It's getting better!

The last few weeks have been the hardest that I've been through in an awful long time. With Pete due to sail, there seemed to be no end of problems keeping them from doing so. For those of you who don't have the pleasure of being a submariners wife, you may be thinking 'oh well, a few more days home'. But i can assure you that it isn't a good feeling. When it comes to long trips, the hardest thing is saying goodbye...it's both physically and mentally exhausting. Really hard. You prepare for a few weeks before hand and when it comes it's like someone punching you in the stomach. Well, imagine doing that three times in the space of a week. It starts to feel like the world has spun off it's axis! Thankfully they've now gone and are hard at work doing 8 on, 8 off and as they settle into their routine, so I must settle back into the 'away' routine. Got this proof of one of the other wives that they'd actually managed to get out this last time. Have no idea how some people can watch the boat go out.....would break my heart even more!

The first week that they're gone you're down and moody, but once you get to grips with that, you throw yourself into everything else and try not to think about him. Unfortunately the past two weeks have thrown up some crap that hasn't enabled me to do that though. After being without the car for two weeks, I was then informed that not only was the headgasket gone, so was the radiator! In total, sorting the car out cost me £847 and man, was that £847 we just didn't have.

It's been beg, steal and borrow as Pete managed to well and truly balls up the bank account before leaving. Problem was, i'm not on the account and can't do anything about it. Over £400 of bank charges which is going to mean that the account isn't going to clear all the direct debits again this month, probably leading to more of the same every month until he comes back. At the moment I'm panicking that he may not even have a bloody house to come back to! I'm just praying that his back pay will go in the end of February to avoid complete disaster. Doesn't help when the 3 week old PS3 that the kids bought with their Xmas money was broken by Natasha last week. With the power off, she couldn't understand why the game wasn't loading that she'd put in....so she put in another....and another.....and another. Yup, four discs rammed into the disc drive does not a happy PS3 make! It's knackered the drive anyway. Luckily my household insurance has covered that little gem, however with £100 excess to find, the girls may find themselves without that baby for a while.

All of this going from pillar to post, credit car company to bank, NPFS to SSAFA, has taken it's toll and I've been really down. It's not the greatest feeling though to have family services come round to drop off an emergency £100 loan just so you can feed the kids! However, i've now done all that I can do, the rest is out of my hands.

So things are starting to settle down and I'm just getting by on an exceedingly tight budget for the next few months. One good thing to happen though is that when I put my memory card from my camera in the PC this morning, I found a few more photos that I thought had been lost after the great PC hardrive failure. This included some photos from Emilys first Nativity where she was a donkey! Funny how no matter how loud the kids sang in reception.....her voice could be heard above EVERYONES!

She absolutely thriving at school and loves it there. She's even managed to read 57 books since she started, not including ones that she reads at home. Tonight she's going to try and write her first ever letter to daddy! Next Friday, she has the valentines disco and will probably be hanging out with Christopher. I'm not allowed to call Christopher her 'friend', it HAS to be 'Boyfriend' or else I get told off.

He came round for tea last week and Emily just wouldn't leave him alone! Think I'm gonna have to watch this girl of mine with the boys.

Natasha is now at nursery three half days and one full day a week. I've got to say it's such a relief to get some time to wind down from it all, especially with Pete away. Just as Emily's whinging phase has finished, Natasha takes up the baton. They are all such loving girls but blimey Natasha is manic at the moment. She did manage to do her first 'letter' to daddy though....what a work of art eh?

Freya seems to have settled down a lot more since Christmas, at least she's starting to buck her ideas up after a rather frustrating six months. Whether it be hormones, the fall out from her dad not going, or just being scared of me killing her (a distinct possibility a couple months back) she's starting to take more responsibility for her actions. She's just joined a new joint schools drama class and they're putting on Alice in Wonderland in the Summer, she's got a school trip to the Scilly Isles to look forward to this year and has just started playing rugby for which her grandad took her into town on Sunday and got her boots. I know when she starts at the secondary school in September she's probably going to be trying to do every club under the sun.

Talking of sun....after an aptly timed snow fall at 8 this morning, it's now beautiful outside. With all the snow chaos everywhere else in the country, I was hoping for at least a full days snow.....or at least the girls were. But they made the most of it by running around like loons for an hour before school. It had already started to disappear by the time they all got off to their respective school gates though.

Still haven't done any scrapping though. Keep saying i'll do it this weekend, and never get round to it but with everything going on i've had a good excuse. So, i'm definately going to do some tonight.......just have to do the shopping first.