The beginning of the end

Well, here we are.  We are about to enter the 6th and final term of the Duke MBA program.  I'm sure you are sick of hearing me talk about it.  Heck, I'm tired of talking about it, and I'm sure Brandon is tired of living it!  Am I glad we spent all this time and money for Brandon to get his masters in a new career field?  You may want to save that question for a time when Brandon has found a new job and we have paid our student loans.  Would we do it again?  I really don't know.

When we started this program we had so many different goals than we do now.  Our original plan was to open ourselves up to any job, any place in the world.  We were excited about the idea of living in a new area, meeting new people and changing our lifestyle.  The girls are all still pretty young and we thought it would be a great time to make a change.  Sure, we would be leaving our friends and family behind but we could manage on our own for awhile.

The funny thing about the last 20 months is while Brandon was in school and we were making all these plans life still happened.  Since May 2011 the girls have had school functions, birthday parties, violin recitals and soccer practices.  We've all been sick or hurt and we needed help getting through all of it.  Our parents and siblings have loved and watched our kids when we couldn't.  Our friends have stopped their own lives at the drop of a hat to come help us by cooking a dinner or to stay with the girls so we could run to the ER for the second time in a week.  We are so thankful that we have so many wonderful people in our lives.  No fancy new job is going to replace our network here.  I'm not saying that we are going to stay in our exact same house or even in the Triangle, but we'll be staying close.

We have both been feeling this way for some time.  We have always known that work came secondary for our family and we have always planned to avoid higher paid positions that require more time away from our home.  We didn't know how much we would be willing to sacrifice until recently.  I believe the precipice came this week.  We had just returned from a great family trip with our family to the mountains.  We had spent 3 days in my in-law's mountain house having a wonderful time.  I watched my in-laws loving my children at the same level as I do.  We did crazy fun things, we talked about what was going on in our lives, and we could just be completely ourselves.  We came back so refreshed and ready to tackle the week.

I know Brandon's MBA will open a lot of doors for him, but we've learned that a lot of them we won't be willing to walk through.  In the coming months we hope to find a wonderful company that shares the same feelings about family as we do, and we are willing to take our time to find it.  In the meantime we are looking forward to spending a lot of time catching up with all of you!