Andy left :(

Well, Andy left for NTC (the National Training Center at Ft. Irwin, CA) this weekend. He will be there for 5 weeks doing training before going to Iraq this fall. We were all sad to see him go. I am now a single parent with 5 kids - yikes! I sure wouldn't want to do this permanently. Don't get me wrong, I'm used to being with them all of the time - especially since we homeschool. The hard part is having to put all 5 of them to bed at night. Last night I didn't get them all to sleep until midnight. Not what I had planned. Tonight, I took a drive (to nowhere) at about 8:30 and put Nick out for the night. That seems to have made things much easier. That can't be the answer to my problems though -especially since gas prices are so high right now. I'd be spending lots of money getting him to sleep every night!

I am pretty proud of myself. We went grocery shopping today - Sam's Club AND the Commissary. The kids behaved really well and it went pretty smoothly. They were a big help putting all of the groceries away.

I went ahead and ordered the Hug-a-Hero dolls for the kids (see the entry on my other blog with pics of them). Now they will each have a "Daddy doll" for when Andy deploys - even Tori. They are all very excited about that. I'm sure that they will be taking them everywhere they go.

Well, I need to use my time wisely while Nick is asleep, so I'm off to do some housework while I have the chance...