18 hours......??????

In my efforts to keep the blog updated I am writing.  But for the first time in ages I have little to report. This might be a good thing, since the 25^th of January 2012 my whole life has changed and having nothing to tell means nothing is changing.

I even have routines in place!!!… Morning routines, school drop off routines, pick up routine, home routine, dinner and bed routines.  You will notice I don’t say much about the time in-between school drop off and pick up cause I have no idea what to do with the time. 

 

Now just to be clear, it’s not like I don’t have anything to do.  I have things I need to get done but … I have not had time ….. real me time, my own time, my own personal time in almost 6 years.  To be honest as I drop the kids off at school I sit in the car with my ‘have to do’ list running through my head and then…. Boom!!!! Gone!! I feel like a school girl who just got the day off school and did not tell her parents.

 

Now we are not (yet) talking about 5 days a week – I have Devin for two glorious days a week before the school system takes him from me next September.  So 18 hours a week I can do ANYTHING I WANT.  I have not yet got a job, or a national insurance number.  So what do you do when you can do anything you like. 

The answer … Nothing… I have done nothing but waste time!  In my efforts to use my time I land up wasting time.  Time just slips through my fingers (which kills me to waste time or not take opportunities)

 

The hardest thing I have been experiencing is how to spend time by myself again.  I have had 2 little people on me like an accessory for so long I don’t know what to wear if I can’t wear them. 

Part of me needs this time. I have had quite a crazy 10 years!  Lived in 4 countries, moved to 3 states, 2 kids, 3 deployments… and that’s just the headlines.  I look at all I have done and part of me just wants to stop!  Stop and enjoy silence! I am tired of figuring things out again (cause each country and state has new everything’s to figure out)

 

My life cycle feels as though it has gone from the most glorious summer I have ever seen to a winter which is stark.  So in seeing that, I have decided to enjoy the stark, enjoy the silence, and just take this time to recharge and replenish.  When spring comes again I will be ready !!!

 

 

 

Greetings from the UK

I’m sitting down quietly (apposed to falling into a heap at night) with some urge to write for the first time in ages. It has been over a year maybe even more since I last wrote on this blog. But I’ll spare you all the crazy details of our crazy lives over the past and start with today, here, right now as I sit on our loner furniture in the UK.

I still wake up and wonder how we got here? I still get momentarily confused to where I am and where I live. I was so settled in Washington I could have just stayed there forever and never ever have moved…. Well the old saying ‘If you want to make God laugh then tell him your plans’ came into effect with a great (and potentially fun) job offer in the UK.

Ok, Ok so I have been here before and all that stuff… but I have never been here WITH Kids. So my old idea of walking leisurely down the streets of London all day long, only stopping when my feet needed a break and my body needed another coffee… GONE, put on pause.

This is my 4th country move in 10 years – you could say I got it… but sadly I don’t. Every country is different and every age changes things too. I can do one thing a day to settle us. This is because it takes me that long to figure it out and to get it done. The main reason for this is I have been so Americanized. America makes total sense to me. It’s an easy place to live.

So we get here and things are for some reason much harder compared to the US (and more expensive). I am on my 10th pass code for this and my 10th ‘special word’ for that. It’s truly like learning how to live all over again. Our furniture comes in 5 days. I think that will settle us a bit more.

So what’s good about being here … Our beautiful house on a farm where the kids can go out and be outside all day long. Yesterday they went out at 10am and came in at 5pm, kicking and screaming. They even eat their meals out there. They are so dirty and so tired. It’s just what I feel they should be doing at their age.

Secondly is the school they are in. It’s everything a parent wants for their kids. They even have swimming and forest school for them. They both love it – I love it. In a few years when we move it is the school I will be crying about leaving.

Another amazing thing here is I have old friends again. You can always make a new friend but never an old one. It’s so nice to think of my tribe close/er and all just a phone call away.

The pubs! Oh the pubs! Mainly the Cotswold pubs (we are living in the Cotswold’s if I failed to mention that before) Just the smell, I want to bottle it up and take it everywhere with me.

It’s also nice to be only 11 hours from home. Sounds long but I have been doing 33 hours from the US so 11 is a breeze.

That’s all I got for now, I hope to blog more often
If your reading this leave me a comment – I’d love to hear from ya’all (woops there’s my American coming out)