I'm happy to report that we are all accounted for and safely ensconced in our currently-appropriate locations. We had a chance to talk to hubby a little while ago. Have I ever mentioned how much I love the whole video chat thing, and how much easier it makes all of this?

Today was the beginning of getting back to normal - church this morning, walking the dog, playing, all the normal stuff of daily life. Tomorrow we start with our homeschool year and working harder on sticking to a daily routine. Arts and crafts this week will mostly be geared toward Miss A's birthday party this coming weekend. We made up the goodie bags today - paper bags with pictures of princesses glued on them that the girls colored last night and today. I may or may not have a tendency to go a little overboard on goodie bags for my kids' birthdays... but they really are a lot of fun!!! We have plans for seven little girls and one boy, so I made his bag up separately with play dough, a toy dinosaur, stuff like that. The girls are all getting stuff like hair bands, beads, stickers... and of course all the bags have plenty of candy in them :) The next few days I'll work on the preps for the crafts we have planned, then I'll do the baking stuff at the end of the week. (Nothing too fancy, just cookies and cupcakes.)

There has been a lot of "I miss Daddy" today... oddly enough, mostly it's coming from the young one.  I think C has a better comprehension of what's going on and understands that it does have a semi-fixed deadline. She doesn't really understand the passage of time in detail, but she does know the order of seasons and calendar events, so that helps. A, on the other hand, is just kind of confused about the whole coming and going thing. It'll be good to be beyond this and back into having him home full-time for a longer period. Good for all of us. But in the meantime, we press onward, we embrace it rather than fight against it, and we look for the opportunities for growth and development hidden inside the experience. That's the way I look at it now. I could rail against the unfairness, whine and cry ... but that would be bad for all of us and would cheat me of another opportunity to say "Why me, God?" and mean it.

How's that for sounding all wise and mature-like? ;)