The road before us

It's been an interesting and emotional week. Austin has a new job! He officially starts tomorrow, June 1, with the Georgia Department of Defense, as a CATM Instructor. (Basically that's the Air Force's very fancy way of saying he's a Weapon's Expert!)

What all that means is that life is about to change for us. Because he's leaving the fire department, and Baldwin County in general, he will be moving from shift work to a regular 9-5 kind of job. Which is great! But with the greatness comes a fruit basket turnover....in other words, major changes.

Austin has kept Jonathan and Annah at home on his off days since they were born. That will no longer be possible. Our wonderful babysitter (who is like a mother to me, and a grandmother to all of my children), for a variety of reasons, isn't able to keep them full-time; so they'll be starting a real daycare Monday morning. We'd already planned to put Annah there full-time in August, when Jonathan starts pre-K, so it wasn't hard to get her enrolled a bit earlier. They have plenty of summer slots open, so taking Jonathan wasn't an issue either. What is the issue is that Annah has never been around other kids her age. I'm not sure how she'll handle it. Heck, I'm not sure how I'LL handle it! I don't worry about Jonathan...he's been in a preschool setting before, and will be fine. But except for the couple of months Jonathan was in preschool for four hours a day, they've never been apart. This will be major for them. I wonder if they'll stay as close as they are now. I hope so. They couldn't be closer if they were twins.

Austin will be making a 100 mile round trip drive every day. Our gas expenses will increase, that's for sure. But we've been fortunate to be able to get new health insurance, which really decreases the amount of money coming out of my paycheck every two weeks. Hopefully, everything will balance out. We've already talked about some small things we can do to make things easier for everyone; hopefully the road before us will be smooth, with as few bumps as possible!