So This Brings Us To Today

If you have read over our history (or even glanced over it), you can see that we have been through a lot as a family over the last year and a half.  To break it down further for you, we've gone from a perfectly healthy family, with a Daddy working full-time and a Mommy working one day a week to something completely different.  Sometimes I feel as though our life was put into a cardboard box and thrown down a flight of stairs!  Nathan and I have said so many times over the months that right now is just about survival.  We take things one day at a time and just try to make it through that 24 hours.  

Since Nathan got sick, he has lost his driver's license twice due to cardiac arrest, which put me at driving about 900+ miles every week to keep up with everything.  Yes, a total of 11 months...or 44 weeks...or almost 40,000+ miles!  Exhausted doesn't even begin to cover it and sleep has become something that is seen as a rare benefit.  After Nathan got sick, I went back to work full time in December of 2012 in order to have Nathan and the boys under Vanderbilt insurance.  Nathan (at that time) was having weekly appointments that have now spaced to every other month with three different doctors.  Now that genetics are back on the boys, Zachary and Tyler go to see their cardiologist for EKGs every six months and ECHOs and stress tests annually.  This averages about 16-18 appointments a year at Vanderbilt Heart.

I took a promotion back in November which has been wonderful, but it has also made for a hard schedule as well.  My shifts now can be 7p-7a, 3p-11p, 5p-1a, 11p-7a, etc.  Even though I'm back to working full-time, I still see my first priority as a mom and don't want to miss out things.  I still want to be the mom at all the games cheering my kids on.  I still want to go to school functions, read during story time at preschool for Eli, surprise Zachary for a lunch date and take Tyler to the park so he can be a toddler boy.  We still strive for family dinners and family date nights.  But with me gone four nights a week, I have found that I choose them over sleep.  I usually go 36+ hours every week without sleeping.  Every week for months I've seen my family on Monday nights but then not again until Wednesday mornings.  Church is still in full swing and we still attend three services a week.  We are still active in our church as the church secretary, a deacon, a church trustee, Sunday School teacher, children’s church and nursery helpers, Women on Missions, adult choir and children’s choir.  Nathan's job has stayed stressful and required more and more hours on his part.  He works 40+ hours a week at the office, and then comes home and works from his laptop for another 10-12 hours a week.   It's all over the map and trying to juggle that, with appointments, with school, with being a mom, with being the church secretary....you get the idea.  So all of this brings us to where we are today...

It's time for a change.

Long story short, we can't do this anymore.  Let me rephrase, we won't do this anymore.  We've decided that life is too short to spend it striving to be at the top of the corporate world.  Life's too short to spend it in the car trying to get everyone from here to there.  We don't want our kids to grow up and remember that they were either with Mommy or with Daddy.  We want to spend more time with them and to help them grow and become the men of God that they are destined to be.  We want to get back to our daily family Bible studies.  We want to sit down to dinner and it be a daily thing rather than a weekly event.  

How are we going to do this?  Well, here it is.

Nathan and I have both been with our current employers for almost 12 years each.  And we have both turned in our notices.  As of May 30th, Nathan will walk away from Cracker Barrel Corporate.  And as of June 5th, I will walk away from Vanderbilt.  

I have officially taken a job as a travel nurse with Travel Nurse Across America and we are going to go traveling as a family!  Nathan and I are going to home-school the kids, and I'm going to get to work only three nights a week!  To break it down further, we will take a 13 week assignment, come home for 1-2 weeks for family and appointments, and then we will head back out again!  Everyone keeps asking us where all are we going to go??  Well, the skies the limit!  We are going to travel the US and make tons of family memories!  We've said we will do this for at least a year, maybe not more than two – but who knows!  

It’s bittersweet to leave Tennessee, but we are so EXCITED!  We are ready to have the family time that we've missed so desperately.  So stayed tuned to find out what happens next.  Our first assignment starts June 16^th in Falls Church, VA.  We’ll be about 10 miles from Washington DC and about 45 miles from the east coast.  We plan to visit the DC area several times, site see in northern Virginia and of course, head to the beach!  The boys are signed up for karate and gymnastics, and music lessons are right around the corner! 

We've talked about doing this for a while…years in fact, but then after Christmas we finally hit a point where we decided it was time.  And after months of prayerfully seeking God’s plan, we know what we need to do. 

It is time to take our life back into our hands!

It’s not about surviving anymore.  It’s about LIVING!