I had to go back and dig to find this thread, haven't posted to it in almost 2 years! Not much has really changed, I'm still dating the same woman but as time has gone on we see less and less of each other. We text a few times daily but have actually only seen each other 2 or 3 times since Christmas (3 months ago). Not sure if that's "dating" or "friends with benefits" or what, I don't really lose too much sleep over it as I'm perfectly fine living alone these days! Kind of enjoy it actually.
I do still have S16 every other week but he's very independent now. We've been working on teaching him to drive but it really stresses him out (not because of my coaching, he just freaks out about it). My two D's have both moved back to the DFW area, one is living with my XW and the other about 30 miles away but still in the metroplex.
I'm still very active in Crossfit and also joined Anytime Fitness and have added conventional weight training back in. Crossfit has helped my cardio immensely but I've lost muscle mass in 2 years of it.
What precipitated me posting this update is something happened yesterday that caught me completely off-guard. I went over to pick up S16 from XW's house and S16 told XW to show me the pics of one of our dogs. Turns out she had made a bunch of new scrapbook pages (this is a long-time hobby of hers, she makes these really creative, beautiful pages) and one of them had puppy pics of our dog from 7 years ago. So she was thumbing through the scrapbook pages of various kid events (marching band, color guard, etc.), and there were smiling pics of me on nearly every one. Now most were family pics but since our D she has made plenty of scrapbook pages and I have rarely made an appearance on them (she or the kids usually show them to me). But then there was an entire page with nature scenes from one of our vacations and only one picture with people in it- the two of us with our arms around each other. She started to flip to the next page and our son stopped her and pointed at it and said "awwwww!" I was really quite shocked, but managed to casually say "was that in Arkansas?" And she said "yeah it was next to that waterfall but it didn't show up in the picture very well." I'm not saying it means much of anything other than maybe she no longer just remembers the bad times but remembers we had good times too. But still, picturing her actually assembling this page of memories with just nature scenes and a picture of the two of us, no kids, no pets; I can't help but wonder what possessed her to do that.
Just in general XW and I get along really well, there's no awkward tension or anything. We coordinate things with the kids and pets and it all goes very smoothly. Sometimes we'll do things together with the kids, like a random lunch or dinner. We still do joint birthday parties with them. I have no idea if she's dating anyone but I don't think she is.
I have a mini vacation planned with the kids in about a month at Great Wolf Lodge. We went in early December and had so much fun we decided to do it again!
