Everything new.

We’re in San Antonio now.

I love it. So far. The contrast of my prior life to my life now, is so stark that some days I find myself feeling like I’m a different person. A whole new world of people & surroundings. A brand new life, I guess you could say.

Everything in Texas is big. EVERYTHING. The road signs & billboards, the houses, the stores, the portion sizes (of course), the landscape.

We live in a beautiful, newer, spacious home in a nice neighborhood. Real estate (compared to our prior locations) is cheap. Our BAH (military housing allowance, since we don’t live on base) enables us to live in a 5 year old, 3,000+ square foot house. The neighborhood has a community pool & the kid’s school is a reasonable 12 minute walk away.

So much has changed in a short amount of time.

After nearly 4 months of Joseph living in a different state for COT & JSOC (commissioned officer training & JAG school), we’re now a family again.

I’m taking my time reassessing my priorities, what I want my life to look like from this point on. My new reality is so different from my old one. I no longer have to work for pay, & as such, I find myself with a greater sense of calm & peace. A feeling I’m not sure I’ve felt, at least in this way, since we’ve been married. Joseph finally has a job, & not just a good job (which it is), but a career. The uncertainty of the future is no longer a part of my day-to-day reality.

My older 3 kids are in school (more on that decision, in another post). And after homeschooling them this past year, having the responsibility of having them all day every day, no longer there, well, it’s going to take some getting used to.

You know that talk about figuring out how to scrape together extra money & cutting back on the grocery budget so we could get out of debt sooner? Well, we discovered we are going to be getting a good chunk of money back from doing a DITY move, much much more than we originally anticipated. Lucky? I’d say providential.

For non-military folks, a DITY move means we moved ourselves (which was a ton of work, btw, & many times I questioned our choice to do the move ourselves since it was so time consuming/stressful/labor intensive), instead of having the military’s professional movers move us.

This means I don’t have to have a paper route, or live on $175 a month for groceries. We’ll still have a lean budget so we can get out of debt, but oh joy, I do not have to think about trying to earn a few extra dollars.

I don’t have things all figured out yet. In fact, there are still boxes to pack, pictures to hang, & oh yes, a life to figure out.

We finally have a steady paycheck & a more than that, a beautiful home & Joseph has promising career. After years of juggling the working mom thing, it’s official, I am a stay-at-home mom. I am a homemaker.

How do I want to structure my day? What will my routine be? What things can/will I do to be the kind of mother/wife/friend I’ve always wanted to be but felt I didn’t have the time/energy? What books will I read? Will I finally carve out time to learn how to play the piano? Will I finally get around to being the sister/friend who remembers birthdays & anniversaries?

And, how much time do I want to spend blogging?

I can honestly say I’ve missed blogging (you know I love it).

At the same time, I love my new life & I’m not sure what role blogging will play. I know I want to focus on creating a building a great “real” life. If that means my online life has to take a back seat, I’m okay with that. I hope you know how grateful I am to you for reading (some of you, for years!) & want you to know I’ll be open &  honest about what’s going on in my life.

What I’m trying to say, is, I’m not sure how frequently I’ll be blogging now, but I want to make it very clear I love you for reading, commenting, & sharing (really, making my blog, a blog of any value) & I hope that you’ll be patient with me as I figure things out.

 


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