Preparing to go on a life changing adventure is so much fun, fun, fun! Hashtag thegoodlife, hashtag blessed, hashtag …. whoareyoukidding?

Here’s me trying to keep it real:

As our date of departure creeps closer, I made a simple calendar for the girls they can cross off each night to see how long it is until we leave. While making that, I marked down their last day of school and had Lauren count the schooldays left. Only 8 days of school! That was last Monday. Talking about a reality check. School will be closed for a 2 week holiday until we leave, so the girls’ last day at school will be Thursday April 26th.

Today we went in for Lauren’s weekly swim class and filled in the paperwork to cancel her future lessons. Turned out, she only has 2 more swim classes left before we leave. Also turned out, even though I talked to someone about it earlier today, the penny hadn’t dropped that I was supposed to go IN THE POOL WITH HER today, for a special pupil-parent swimming lesson. I felt so bad for her that I didn’t participate, and when I apologised to her, she said “It’s okay, Mommy” with more composure than I had at that moment.

The past year has probably been the most challenging year for us all. So much has happened, it has my head spinning. Between losing Rene’s brother and aunt, financial “Three Card Monte”, me being overstressed and quitting my job, Rene being made redundant on his and the mayhem of getting two houses ready to be rented out, it’s been an absolute rollercoaster.

I don’t think we (kids included) have had a chance to properly deal with all of it on a mental and emotional level. We’re all getting pretty high strung and getting by with the occasional ‘outburst’. Like 4 high pressure valves in a house. That’s almost a pretty bad ass band name, isn’t it? No? Fair enough.

On Robin’s birthday some two weeks ago I couldn’t keep it up anymore. Raw emotion just flooded from my eyes. I cried at my kid’s birthday party, her last one here for four years.

Rene has been keeping himself very busy with painting and other DIY jobs, and even though he is absolutely the most stable of all of us, it’s not hard to tell he’s extremely tense.

The kids have their occasional temper tantrums and crying fits, especially the oldest because she is very aware of all the chaos and the negatives surrounding our departure. From her perspective it’s rounds of painful needles, the prospect of missing her friends, a daily changing house with a lot of “Don’t touch that!” and stressed parents.

So there it is. It’s hard and we get snappy and we seem to miss each other because the tension does get in the way sometimes. And it’s okay.

The only thing we can do is keep going, take care of each other as best we can under these conditions and ride it out like a storm. Fine preparation for a soon-to-be sailing family.

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