We are in the final countdown now! Bill was home for 10 days for Thanksgiving and flew back to Amsterdam on Sunday evening. His plane tickets are booked now for his final venture home...in exactly two weeks he'll be home for good and working back at the West Point buildings....10 minutes down the road from our house.
While it's been crazy single parenting it, I am so thankful to all of our friends and family members who have offerred their help, love, and support. Simple kind and encouraging words have meant so much to me. I must say that even though I am running ragged, all of the sports and activities that the kids are involved in are certainly keeping me busy. By the time that I sit down at night to catch up with a book, paperwork, or my DVR, I'm exhausted and the day has flown by.
Sure, there has been a few times when I want to throw in the towel or I wonder why we made these choices but ultimately, this is my husband's dream job! This was the position that he has talked about since we met! If you were to ask him 10 years ago or even 5 years ago where he wanted to see his future at work, he'd say working internationally - hands down. Guess what...CHECK! He's done it and it's now a permanent part of his work experience.
I have to hand it to him, while I was going nuts with how quickly the whole experience happened after the ball got rolling (there were quite a few several months that we were in waiting limbo), Bill really had his ducks in a row. Working in trips back home every 4 weeks in the fall was AMAZING. It made our time apart go by a little bit faster - and he isn't missing any holidays. If only he had thought about getting first class written into that deal...
Tonight, I took a walk down memory lane, looking back at all of our blog entries from this past summer. I still can't believe that this is my life. I cannot believe that the kids and I were able to go spend the summer abroad. The only thing that I really think about is that I wish I would have known ahead of time how much I would love it over in The Netherlands. Had I have known that I would fall madly in love with the country, I would have tried to work out a way to stay there through Bill's entire job assignment. I did things this summer that I never would have dreamed of. For starters, I flew internationally with two children TWICE! I get anxiety just thinking about flying. I also took trains, lived without my cell phone for 10 weeks, and somehow managed to figure out how to order beer, buy cheese, bag groceries at Albert Heinz (it's much harder than it sounds), and busy myself and the children daily while Bill was at work...without the use of a car!
The sights we saw - breathtaking - Eiffel Tower, Liege, windmills, national parks, MANY historic churches, Disney, holding monkeys (that is still my hands down favorite)....
I still cannot believe that this is our life. I cannot wait to see where our next adventure takes us...trust me...I'm already plotting how we can top the "Summer of 2013."
***Editted note 2 minutes after the initial post - I find it very fitting that without even thinking about it that this post title is the exact same as my very first post title back in June - The Final Countdown ***
