The gifts are open!<\/p>\n
Thank you all for your encouragement to open the gifts. I opened them while on FaceTime with the help of two of my girls.<\/p>\n
Today was a good day. Last week I started doing something I should have been doing since deployment day 1.<\/p>\n
I hired a babysitter.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Especially because my kids are the typical kids who wait outside the bathroom door to ask you the very important question-<\/p>\n
“Can I have a snack?”<\/p>\n
The words,\u00a0“Can I just finish pooping?”\u00a0<\/em>have been spoken by me more times in the past 73 days than they have in my entire life x 10.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n For all of you who are in the middle of deployment or gearing up for one, get a sitter.<\/p>\n And for all of you who know someone is going through a deployment, offer to babysit, for free<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n So it could be the only thing holding a spouse back from asking for help is money. It shouldn’t be that way.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n It is tough.<\/p>\n Giving them a break (even once a month) makes them a better parent and a better spouse.<\/p>\n 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 \u00a0cleaned my bathroom!<\/p>\n It’s amazing the difference a day makes…. and lots of clean clothes.<\/p>\n