August/September was the start of Chris' final semester at Georgetown. His final semester in his NP program. This meant substantially more clinical hours (seeing patients in an office) than the previous semesters. His schedule was basically Monday and Tuesday he was at an office all day seeing patients - getting home either when we were having dinner or when the kids were being put to bed. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were his work days, 12 hour shifts. We did actually get to see him slightly more on weekends since he only had one class, but there were still several weekends full of schoolwork and no family time.
I've also still been working from home. I've found a routine that helps balance work and Mom time a bit better. I have a sitter come 3 days a week for three hours in the morning so I can devote that time to work and the sitter gets them ready for the day and gives them one on one interaction. We then have swimming, dance, playgroups....life. It can be hectic.
We are now at a point where we are kind of coming up for air. The last several years have been spent treading water, trying to stay afloat, just getting to the finish line. We made it. Chris has finished the program. He is now an NFP. He graduated with honors. He did it. We made it.
I'm not going to say we made it unscathed - we have a lot of work to do as a couple and a family - but we're here. I'm not complaining, just telling it like it is. Yes, I know we put ourselves in this position, but that doesn't mean I can't mention that it really sucked. Our family made lots of sacrifices for all of this to happen. Our relationships made lots of sacrifices for this to happen. I've basically handled all the house, children, financial, family aspects of everything so that Chris could focus on school and work. Those were his only responsibilities. He had to become very selfish for this all to work. He had to. It sucked, but it was necessary. I've basically had to do everything myself, give every last ounce of myself, take nothing for myself for this to work out. I've had to do it all with two young children, without the emotional or mental support of a partner. It sucked. Again, not complaining - simply being honest.
Now comes the hard work. The work of putting our marriage and family back together. The kids need to integrate their Father back into their lives and I need to adjust to having a husband again. Some more honesty - it's kind of easier to parent when you are calling all the shots yourself. Co-parenting can be hard. Chris needs to find his role, and we need to be willing to give it to him. Thankfully he is ready for the task. He knows we have our work cut out but he is eager to do that work. I FINALLY got around to reading the Five Love Languages book (as was suggested by a couple people) and I THINK mine are Quality Time and/or Acts of Service - I'm honestly in the category of "the tank has been empty so long" where it is hard to figure it out. So, yeah, neither of those have even been a possibility over the last several years with Chris' schedule. Now is the time to work on filling each other's tanks.
Now that we are at a point where we can catch our breath, I've also had to tend to myself. One large thing being foot surgery. On 12/31 I had two extra bones removed from my left foot. An accessory navicular bone and a bone by my heel that probably broke off at some point but never reattached. This has left me in a position where I can't put any weight on my foot for 4 weeks - then I can start to gradually increase weight on it. I have had issues with tendinitis because of the extra bones and what better time to take care of that when 1)Chris is done with school so he can help with the kids 2) He is still working at the surgical center and we get some discounts and he knows everyone there and 3) We could squeeze it onto this years deductible! Perfect timing, right?!
This also means that I'm basically stuck in bed with my foot up for a while.
What better time to catch up on posts and update you all?!?! So, here I am. I'll do a little summary of the most recent stuff below and then some other posts from what we did over the summer.
While Chris was busy this last semester - I kept the rest of us rather busy as well.
Our garden kept me plenty busy. It wasn't as fruitful as last year, but still plenty to work with. People were also incredibly generous with their own gardens as well.
Play dates will be hosted with the purpose of everyone picking some fruit to take home.
I had to put this Little Lady to work helping me chop up pears for all the pear sauce we made.
One thing I love about Idaho - people are very generous with their blessings and belongings. We love to share. Just don't tell us we HAVE to.
Thanks to the sharing nature of another friend - I now know how to make the best sauce EVER. Heat oven to 350, cut up a bunch of your tomatoes, add some onions, bell peppers, garlic, whatever. Toss with olive oil, salt and some seasonings. Roast for several hours. Then put it through a food processor with some broth. It's like a cream sauce - but not. Amazing.
I also wrapped up our experiment of growing sweet potatoes in straw bales. Not a success. Probably would have been if they were in full sun all day. Not our case.
I made sure I did a trip to an apple orchard with the kids.
We went to Cabalo's Orchard to do some picking and were fortunate enough to be able to see hives and turkeys as well.
The kids had a blast and were great helpers.
It was admittedly a lofty goal to handle it all by myself, but we made it. A change of clothes and everyone was good to go.
They even got to feed the turkeys the apples that had fallen under the trees.
Again, I was a bit ambitious and picked something like 40lbs of apples, but between sauteed apples, apple sauce, and apple fruit leathers - I used them all.
Little Lady has been keeping busy with activities, specifically dance and swimming.
Her dance class does ballet the first half and then they switch to their tap shoes.
The tap shoes are more exciting to her.
She can now swim on her own and we are working on having her keep her face in the water and swim on her stomach. We just got her some nice goggles and she has already been practicing with them in the bathtub.
I've been keeping myself busy with the kids, work and some community stuff as well.
I spent the last several months trying to enjoy having full use of both my legs.
I let a friend talk me into doing The Color Run with her.
It was a bit of a messy one.
It wasn't too bad, so we decided to go ahead and do another 5k on Thanksgiving. I had never done one before, but now have two under my belt.
