Anyway, it was awesome! We brought the kids down to my sister's and brother-in-law's house for the weekend, left the van with them and rented this fun little car (another generous gift from family)!!! We came home and were without children for 2 nights and 2 days!!!!! This is the first time we've left all of the children to do something fun. We've left them for various hospital stays throughout the past 19m, but none of those were too fun or restorative. On Saturday we went to this awesome gluten free bakery and grabbed lunch and sandwiches for the road and headed up to Popham Beach, Maine. We have vacationed at Popham Beach with my family for the past 3 years and totally love it up there. We went to the State Park Beach and read, napped and walked without having to deal with kids crying about the wind, the sand, the waves, the cold water, they can't walk any more, "can we go back to the car", "the sand it too hot", etc. etc. It was awesome! Chad and I talked a lot about how to change our situation/life so that we don't stay in such a crappy place (emotionally) and don't ever get so low again. We have inserted mini get aways each quarter, a separate day off for Chad and I once each month, a date night together at least once a month and random other little things to take back our life from this constant pummeling we've been taking. We started having family meals today too and the kids responded really well to it! Hopefully it will get even better and meals won't be the crying/whining/fighting/food throwing/time out-ing event it usually is.We are not in a better place yet, but we have found the trail marker to it and have started on the path, hopefully. Please keep praying for our bedraggled little family. The path to a better place starts out on a knife edge and feels very precarious...so easy to fall off the path. I think as we force good rests into our lives amidst the hard things that keep coming, that the path to a better place will feel less precarious and will be a little easier to follow. If I stay on the mountain path analogy, I think Chad and I have been trying to sprint up this mountain of hardship and just get to the top where everything will be better. However, we keep coming to another steep stretch of the trail and there is no end in sight, or so it seems. So now we have to re-strategize because sprinters can's sprint through a marathon. They have to become long distance runners and pace themselves and in our case, rest alongside the trail, eat some yummies and maybe even set up camp for the night. So that is our new strategy. We are starting to accept that we are on this mountain and that we may have to climb for a long long time...we've got to start looking around at the path we are on, see if there is anything worthwhile to see, sing some good Deerfoot songs when moral gets low and occasionally ask passersby (ie our families/friends) to carry our packs for a little way. It's kind of embarrassing to have somebody carry your pack when they've got their own pack, but we have gotten to the point where we are freezing cold, soaked, tired, hungry, disoriented and need the help. It was kind of nice to have family give us provisions, carry our packs and let us rest this weekend. Thank you!
Now for some fun pictures! Here we are in driving our fun little car up to Maine
Here we are at the gluten free bakery.
We forgot to take any pictures at the beach, but that really was the best part of the day.
Here are the 5 boys (our 3 plus 2 of our nephews) eating breakfast and getting car racing quizzes and related physics lessons from uncle Tom. The kids were really loving this!
