Reflections, April 2009

My last "Reflections" post was back in December 2008, but now it seems a good place to write about our exciting news this year. Probably about the most exciting news for our family since we moved here, two years ago.

The wet weather has brought out the wild fungi...a sign of changes in the garden...

Changes...changes - everywhere!! The most significant change came of late, with a new job offer for Dave. He applied for what seemed like a very generic position as a "chef", and it turned out to be an on-site Catering Manager position. Not just for a small business though, it was for a well known catering company with contracts all over Queensland for hospitals, building sites and the like. And they happened to have the contract for the new prison being built 30 minutes drive away.

What does this mean for our little family at the Bushland project though? We get a husband and father back again!!

He will be home every afternoon and evenings during the week, he'll have weekends off and if that wasn't already enough- he'll get ALL those public holidays off too. We will be that family eating out or lazy about in the garden when there's a public holiday to be had. No more working on those days...no more working on weekends...and no more putting our daughter to bed by myself nearly every night.

Dave gets to have those special moments with his growing daughter again, which I could only tell him about later. He would often pop his head in her bedroom door when he got home from work, and say he can see how fast she's growing - and he's missing it.

I'm sure the job will have it's down sides too, but for now we're celebrating the thought of 8 hour working days instead of 14 hour ones. He starts next week...yay!!

I must confess as the end is nearly in sight though, this week has been the hardest for us all. Dave worked all during the Easter holidays, so we've missed him and he us. In the past I would've just put my head down and said this is what pays the bills. So would Dave, and our daughter has just come to accept this is the way things were. We all knew this week however, that working in this manner WAS something to feel uncomfortable about.

It's been a few weeks of extremes here. Old job new job. Happiness and frustrations. Finishing loose ends, starting others. School holidays and rain, rain, RAIN! Sunshine today thankfully. As hard and challenging as it's all been though, I guess it's about renewal. From old things come new things, but it's all what we make of it.

This family has suddenly got a lot more time to make things together!