fit in a trip to the dentist (3rd time in a month- that’s what I get for having all these kids!), all our school work, picked up the house, and the kids ate something other than cereal for dinner.

I feel like I just ran a half marathon (not that I know what that feels like). I’m tired, but I’m glad I powered through.

Dentist parking lot selfie!

I LOVE our dentist. We’ve been to a ton of different places and this one is my favorite. They are fast, we never have to wait and the staff is super friendly.

The kids and I have decided we hate winter. Today it was 60 degrees and they were running around without jackets. Because it feels like summer. I want to take a trip to Florida soon to escape the grey, but planning a trip and coordinating the schedules of seven other people is…. well a pain.

I keep wavering back and forth about going. If I wait too much longer to make a decision Maryland weather will be nice again and it will be 100 degrees with 100% humidity in Florida.

Today was another good day. I feel like I’m finally getting the hang of this thing. It’s only taken me 75 days. Not too bad!

My husband has been deployed to the Middle East for 274 days.  These are my real thoughts expressing my heart during his absence.  I appreciate your prayers and kind words as we cope, adapt, and carry on without him until August 2014.  To read from the beginning, click here.

I woke up feeling not so great so I decided for the first time in a very long time to just go back to bed. I rarely do this, I normally just get up and power through the day, but I thought that if I slept a little longer I might feel better.

I was right, when I work up I felt significantly better.

We didn’t really do anything today. That seems so strange, but instead of tackling some big project or going somewhere we all just did nothing. Well my boys spent most of the day doing homework (typical Sunday) but the rest of us just sat around, except for trying to finish the laundry.

I’ve been on a quest to catch up on laundry this weekend. I’ve done 19 loads over the past few days. Not only was it our regular laundry, I decided to wash all the sheets and towels. And I decided to finally wash all the sweaters and delicates that can’t go in the dryer.

And of course because I decided to wash all the sheets, someone will wet the bed today. That’s just how life works.

It is almost all folded and put away. Almost.

I have this strange fantasy that one day I will locate all the missing socks and create matches. This will never happen, but I continue to press on searching the house for strays and putting the extras in our sock bag. I have no idea how much time I’ve spent on single socks, but I’m sure it is far too much.

The kids got to talk to Commander for a long time today. The internet connection held up for their entire conversation.

It was a good day.

My husband has been deployed to the Middle East for 274 days.  These are my real thoughts expressing my heart during his absence.  I appreciate your prayers and kind words as we cope, adapt, and carry on without him until August 2014.  To read from the beginning, click here.

I woke up feeling like I could possibly be getting sick again, but I also felt like myself for the first time in forever.

Since it was a yucky rainy day I immediately made a list of all the things we could do, inside and also made a mental note to keep plodding through with the laundry. (Another 7 loads today)

I was pretty ambitious with my list, but surprisingly we got through everything but one activity.

The little girls and I  went to BJ’s to pick up some groceries. This was the pleeeeeeeeease mom can we buy this face.

Of course I said yes. #beayesmom

We played a really fun board game today that my friend Stef sent us called Spy Alley. I love board games, but I don’t always like playing them with the kids. This is because one kid is usually too old for the game, one is too little, and one is always a sore loser.

Spy Alley was so fun that the losers didn’t care that they lost because they were so excited to try and guess the spy. My seven, nine, eleven, and thirteen year old played it and loved it!

The only bad part of the day was when the seven year old came up to me in line at BJ’s and said in a not so quiet voice,

“Mom, what does s*x mean?”

I tried to act all calm and cool as if explaining the birds and the bees to a seven-year-old in the check out line at BJ’s was something I did a few times a month.

But I didn’t. The lady in line behind covered her mouth and murmured something under her breath (she felt bad for me, but was also trying really hard not to laugh).

I tried to smile and use my nice mom voice and asked her if she had been reading the magazine covers in the check out line.

My seven-year-old said she had and that her big sister had put her up to asking what it meant.

I didn’t want to make it a big deal, but it was a big deal and there was no way I was going to try and talk this out while the check out guy is pretending that this entire conversation is not happening.

I looked at the lady behind me, smiled and said, “How about we talk about this in the car.?”

She nodded okay.

And this is the part where my $9 a month Spotify subscription saved the day.

When we got to the car the girls started discussing what song they wanted to listen to and they asked me to find a song they’d heard their brother singing a few days before.

Thankfully it was on Spotify and they completely forgot about our conversation in BJ’s.

Of course they didn’t really forget, but it isn’t a conversation I want to have in the car with a four, seven, and nine-year-old. I don’t want to have the conversation at all with the four-year-old.

It’s the best $9 I’ve ever spent.

My husband has been deployed to the Middle East for 274 days.  These are my real thoughts expressing my heart during his absence.  I appreciate your prayers and kind words as we cope, adapt, and carry on without him until August 2014.  To read from the beginning, click here.

The gifts are open!

Thank you all for your encouragement to open the gifts. I opened them while on FaceTime with the help of two of my girls.

Today was a good day. Last week I started doing something I should have been doing since deployment day 1.

I hired a babysitter.

