A difficult month but some good stuff too

I knew that when Mike left it was going to be a difficult two months.  I'd dreaded him leaving for months and just tried not to think about until I actually had to.  It's been a long time since Mike has had to leave us and I admit that I've been spoiled.  Especially for a military wife, I've been spoiled.  I was much more used to his absence when we lived in Oklahoma.  But it's been a long time since Oklahoma and I'm out of practice.  And I didn't expect it to be this hard for me.  

But it's been a pretty crappy six weeks in so many ways.  I mentioned that the first week of Mike's absence found both myself and Piper sick.  I haven't had a cold and sore throat that bad in a long time so I can only imagine how bad it was for her.  Since then she has been sick almost non-stop.  She has now had two terrible colds with lingering coughs, diarrhea with blood in her stools, pink-eye, and an earache.  She never was a good napper anyway so that hasn't been any different but she has always been an OK sleeper at night, only waking up one or two times a night.  But since being sick she has not been sleeping well at night either.  She just feels so miserable and her coughing and boogers and fevers have kept her from getting a good nights sleep, which of course means I don't get a good nights sleep either.  Night after night has found me getting only a few hours of sleep.  And I don't function well on a few hours of sleep and it's worse when there is no husband home to give me a break or let me take a nap.  

I was finally able to get away one night this past month and I left the boys and Piper with my friend and her husband and went grocery shopping by myself and went to Home Goods and Hobby Lobby.  It was so nice.  I have also had a Young Women in the ward come over a few times so that I could take Piper to the doctor without having to drag the boys along too.  Oh, and I went to book club and stayed for hours just chatting--oh to have adult conversation!  

Two weeks ago I was at the gym working out when I fell on my right knee a few times.  It was a really difficult workout and I just kept falling.  The last fall was the worse but I didn't notice any pain other than what seemed like a floor burn from the hard gym floor.  But as the day went on I realized that it was much worse than I expected.  I got a blessing for myself and Piper (who was sick again and had a fever for a few days) but by the end of that week I was in a lot of pain and the pain wasn't staying to just my knee, but hurting down into my leg and my foot.  And when Piper and I only got three hours of sleep that night from her fever that was keeping her up, I decided to take us both to instacare.  I called a friend and asked if her daughter could come watch the boys.  She brought her daughter and the rest of her family and they cleaned my house while Piper and I were at instacare for two and a half hours.  At instacare the doctor told me she thought I might have a blood clot and that I'd need to go to the ER.  So I brought Piper home and put her to bed and then called another friend to relieve my first friend so she could go home and take care of her own family.  My friend came over and stayed at the house while Piper slept and I spent three and a half more hours at the E.R.  They did an ultrasound and said there was no blood clot but they weren't sure what was wrong and sent me home.  

So since then I've been limping around everywhere.  It hasn't gotten any worse but isn't really better either.  Thankfully, for the most part my leg and foot have stopped hurting and it is mostly just my knee now but I think it is time for me to get back to the doctor and hopefully they can tell me what is wrong.  It seems like it is a torn meniscus from all my symptoms.  The day after the ER experience the boys woke me up with breakfast in bed.  It was so sweet.  They brought me two cups of milk (one for pouring milk into my cereal and one for drinking), cereal, and a piece of toast.  Will had made the toast and he went to butter it but it wasn't melting so he popped the toast in the microwave.  I'm not sure how long he microwaved it for but it was long enough to make the toast inedible--like break my tooth hard.  It was adorable and I didn't tell him how hard the toast was.  I told him it was wonderful.  I think it's ok to lie in those kinds of circumstances, don't you think?   

Piper's cold seems to be mostly gone now but she still has a nasty cough that wakes her up at night.  I'm hoping this is the last of her sicknesses for the entire summer!  

Anyway, life could be worse.  There is always something worse...That said, it's still been very hard for me to be without Mike's help with four kids, one sick kid the entire summer, and an injured knee.  

The positive part is that I've had some wonderful friends help me and for that, I'm so thankful.  I'm so lucky to have such a wonderful support group here.  

And to end this long post, I have happy pictures to post--proof that not all is crappy and in fact, a lot is very good.

1.  The boys found snakes in our backyard.  They put one of them in a jar and declared him their pet.  It took some convincing but I got them to release the little guy into the backyard again. 

 They tried to build the snake a little "house" thinking that if he couldn't stay inside they could keep him outside in a little "house."  He was a tricky snake and didn't stay put.

 2.  I made my first 4th of July decorations.  I think it turned out great.

 3.  We went to play games with some friends one evening after dinner.  The boys were more interested in the bunnies hopping around their yard than the game though...

 4.  Mike came home!!  It was the best weekend ever!  He bought an ice cream maker so he can add to his cheese making fetish.  He and the boys made vanilla ice cream.  He also took them to a movie and then we went to the zoo together the next day.  And he helped around the house doing things I needed help with or didn't want to do--like take care of the wasp nest in the backyard.

 We got to go on a date.  It was so much fun!  We went to Squeak Soda.  It has 70+ soda flavors.  We decided on French Toast and Uncle Vinney.  Mike's was the French Toast and it tasted exactly like French Toast, which actually is quite disgusting as a soda.  Mine was a mixture of lemon grass and mango and it was weird.  Fun, but weird.  Neither of us finished our sodas.  Then we went downtown and checked out all the stores.  We planned on hitting up Paris Crepes but it was closed already.  We discovered that there are a lot of homeless dudes in downtown Colorado Springs.

I wanted to buy these for my sister Gillian but Mike convinced me just to take a picture for her.

 Saturday night Mike and I ate the ice cream he made with the boys--they had some the day before--and watched a movie.

It was such a wonderful weekend and I miss him already.  I can't wait for him to get back!  When he gets back we are going to South Dakota.  We will get back after school starts so I have only two weeks left to get everything done in time for school.  It is going to be a very busy two weeks and hopefully that will make the time pass quickly.  I don't know how single mother's do it.  I really don't.