New Adventure With An Old Hat

The end of the year is my favorite time.  I love looking back at how God has worked in my life through the past months. This has been such a happy year for us. We've embarked on a incredulous journey of parenting our precious little Bean. I knew that we would love being parents and growing our family, but I didn't know how much FUN it would be! (Or how many times we would Google search baby poop. Truth.)

We have fully embraced our family of 3 and can't thank God enough for the opportunities we have been given. 

As we head into next year, we are looking into the unknown with certainty that God will guide us through our next adventure.

We have made a decision that will most definitely change our family in the coming year. 

Kyle has re-enlisted in the National Guard. He previously served 9 years in IL but we have been out of "army life" for almost 3 years now.  So here we are.  Back in the military family life.

I know family & friends have questions so I thought I would clarify here: 

 Why?

There are several different reasons he has chosen this path, but I will give you a few of mine.

He has an incredible (and largely untapped) skill for leadership. It is a gift that I think he will excel with in the army. 

When he talks about his brothers whom he has served with, he has a laugh and a love, that goes into the depths of something that I cannot understand. I would not deny him that important part of his life.

 He is our family leader and I trust him, plus the money & benefits is helpful.

His job?

He will continue at the police department, and they will allow him to take the time off he needs for training and drill weekends. However, the few weekends he gets off now will likely fall on drill weekends so family weekends might be rare. 

What now?

He will continue with the same rank he left with and will drill one weekend a month until he starts OCS- Officer Candidate School. This will be around 4 months long and when he is finished he will go through IBOLC - Infantry Basic Officer Leadership Course. This will be another 17 weeks. It sounds like we will start this all in the summer and he will be in GA. But we don't know for sure quite yet.  Long term after that will be the "one weekend a month plus 2 weeks a year." 

Deployment again?

Not likely, but  9/11 changed our lives in a second. Anything is possible when our countries are not at rest. Every soldier signs the blank check, no matter what your job and expectations.

We are excited to see where this new road takes us. However, there is a lot of anxiety since he will be away from home for a large portion of next year for training. I am not looking forward to cross-country parenting or to going to every event solo. But Bean and I have great friends and church family here in IN and I know we will be well taken care of!

* And, yes I know, my blog has been non-existent for several months!  :(  Our laptop is old and slow and I haven't taken the time to sit down and write. I am hoping to get a new laptop soon and get back to sharing my thoughts. (And updates on Bean of course!)