Toni Anderson

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.

I think it is safe to say I do not like winter. I’ve been reading everyone’s Facebook status’s sharing their below 0 temperatures and I’m secretly thinking…

“It doesn’t matter to me, I’m not planning on leaving my house anyway.”

Except I had to open my back door a few times today.

First, because I caught my boys skateboarding on our frozen pool cover. Although it did look like a bunch of fun, I’m fairly certain that it is a really bad idea.

I’m not sure why it is a bad idea, but I can only assume skateboarding on something that isn’t supposed to be walked on, even if it is frozen, is a really bad idea.

Then I saw a few videos on the internet (mistake #1) that showed people throwing a cup of hot water into the air and turning it into snow or steam or something.

So I dragged all my kids outside so we could try it (mistake #2). But because it was a spur of the moment thing and they were all eating breakfast no one was dressed to be outside (mistake #3). And then it wasn’t quite cold enough for it to work (mistake #4). So I tossed the water, half of it turned to snow, the other half fell on the grass.

The kids were confused. They kept saying, “when are you going to show us the trick?” I contemplated trying it again but since I was wearing my usual flip flops and socks my feet were numb and I decided we’d just chalk it up to another experiment gone wrong and go back to our cereal.

Cora took my phone today while we were doing school. She loves to take pictures. Here’s her blurry shot of our day.

We had a good day.

Tomorrow I’m taking six kids to the dentist. Two of them have tried every trick in the book to get out of it and two are really excited. The other two don’t care. It should make for some good blog material.

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 great day. We got all our school finished, the kids played, read books, and generally had a good day.

We’ve had bags of leaves in our backyard for two months, or so. For some reason I decided that today was the day to get them to the curb. So my big boys took care of it. And since we are from Florida one of them thought wearing a hoodie would be sufficient.

There he is curled up under my desk by the heating vent.

It’s really cold here. Since I get cold at any temperature below 72 I’ve decided I’m not going outside until April, maybe May. I’m not sure exactly how that is going to work, but that’s my plan.

I finally feel like I’m over the funk I’ve been in for the last few weeks. Nothing has really changed except my attitude which I guess is all that needed to change in the first place.

Maybe I’ll open my birthday presents tomorrow….

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.

Not having a birthday is so much better.

Today I decided to stop trying to be everything and decided to just be.

There was a lot of stuff that needed to get done that didn’t get done. Tons.

But when I tucked my girls in bed, my nine-year-old said to me,

“Today seemed like the days we had when daddy was here, fun.”

I kissed her on the cheek and promised her tomorrow would be the same.

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 my site broke this weekend. When I first started blogging and my site broke I would freak out. I would spend hours on my computer and on the phone with the hosting company trying to get it fixed.

Maybe I’ve grown up, or maybe I’m just apathetic but I just rode it out today. And when it finally started working again all the content from the last week was gone. Forever.

The first think I thought of was the deployment series. I did not want to lose these posts. The rest of it I could live without, but not my little online diary.

I was able to find most of the old posts through the daily emails so most of them are back up, but all the comments are gone. 🙁

Deployment day 66 is totally gone since my site crashed while it was saved but not published.

It’s probably a good thing because it was basically a pity party!

Today is my birthday. As far as birthday’s go, I’ve had better, but I’ve also had worse. I really just wanted the day to be over as soon as possible.

Things are not even that bad, I mean there is a bunch of little crap, but nothing terrible. We have a house, food on the table, the kids like each other, we finished cleaning out the playroom today and only found two rotting bananas, things are good.

But throughout the day I kept getting those Facebook notifications whenever someone wished me a happy birthday. You know, where people say things like hope you had an amazing day, hope you had fun, you deserve a day off….

All the stuff I write on people’s walls when it’s their birthday.

Except my day wasn’t amazing. It was crummy. I didn’t enjoy it, get a break, or sleep in. It was just like every other day, except because I wanted it to be something better I spent the day frustrated that it was just like every other day.

Ahh, expectations. Being as old as I am now I should know better. I’ve had more bad birthdays than good- but yet every year I expect something better, not spectacular, just different.

It made me think about how I treat people on their birthday. Do I really care if they had a good day? What have I done to make their day different?

Usually it is nothing. That needs to change.

Don’t get me wrong. I really love all the Facebook birthday messages. I love reading them, they put a smile on my face. But it just didn’t seem right, not this year.

I’ve spent many birthdays with just me and kids so I’m not sure if it is the deployment or maybe I just don’t want to get any older.

I actually feel bad for feeling bad. Isn’t that ridiculous?

I’m sure tomorrow will be better.

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.

As I mentioned yesterday, today we tackled the playroom.