As you know I work from home and that, combined with homeschooling, plus everything it takes to keep the house running, plus life is a lot. Since I have a lot of kids, I’m never alone. Never.

Especially because my kids are the typical kids who wait outside the bathroom door to ask you the very important question-

“Can I have a snack?”

The words, “Can I just finish pooping?” have been spoken by me more times in the past 73 days than they have in my entire life x 10.

My New Year’s Resolution was to actually start sending my kids to the farm (where the babysitter lives) once a week. We’d discussed it for months but I’d never actually done it.

I can get an unbelievable amount of work done in five hours. The best part, my kids love the farm. They explore, drink hot cocoa, bake cookies, get help with their school, visit the chickens, and much more. They come home and I don’t feel completely behind and they are really worn out from their day.

For all of you who are in the middle of deployment or gearing up for one, get a sitter.

And for all of you who know someone is going through a deployment, offer to babysit, for free.

We are fortunate, we can afford to pay for this necessity (and yes it is a necessity if you want to stay sane). But many military families cannot. In fact I would guess that most military families do not.

So it could be the only thing holding a spouse back from asking for help is money. It shouldn’t be that way.

These spouses need a break. They are dealing with the stress of being the only parent 24/7 on top of the stress of trying to keep a marriage together while separated by thousands of miles and a war.

It is tough.

Giving them a break (even once a month) makes them a better parent and a better spouse.

We had a great day and it wasn’t because the kids were gone. I also got seven loads of laundry finished and put away, and  cleaned my bathroom!

It’s amazing the difference a day makes…. and lots of clean clothes.

My husband has been deployed to the Middle East for 274 days.  These are my real thoughts expressing my heart during his absence.  I appreciate your prayers and kind words as we cope, adapt, and carry on without him until August 2014.  To read from the beginning, click here.

Thank you so much for all your tips on how to get the earring back in her ear. Of course today, the other earring came out!

I feel like something must have been wrong with these earrings to come out so easily since it didn’t happen to my other girls, but who knows.

Unfortunately, she was so traumatized by the first incident she wouldn’t let me near her ear to even try to put it back in.

It really isn’t that big of a deal. But you know how it is when things that aren’t a big deal, are a big deal, because the big deals are too much of a big deal to think about.

That.

We are studying birds in science. I’ve been trying to get pictures of the birds that come in our yard so we can identify them.

Not quite fast enough to catch this bird on camera.

I feel like this is a good representation of my week. I’m two steps behind everything and everyone. Not where I want to be right now.

I still haven’t opened my birthday gifts. They are sitting on a chair in my bedroom.

At this point I’m thinking I might wait until next year. It’s driving the Commander crazy that I haven’t opened them. I’m sure they are great gifts I’m just not in a gift opening mood lately.

My husband has been deployed to the Middle East for 274 days.  These are my real thoughts expressing my heart during his absence.  I appreciate your prayers and kind words as we cope, adapt, and carry on without him until August 2014.  To read from the beginning, click here.

Today started great and ended poorly. I took all the kids to the dentist for cleanings, orthodontics, teeth pulling etc. I actually love our pediatric dentist.

The office staff is great, they are really good with kids, and they take our insurance.

I couldn’t find my purse before the appointment so I ended up grabbed a checkbook and running out the door. Not having a purse meant I couldn’t stop at the store on the way home and pick up milk and  a few other essentials.

I was upset that I couldn’t find it and frustrated that a few of my children were not moving fast enough in the morning.

The dentist appointment also messed up our routine. Usually we work on school in the morning and then I work while the kids work independently in the afternoon.

We sat down to start school at 2pm. At this point in the day my kids do not want to do school.

At 9pm we were still doing school.

Of course, if this was anyone else I’d say, just call it a day. But this year we’ve had far too many “just call it a day” days. Between the kitchen remodel, which began our first week of school, and the deployment we’ve had a lot of days fall apart.

Of course if this was anyone else I would say, some years are need to be more relaxed. But we’ve had far too many relaxed years. I see gaps in my kids’ education because of the frequent disruptions,we’ve moved or had a baby in the middle of almost every school year for the past ten years.

It takes its toll on the kids.

So this year I’m trying very hard to stay on track. Days like today make it impossible.

To add excitement to our day Cora was messing with her sister and her sister’s hair got wrapped around her new earring. When they separated the earring fell out of Cora’s ear.

I could not get it back in. I spent 20 minutes while she cried and shook trying to get it back in, but I couldn’t. So now she has one earring and we need to wait for the hole to close up and get it re-pierced. Not exactly what I wanted to do today.

I’m trying to have perspective, but it is hard. I’m tired.

Yesterday I had a fleeting thought that things were actually going pretty well and things were getting done. Then my seven-year-old told me she had no pants to wear to the dentist.

Clearly all the extra time this week has been due to the fact that I haven’t done laundry in a long time. It’s amazing how much time is available when you aren’t doing laundry for eight people.

I’m sure at some point I will laugh about all of this.

But today is not that day.

My husband has been deployed to the Middle East for 274 days.  These are my real thoughts expressing my heart during his absence.  I appreciate your prayers and kind words as we cope, adapt, and carry on without him until August 2014.  To read from the beginning, click here.