I also helped organize a fundraising WOD for a friend of mine who has cancer. A fundraising WOD is basically an event hosted at a CrossFit gym. Everyone makes a donation to participate and all that money goes to the family. We also had several raffle items that were donated and people bought tickets for that as well. Our friend, Alissa, is battling colon cancer. It spread to her liver. She is the amazing Mama of four young babes and is married to her own Chris with a shaved head.
It was a successful event, as was the life altering surgery she had afterwards to remove a large part of her colon and liver, but her battle is by no means over. If you would like to make a donation to help out this family, you can do so here. We've become good friends over the past year and anything we can do to help them, we will.
As you can probably tell, I've stayed active in CrossFit. Not as active as I would like, but I've got a pretty full plate. As part of my "extra bone removal" bucket list, I went ahead and competed in my first CrossFit competition. It was the Toys for Tots Christmas Throwdown. It is a nationwide competition, hosted at various boxes across the country. I competed in the scaled division - basically that means I can't do pull ups so our workouts consisted of situps instead - or single unders rather than double unders. (you can just google all that)
Anywho, I came in first place in Women's Scaled at our box.
I'm also now helping organize events, both charitable and member ones, at the box that I go to, CrossFit South Boise.
I have also been helping with teaching Sunday school at our church and heading the playgroup we have each Friday. However - I've had to back out of all of that. Right now is the time for me to be a bit more selfish with my time and focus it on our family. I need to heal from my surgery and focus my time and energies on that. I've given a lot of time and energy to helping those around us - largely because it has kept me occupied and my attention away from the large void in our own house. But now we've got Chris back, so my attention and energy needs to be focused on us.
We did get a chance to do several little family outings.
Papa got tickets to a car race from someone at work.
It is possible it was the highlight of Ninja Baby's life.
Little Lady has been really into dinosaurs, so we HAD to visit the exhibit they had at the zoo.
It was a short visit, but a fun one.
Following the car theme, Papa had to visit the Tough Truck Challenge that was in Mountain Home.
Certainly a new experience for many of us.
Ninja Baby did NOT like when the trucks got stuck on the rocks. He would start yelling for the "struction site" (what he calls construction equipment) to go get it.
An interesting way to spend a hot, sunny day.
I also made a point of having us do several hikes. Again, using my foot while I could.
He is kind of at the stage he prefers to drive his truck along the trail than walk it.
We visited a couple area spots - anything with easy walks for the kids.
I like to take them to Hull's Gulch when I go by myself.
Good mixture of terrain.
Even if it is just getting out for two hours, it is so beneficial for us.
And you never know what you'll come across.
You might even find an apple tree.
Little Lady has gotten pretty good at hiking on her own now. She will even carry the water for them.
Hmmmm, so what else.....what else.....
We had Halloween again.
I took them to the same place we went last year. Nice and mellow and not all about expensive mazes and rides and stuff.
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They've got plenty of free stuff that suits us just fine.
We're pretty easy to please.
We got pumpkins, but never got around to carving them. The plan had been to do them with Papa but, well, hey, we've been drowning.
Little Lady was Snow White for Halloween again. She got to wear her costume to dance class.
Papa was given a costume to wear for Halloween as well. This is what a Georgetown education gets you. It's good to remind them not to take themselves too seriously!
I made gruesome snacks for our church playgroup that day.
Got everyone outfitted for Trunk or Treating. We had never done that before.
This was all so utterly thrown together. That entire day was thrown together.
These munchkins didn't seem to notice.
They did some additional trick or treating that evening when Papa got home - although Ninja Baby asked to go to bed shortly after we started.
She came home when the handle to her bag broke and ultimately forgot about the candy after 2-3 days.
We also got some surprise Pre-Thanksgiving snow.
An impressive dump, actually.
Instead of a snowman, we used it to build a sledding hill.
We still visited Camelsback for some slightly higher quality sledding.
This little monkey is always eager - she is going to love skiing. Our hopes are to try that this winter since Papa's schedule is more open.
What else.....what else.....
Well, we also just did a little visit back East. If we didn't get to see you, sorry. The main focus of the visit was to spend time with Chris' Father. He has dementia and was going to be placed in a home. We got to visit with him before hand. He got to spend a ton of time with the kids and they had a blast with him. He does not remember who any of us are, hasn't for a long time, but he really connected with the kids. He sat and played with them for hours and would play the piano with them as well. I never even knew he could play the piano. Pre-dementia he never played it. Honestly, I don't think he would have connected with the kids like that either, several years ago. His personality changed with his stroke and even more with the onset on his dementia. It is tragic, but has also allowed people to connect with him in a different way. He had barriers up before that are no longer there. It was a good visit. It was a tough visit. It was a needed visit.
We were able to squeeze in a couple visits to some old friends...
He warmed right up to them...
It was nice to see our "extended family".
They also got the chance to see more of my family,
And see some of where I got to play as a kid.
We did have to fit in a visit to Georgetown - you know - to give them even more money by visiting their bookstore. Nothing says $100k education like a sweatshirt.
We met up with my sister while we were down there.
A bit more stressful to head downtown when you have two kids in tow.
These two had lots of time together. His father has lots of stories to tell. Some of them are very ornate and intricate stories. There are some traces of fact and plenty of fiction in them, but those are his memories at this point. And what grand memories they are! If you're gonna have them - make 'em good ones!
The kids also had lots of time to connect with Grandma Gigi and Aunt Kiki. It was a good visit.
We headed home two days before Christmas, but that will be a post all on it's own. If you're still reading after ALL of that - yay for you! That was a lot.
I'll get to the rest later.
For now, I'm going to enjoy this forced slow down.
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