On my brief stint as single parent...

My husband will be home soon!!!
Schools are out.
Y had the cutest graduation ever! It was so cute:)
Then I can't believe CK is going into 3rd grade! What??!! When did this happen?
Thank you God for your loving kindness.

I'm sitting outside in the circle as Y plays. Its so nice under the shade and Y is just having a blast all by herself, happy to be outside, just taking it all in. CK is at a play date, a sleepover(again, when did we get to this point? Gasp). His day is made too. He lives for stuff like this.

For those of you who don't know, my hubby has been deployed since January.  I'm just so thankful that we have made it this far. That I've been able to be single mommy to two energetic and highly emotional childrens.

I am one bad mama jamma! Yep, allow me to pat my own back for a second.

What have these nearly 6 months taught me?

1. That I can do it. I can go through difficult situations and I can make it to the other side. Note that just because you made it through doesn't mean you did it with grace and elegance the entire time through, haha!
CK and I have gotten into watching American Ninja Warrior. We just love it.
There was one particular contestant that made me think about this period that hubs has been away. The contestant had quite the journey working through those hurdles. As one of the commentators went on to mention, " this is one of the ugliest runs I've seen. It is not pretty"
At one point he was on his belly hanging on to an obstacle where  he was supposed to be on his feet.
I was like yep, that's me alright. There have been times where I have been an outright mess but we made it to the end of the day and we tried again the next day.

2. That sometimes you are just going to feel lonely and alone. In a world full of human being, it can be a painfully lonely place sometimes.

3. That not everyone you offload to is going to empathize.
There are those that will use the information you give them to make themselves feel better about themselves and the choices that they have made; "I'm so thankful for their service but I'm so happy that's not my life"
Then there are those who are just like "Look, people are starving to death in Somalia, get over it"

4. That there are some incredible people out there, true godsends, who will light a rainbow in your path in ways you never even expected.
I have had some pretty amazing support from the most unexpected places. It's so true that God works in mysterious ways. In my mind I had a pretty conclusive list of who I THOUGHT I could rely on and God just chuckled at me and showed me the real deal.

5. That it's the challenging times that take us to deeper levels of faith, love, understanding....growth.
I needed to be lonely to know that even if I feel that way, I am in fact not alone. God is ALWAYS by my side. I found myself relying more and more on my faith to get through some times. As a result my faith grew even stronger. I realized even more how prayer is my lifeline and not so much my last resort after I've tried to do everything by my own will and strength.

6. That I really, truly love my husband and all that he is to me. My confidant, my best friend, my lover, the father to my children, my voice of reason. Okay fine, I knew this before but it was reiterated during our brief time apart. In he beginning, I just missed how much easier having a partner makes my life. I have someone to help bathe the kids, someone to stay with them while I go to buy groceries, someone to take turns with the bedtime stories (coz who wants to read Elephant and Piggy 6 times EVERY DAY).It was all about the service.
But afterwards, when we got into our own rhythm, I missed the other things too. Someone to hold my hand, laugh at T.V shows with, give me hugs et kisses. Just sit in silence with.

We still have about 3 weeks more to go so who knows what else will happen, what other lessons I'll learn, what other meltdowns I'll have or how bad ass I'll get to be :)