And we wait

All is well with the Campbell household.  School started in full force on Tuesday, and it seems to be going pretty well.  I'm tired, though!  Wrangling lessons for 2 kids and managing a 3-year-old is a lot of work!  Thomas is so excited to be in Kindergarten, and he is taking to his lessons very well.  I'm realizing that he really did absorb a lot while sitting at the school table last year, because a lot of the early Kindergarten work is actually a review of things he already knows.  Jack is also doing well, although he has more academic work than Thomas (as he's supposed to!) and sometimes the amount of it frustrates him when he'd rather be playing.  I completely understand -- it's hard for me to be a cheerful and patient teacher when I'm tired and feel like my work load is too high, too :).  But he is settling in well and I think it will just take a little time for everyone to get used to the new routine.

I'm so glad we'll have a good couple of months of routine schooling under our belt before the baby arrives.  I know we'll have a chaotic few weeks while we're all adjusting to having a newborn around, but I think (I hope!) we'll hop back into regular life more quickly since it will be habit by then. 

We continue to wait to hear about David's job offers.  Our hope is that we hear something next week and can begin the process of making a decision, but it could push out further than that.  It does appear that all of David's hard work in networking and cultivating excellent offers is just about done.  Now, HR and the various sites have to do paperwork and things on their end, and then we'll hear something.  So, that's a relief.  I'm also glad for the distractions of home schooling and preparing for a new baby because it doesn't give me a whole lot of time to obsess over all the endless possibilities!  I know once we make a decision about where we're going, we'll have a lot of preparations and trickle-down decisions to make, so I'm trying to enjoy this forced lull because the storm is coming :).

I don't think there are necessarily any "easy" scenarios.  If we go back to San Diego, we'll have a cross-country road trip to plan with a newborn, plus a couple of weeks of limbo before our house will be available to live in.  If we don't go back to San Diego, we have to decide if we can afford to keep the house in CA as a rental or if we'll be forced to short sell it (enter possible real estate lawyers, discussions with our mortgage company, etc).  And, at same time, we'll have to find our own housing in whatever city we will be in.  I know we'll make it all work out and we'll be just fine, but I think we're all really looking forward to Thanksgiving this year.  We figure by then, we'll be settled in nicely somewhere, all the uncertainties and decisions that we're facing now will have been dealt with, and we'll be out of the crazy first 6 weeks of newborn babyhood.  We can just sit back and enjoy a our family, a good feast, and be thankful for David's great job and for making it through.

We'll update everyone when we have more news.  We can't tell you how much your prayers mean to us.  I'm about 6 weeks from my due date (how did that happen?!?) and without your prayers I'm sure I wouldn't be nearly as calm and at peace with everything as I am.  Not to say that I don't have my moments (I do!  Sometimes I want to hide and just be pregnant and have nothing else to think about right now!), but I really do feel the grace of God holding us up through this.

Just for fun, here is a picture of my pregnant-tummy buddy: