Day 1

Steve left on Friday for a backpacking trip to Montana. Although I know I can exist without my husband, I don't often choose to. As sappy as it sounds, he does complete me and he is my sanity at the end of the day and the one I want to talk to and lean on when I'm not feeling like a good mom or when I just plain need strength. My whole world feels off kilter when we are arguing, so I have to honestly say that as much as I was excited for him to go off and do something he loves and see the wonders of God's hand, I had a lot of anxiety about how I'd do here at home without him for a whole week (we never last more than a few hours arguing, so a week seems like an eternity to have my world off kilter). My anxiety was a little amplified because I started watching 2 new girls today and that's always a trying time and moreover until school starts, I'll have six kiddos under six three of the days he's gone. I think that's kind of an insane undertaking under the best of circumstances, but with Steve gone....

Anyway, I"m counting Friday as day one of my journey through single parenthood. It was fairly uneventful, actually, and that was a good thing. Did some school shopping for Kailin and then settled in to wait for my friend Katie to arrive. She was due to bring me 30lbs of frozen blueberries I'd ordered and we have a monthly yoga lesson together (she is studying to be a yoga instructor and stays with us once a month to attend class). Unfortunately, Katie's arrival brought the realization that I'd wrongly assumed that the 30lbs would come in a horizontal box. Not so much. The box didn't fit in my freezer in any orientation, so I was madly scooping blueberries into bags and containers before they thawed (they were individually frozen and I wanted to keep them that way), when Katie came in and announced that she'd just figured out that her suitcase didn't make the trip with her. She is short and petite and I am...NOT. Borrowing clothes was an impossibility so I sent her off to our 24 hour Walmart for replacements. Thankfully, all situations were handled and everyone came out relatively unscathed. No yoga this month, but at least I still have the frozen blueberries and she didn't have to attend class naked. High hopes for Saturday!