A Light

I am so happy to say that there is a light at the end of this dark tunnel we've been living in.

We have been talking quite a bit recently about which path to take and it looks like we got our answer today. I said a prayer last night for God to lead us in the right direction. God is good.

As most of you know, Daddy has been struggling to find a job since October. I'm not joking when I say that he has nearly TWO HUNDRED applications out there floating around. Sure, we've gotten phone calls but most of them are dead ends.
About a month ago I suggested that if we didn't have any job prospects by the middle of March that we consider going back to active duty (EXACTLY what we DIDN'T want to have to do.)

This morning Daddycalled the Air Force recruiting office in Erie to ask some questions about the process of re-entering after separating and joining the Reserves. The phone call was really only to gather information so that we were armed when it came time to make our decision. As it turns out there are no openings for his career field on the active duty side. It is very seriously over-manned, etc., etc., etc. This means that if he wanted to go back to active duty he'd have to cross-train into another field and *fingers crossed* try to get something that he was interested in.

Then the guy mentioned that there were recruiting positions available.
This was absolutely not something he had ever considered.

After a long talk we've decided that this is best for us right now. When we left Alaska in August we had now way of knowing that the economy would take such a severe nose dive. (Plus, most of Alaska is isolated from the horrible economy. Things really aren't that bad there.) We can't live here forever and, as it stands now, we have no prospects and no end in sight.

Today there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Once he is trained we'll be able to choose where we'd like to be (from a list of available openings). This is the complete opposite of being "regular" active duty and not really having a say in where you go (even though they like you to think you do).
This is exactly what we need right now. He'll have a stable Monday through Friday job with no weekends and no possibility of deploying. We'll receive BAH and BAS and we'll be on the same pay scale as before. (Which is, quite frankly, more than we're making now...which is NOTHING!)
We'll be able to purchase a home with confidence that his job will be there in a week. In this economy, this is what we need.


So we start the process today. I'm not sure how long it will take to do the paperwork (and for Daddy to work off the 20 pounds he's gained LOL) but we have a plan.

And having a plan is good.