And off he goes!

Kyle has officially begun the winter rodeos. It is an adjustment as always to have him gone. The mornings are by far the biggest challenge that I have. This is my typical work day when he is gone. (I am sharing this mostly so I can look back at my blog when I am old and gray remember these days :-)

Alarm goes off at 5:45. Get up and get myself ready and let Buster outside before the girls get up. Pack Jenae's lunch and make sure her back pack is ready for the day.
6:30 sharp I wake the girls up if they are not already up.
6:45 Go get the car out and pull it in front of the house so it can warm up a bit.
7:00 on the dot we need to be driving out of my driveway and off to drop Jenae off at Grandpa & Grammy's house. (Marilyn takes her to school when Kyle is gone)
7:10 Drop Aubree off at Lindsay's house for the day.
7:20 pick up my car pooler, Lisa and head to O'Neill.
7:55 At work ready for the day!

I run a pretty tight ship in the evenings too.

It is usually 6:00 in the evenings by the time I get home, get the girls picked up and settled in the house.

From 6-7 We eat a quick supper, get baths taken and work on spelling words and math facts with Jenae. I do sometimes let the girls eat supper in the living room and watch the Duke's of Hazard. We all like that show :-)

At 7:00 we shut off the TV and I turn my phone on do not disturb so the girls and I can have quality quiet time. We do a lot of reading from 7-8 and at 8 I put them to bed so we can do it all over again the next day. (This is assuming that Aubree does not nap during the day. If she naps she is so wound up at night and I am lucky if I can get her to fall asleep before 11:00...and this mama is not a night person!)

Aubree probably has the hardest time adjusting to Kyle being gone. It is a real struggle to get her woke up and dressed so early. She loves get to lay around in her pj's until she is ready to get dressed for the day. Getting her dressed at 6:30 in the morning can be a challenging task.

It is hard right now, but I know soon we will adjust and it will get easier. I am so thankful that we did not get the additional 4-8 inches of snow they were predicting. That would have added a little more stress to having Kyle gone.
At least he is only gone a couple days then home for a bit before he takes off again.

Thankfully I have an awesome support system with Chip & Marilyn just down the road. They help me out in so many ways from taking care of the horses & chickens in the winter months to getting Jenae to and from school. Kyle would not be able to do what he does with out all of their help.

Yesterday Aubree and I were kind of lost having Kyle gone and Jenae at school. We did manage to have a fun day at home. We played "house" and I was the mom and she was the kid again! Sometimes she would be afraid I was not "playing house" and she would remind me at say "Mom, we are playing house remember you are the mom and I am the kid" It is hard to pretend to be the mom when I actually am the mom :-) We had fun. It was snowing pretty hard last night and they called off Awana. I was thankful I did not have to bundle up the girls and take Jenae into town for that.

I am hoping the weather cooperate so we take take a little road trip this weekend. I saw in the forecast that they are calling for snow on Saturday night into Sunday morning now. I guess time will tell.