The playroom is a wine cellar that we converted into a playroom since the two bottles of wine we buy a year doesn’t really justify having an entire room dedicated to it.

And since we have approximately 1,239,775 toys turning that space into a playroom seemed like a good idea.

The problem is that the room is in the basement.

Being a Florida girl, I like to pretend we don’t have a basement because that means I have less space to keep clean. Our oldest son has a room down there and my gym is down there, but the gym is right next to the stairs so I don’t have to go any further into the basement to get to the gym.

Since the deployment started I’ve basically ignored the basement. Actually I’ve been ignoring it since I moved in, but sometimes I send the Commander down there to motivate the kids (aka threaten to throw away all the toys) and get it cleaned up.

Waiting 65 days to go into the playroom was a critical error on my part.

I glanced at the playroom the other day and noticed it needed, well let’s just say, an extreme makeover. Since my oldest was home from work I decided today would be the day to tackle the room.

Now normally when I enter a hazard zone I get upset with the kids for not taking care of their things. Today I vowed not get upset no matter what I found in the playroom.

No matter what. 

I’ve noticed that the kids don’t really like big cleaning projects if all they get is negative comments from me about how they are poor stewards of their things.

Whether this is true or not, it makes cleaning rather miserable and they end up being reluctant workers.

So, today was going to be different. Cleaning was going to be fun!

Then I entered the hazmat zone.

Since I vowed not to get upset, it is only appropriate that the first thing I found when pulling out the bins was my son’s backpack.

With a 1/2 gallon of ice cream in it.

Thank goodness the lid was on and I’m cheap and keep my house pretty cold in the winter. The ice cream had only leaked a little bit, creating a nice white-ish green slime seeping through the backpack.

I mean who puts ice cream in a backpack and then puts it in the playroom? Upon closer inspection I noticed that the backpack not only had ice cream but sprinkles in it too- so this child (I’m thinking Cora) was totally ready for a picnic!

The entire thing made me want to vomit so I stuffed it in a trash bag and moved on.

I think finding the rotting ice cream backpack first thing was a good start to my day. What could top that?

We then dumped out all the bins of Lego’s, K’Nex, Bionicles, Playmobil, and Imaginext.

I’m pretty good at identifying Playmobil pieces but after that I’m useless. We sorted these little pieces for over three hours.

As I was sorting I decided that this job should replace and interrogation methods the government is currently using. I would have done just about anything to get out of sorting those little pieces that all LOOK EXACTLY THE SAME!!!!

Of course my kids could tell me in exact detail how they were different and how Bionicle had circles and K’Nex circles weren’t really circles at all. The whole time I’m thinking, if it is so easy how come you never do it?!?!

We found all sorts of exciting things in our bins including backs of television remote controls that had been missing for months, about two hundred batteries, and even a tooth.

The tooth didn’t phase me because I was still feeling woozy from the ice cream slime.

We found a few things that we couldn’t identify, but out of concern for public health I made the kids throw them away before we could review them closely.

But we kept smiling and I even started playing DJ letting the kids pick their favorite songs to listen to while we sorted. This was actually a devious plan on my part to take a break from sorting because I was about to go crazy.

See it almost looks like we are having fun here.

Also notice how the kids have to touch everything for 10 seconds before they put it in the bin.

As I’m putting items in the bins I’m mentally timing myself to see how long it takes and then estimating how long it will take to finish the job based on my speed, accounting for the disposing of teeth, rotting backpacks, and random toilet paper bits (hopefully unused).

After about three hours I realized we were all going crazy. I was actually impressed and surprised my kids made it that long without a total meltdown.

We took a break for lunch.

And dressed up in wigs, and dressed up the dogs. Because we now knew were our wigs were. They were at the bottom of Lego bin #7.

After lunch we got back to cleaning.

As the hours went by the kids got a little crazier. At some point they were dancing in their underwear (only the littles, we’re not that crazy) and then the dramatics started.

I think she was kidding.

I told her she wouldn’t die in the basement because there was plenty of food down here.

Banana with a side of dollhouse anyone?

We cleaned and sorted for nine hours.

Nine.

We aren’t finished, but we made good progress. Hopefully we’ll finish it up this weekend.

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.

Christmas tree is down!

I spent most of the day trying to get all the business bookkeeping done from 2013. If I were to rank my least favorite things, bookkeeping would be close to the top of the list. But most of it is done and my girls went to the farm to play for the day so everyone is happy.

Tomorrow we are cleaning out the playroom. If I were to rank my least favorite things, cleaning out the playroom would be in the top five. I’m trying to have a positive attitude. Trying.

The boys went shooting today. Not only did their dad’s coworker take them to the range, he took lots of pictures.

Awesome.

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.