The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Last week was sort of a rough week for me.  Chris was gone for work Monday-Friday and though it wasn’t really much different for the girls from when he was working at the restaurant, it just felt different to me.  It was hard not having him in the house at night.  I was supposed to be building the dollhouse for Nora’s for solstice present, but Zara wasn’t sleeping well at night and I just couldn’t find any time to work on it.  I couldn’t go shopping for our traditional exotic fruit stocking stuffers because the girls were always with me, and I realized there was no way we would be ready to celebrate on the 21st.  Disappointment of the missed holiday combined with the stress of trying to figure out what we are going to do about our living situation these next few months made life feel pretty overwhelming.

I still sometimes cannot believe that things turned out as they did.  Not six months ago, we we basking in the joy of owning our very own home.  Everything felt like it was starting to fall into place — and then we had our second awful November in a row (I’m starting to wonder what the deal with Novembers is).  Now, the new house I love is a huge weight stopping us from moving forward, and all I could think last week was how completely out of control I feel about everything.  By Thursday, I was a mess and by Friday I wasn’t quite sure how I would be able to keep holding it together.

Then, at 4:30 Friday afternoon, Chris surprised us by getting home four hours sooner than expected, and suddenly I was able to see the light at the end of the tunnel again.  The next couple months may be rough and they may be less than ideal, but in the end it will all be worth it because of Chris’ new and amazing school-hour schedule.  We are only a few days into his winter break and already with this new job we are getting so much more time together as a family.  We are eating dinner together.  We are making gingerbread houses.

We are taking Chris to explore all the places he normally misses out on, like the Rockpile Museum.

We are actually getting the most family time that we have had on a regular basis since Nora was born, and it’s going to stay that way.

In the end, I realized that it really didn’t matter if we did our holiday celebration a couple days late.  We still got to watch the baby discover wrapping paper.

We still had two sisters super excited about rocking horses

and dollhouses

and watching the neighbors shovel.

The day itself didn’t really matter.  What mattered was that we were all together as a family and that we know we have many, many more days of this to look forward in the future.

We are still working out plans for the new year and are trying as soon as possible to get our whole family living 24/7 in one town again, but I’m doing my best to focus on the positive that is sure to come.  There is a light at the end of this tunnel.