Lately

Good morning!  We survived our first week without our main man around.  

I've been drinking a lot of coffee lately and I'm hoping I won't have to stop anytime soon.  My stomach can't always handle coffee, but for the past 2 months or so, I've been able to drink it everyday without issues.  

We started our morning at the gym, and then headed to Trader Joe's.  It was my first time and I expected the prices to be really high and a lot of options.  I was wrong on both!  I found the prices to be really reasonable (and most times cheaper than Harris Teeter).  The store was smaller than I expected, so there wasn't many options.  Which was fine.

The freezer stash we selected.

And everything else.

So far, we've liked everything.  The chicken lo mein I thought I was grabbing kung pao chicken, but Xander loved this.  I didn't actually eat it.  I haven't been eating dinner much lately.

Honestly...

Monday night I felt the stress of it all and I had a breakdown.  #noshame  I know it's only been a week, and Nick was gone for 2.5 months prior to this.  But, it's different now.  I can't just call him when I'm having a hard time or just want to talk/vent.  I also don't want to burden him with our silly issues here while he's gone.  He has to worry about much bigger things.  Like an attack.  So, I bottle it up.  He's not coming home on the weekends to help with whatever I need help with.  I have a 70 lb bag he left that I need to lug up 16 (steep) steps and it's giving me anxiety.  So it sits in front of the bathroom by the step.  Sterling tripped on it and hurt her hiney.  I slept only an hour that night.  We skipped tennis on Tuesday because I was afraid I'd fall asleep driving.  I was tired, but just couldn't sleep.  I apologized to the kids for crying all day Tuesday (I was tired and everything made me cry).  It was rough.  But, we'll be fine.

We've been rocking school and I think we finally have all our kinks worked out.  I plan to make a post at the end of this month about what we're doing.

I ordered my favorite lattes.  #iwillsurvive

Lulu had her last training session and afterwards, Xander wanted to hold a ferret.  Gross!

I also made a new cleaning schedule.  Which involves the kids more.  I usually make one day a cleaning day, but now with homeschooling and no breaks alone, they will be helping.  I broke it down into sections so it shouldn't take more than 15 minutes.  If they just do what they need to do and not dink around.

Xander's good with doing his chores.  He knows that after his chores, he'll get an hour towards electronics.  He always chooses the xbox.

Sterling's not so good.  She complains and makes a stink about it.  But, she does the best job when she does follow through.

I'm hoping the changes that we're trying out will stick around and make life a little more simple for us.  More time to enjoy other things.  

That's a little of our life lately.  Have a great day!