Off to greener pastures

Well, this is it.  My last day working full-time.  I've been working full-time for the same company for 10 years (my 10 year anniversary was May 6th).  It hasn't been all that rewarding, especially in recent years.  They blamed the economy for freezes in merit increases.  Laid off people that were good workers.  Claimed they cared so much about their employees.  But there are more than 30,000 people who work for this company, so really everyone is just an employee number and an email address.  People at the top have gotten quite greedy as our company is doing well and yet still there are meager (if any) merit increases.  The work has been challenging though and keeps my brain in tip-top shape.  And I work with some really great people (even if I have had 4 different bosses in the last 2 years).  Plus I work from home, so that's always been the draw that keeps me here.

So I'm hoping my next full-time job (stay-at-home-mom) is more rewarding than this last one.  Brynn and Ethan  have their last day at school tomorrow and then they'll be home with me next week.  Blythe has school until June 7 and then the real challenge begins...me and ALL 3 kids.  Ethan says he's happy that he won't have to go to school anymore, but I don't think he gets that he won't see his friends anymore.  Wonder how long it will take before he's asking to go back.

I'm excited about this very big change in my life, but also very nervous about it.  Will I have the patience to deal with them all day every day?  Will they listen to ANYTHING I say?  Of course all the images in my mind are of us having fabulous days with lots of learning opportunities, but I know they won't be like that.  I've spent many hours working on themes for each week and coming up with learning opportunities, field trips, projects, etc.  But will Ethan be begging to watch TV all day and Brynn asking for snacks all day?  Probably at the start since that's how our weekends go.  Hopefully I can change that.  It hasn't really sunk in though that I will have almost NO time to myself.  I want to be able to spend a lot of quality time with the kids without having to worry about other things, but there is grocery shopping to do, house cleaning to be done, errands, exercising, and holding down 2 part-time jobs (swim camp administrator...which takes up more time than you'd think, and working for my current company which I've committed 10 hours a week to work).   Guess we'll figure it all out as we go along.

Somehow I'm hoping to blog more.  Or at least take more pictures.  Lynette - I'm planning to copy your "My week in pictures" so my goal is to take at least 9 pictures a week :)

So anyway, stay tuned for changes ahead and wish me luck!