I woke up this morning to the sound of NATO fighters taking off and shaking the house. It was probably eleven when I woke up. It was a good night’s sleep and I am feeling much better today after having had a night of no sleep. And I feel like I am mostly on a realistic European schedule now, as well. It is tough for us because we deal with people in the US all day long, especially me, so getting to an ideal schedule for me (bed by eleven, awake at six) just doesn’t work because then I am unable to overlap with people back home. So it kind of forces us to be on a skewed schedule of getting up very late in the morning and staying up late at night, even though we would prefer to be up with the rising sun, or at least I would.
The girls were up before me today, which is unusual. But they did not miss a night of sleep like I did. They only beat me by twenty minutes or so, though. So not much.
Today was a day of eating leftovers. Dominica has been cooking at home for every meal since we have gotten to Greece and there are lots of odds and ends to finish up so that we don’t have them piling up in the fridge and going bad. We are generally terrible about that but today we made an effort and pretty much cleaned out the fridge. This is awesome, we are eating on a much tighter budget than we have in a long time, maybe ever. Even in Spain, where food was cheaper, we were eating out and getting prepared food much more frequently.
Life in Greece is very different for us than life in Spain. How much of that is because we are on a little island, or because of differences in jet lag, or in work schedules or because this is not our first, long stretch in Europe we have no idea. In Spain we were instantly out and exploring the area, including our first weekend taking a trip across the region by car and staying in another town. Here, we have barely left the house. I’ve been out a few times and Dominica and the girls for only one car ride to anything other than the one trip to the grocery store. Maybe we are just used to things and not that excited to explore any more? Maybe we are just tired. We have not even gone out for a single meal, yet.
I supposed, being our fourth long term live in country in a year, we are just used to the constant exploration of new places and are not so excited to get out as much as before and we are so much more tired and looking forward to the chance to just be at home and relaxing. It has been quite a busy year, we need downtime, too.
Liesl is back to school today. They have taken some time off for the holidays and the move but today is full school again. I did her word work with her and she and Dominica butt heads something terrible and it can easily take an hour. I’m able to keep her on task and we get through it in twelve minutes without the fighting.
I spent a lot of time posting today, it was an incredibly active day. Everyone has recovered from the holidays, I am imagining.
This evening Luciana talked me into playing catch with the girls for maybe half an hour or more. We played using the stuffed reindeer pillow that Luciana got for Liesl for Christmas. They call it “reindeer catch” and they had a great time.
We managed to get everyone off to bed nice and early tonight. The girls went up around eleven. Dominica and I just a little after that. The girls begged for me to sleep up in the loft with them again so I gave in. My back will likely really hurt tomorrow, there is no room up there for me to toss and turn like I need to so my back tends to be pretty sore after trying to sleep in a small bed. But it keeps them happy and helps them to get onto a good schedule as they are willing to go to bed and actually go to sleep hours earlier this way.