Aching Hearts

Valentine's Day I tried to keep myself busy. I took a single flower to all the sisters I go visiting teaching to and my partner. Out of the 5 of us, only 1 has her husband home. All of the other 4 of us either have husbands deployed or gone for predeployment training. I even bought myself some tulips. I'll just say their from my husband since he works to provide the money to buy them. He sent a card but it still hasn't come. The package I mailed to him took 10 days to get there. My visiting teaching partner says packages from him may take a month.

We had a counseling appointment we all went to and then I got brave (I had bribed them) and took them to Pizza Hut for dinner on Valentine's Day. Me. Solo with six eating pizza at a restaurant. And we all survived. And I don't remember any tears.

When we got home, the kids and I exchanged Valentine's cards. We had made envelopes and decorated them the week before and spent the week writing on hearts love notes to each other. We all had fun opening those cards. Amanda also gave me a Valentine's card that read, "I love you because you love blue." So sweet.

Yesterday I used our tax return to finally pay off the van and my student loans. AAAHHH!!!! Can't way until we can say we are completely debt free but we only have the 2 biggies left at this point--his student loans and our house in Utah. Slowly we're getting there.

Jonathan had a really rough day at school yesterday and started kicking people and things when he got upset. I got an email from Daniel's teacher this afternoon said they were discussing something in his class that reminded Daniel of his Dad and he lost it. My heart aches to see them hurting this way. I wish I could do something, anything to take this pain away from them. We all have our moments and struggle for a while. I have to admit if I didn't have these kids, I think I would be like so many others I've heard of and probably love to stay in bed all day. Maybe that way I could actually get some sleep. But I can't. So tomorrow will come and we'll all try to move on.

So as I was typing the last bit, I got an email from Jonathan's teacher and he had a rough day again today. UGH! I'm not sure what else to do to help my kids right now except pray some more.

Trying to pull ourselves together and celebrate Amanda's birthday tonight.