Slowly Recovering

Sometimes, as Curt and I lay there at night, we wonder what's wrong with us and our family.  Why are we always so tired?  Why don't we have more time to put into the kids?  The family?  Each other?  Why are we so busy and yet don't seem to have much to show for it?  Why are we snappy and irritable?  We don't go to many extracurricular activities.  Our kids aren't involved in sports.  We have no trips to school to make, no parent/teacher conferences, no band practices.  We spiral downward into thinking that we are so screwed up.  And we've screwed up our kids.  Because we must be doing something wrong.

Then, once we've slept and can think a little more clearly, we re-process.  According to one of the recent stress tests I looked up online, we hit a bunch of the top 20 stressors:

• moving internationally  (they only had moving.  I think internationally should score a lot more points)
• recent trip (more like a move, with being gone 4 months)

  
  

  This is what happens when you don't have toys to play with

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  Woodworking!! 

  

  Our neighbor, Hunter, with Carmen and Zoya.  He is SUCH a God send.  These 3 are together everyday.

  

  Elden, the lionmore like a move with being gone for 4 months)

• change in job (Curt's role is COMPLETELY different than his last and he is still learning a ton everyday at work)
• too much to do around the home (enough said)
• change in pay (the closest I could come to support raising)

Even with all of these, we only scored mid-way on stress.  We haven't had anyone die (thank the Lord) and haven't been incarcerated recently.

Since we last wrote, we settled back in, went through THE ENTIRE house and pulled out everything we wanted to ship to Thailand (Oh, the decisions!!) and packed boxes.  18 boxes later, we were done  (I think there were 2 boxes of just sheets.  No flat sheets over there).  No joke, everyone only has 8 days of clothing.  Everything else went in those boxes.  Don't make fun of us if we're always appearing in the same clothes.

Next, we went back through the entire house, and pulled out everything we wanted to sell (pretty much everything else), organized it all and threw a huge garage sale.  We sold abouthalf our stuff.  Pretty awesome.  The rest went back into the garage for the next garage sale.  In the midst of all that, Curt left for 2 weeks for some really awesome meetings in Thailand (thank God for my dad who came for most of that time!!).  

We are now living on bare minimums (as a minimalist, I love it).  One pot.  One skillet.  One couch.  One set of sheets/bed.  I think the kids have about 8 toys total to their names.  When they ask what they should play with, I hand them a stick and a leaf.  As my friend, Val, would say, "It increases their imagination."

So, once we look back through all that, we realize we're normal.  Well, normal for crazy people.  So, normal psychos.  And, somehow, that helps us sleep so much better.