Our time here in Indiana comes to an end tomorrow. Duty calls, and Dave, the kids and I are heading off to Scot AFB tomorrow morning so he can sign in to the squadron and we can start the next leg of our lives together.  This week will involve signing for a house (if they have one available), setting up cable, phone and internet services, arranging for shipment of our belongings (and hoping that they haven't broken anything), seeing about getting a second vehicle, and enrolling the kids in their new school.  We'll be living in Temporary Living Facility...like a furnished apartment, until we can get situated with our own place and our own stuff.

I'm apprehensive but excited.  This is pretty much starting over for us....a new location, new workplace, new neighborhood, new friends.  it's also going to be a lifestyle change - we have been on our own for so long that being close to family (and extended family) again is going to be strange.  We have invitations of babysitting anytime we need it, invitations for holidays and family events, promises of people coming to visit us...things that other people take for granted. Whaine's blog last weekend was an accurate description of our lives over the last 9 years - no matter what the circumstance, we have toughed it out on our own, relying on no-one but ourselves. Having family around to help, to socialize with has been a mere thought until now.  Now, my children will grow up knowing their grandparents, their aunts and uncles and cousins.  Already, allegiances are being formed.  My son Jake and Dave's Uncle Jerry have bonded, and Shea and her grandma have become close.  I have found a friend in my sister-in-lae, and have even found some compassion and tolerance for Judy, Dave's biological mother, despite all of her issues.

So, tomorrow morning we'll pack up the car and leave his family behind.  This time, however, we will leave knowing that it will only be  couple of weeks until we see each other again. 

I like that.  I like it a lot.