discussion title:
hello to anyone out there :)
I've just found this board today and have posted in a few places but thought maybe I'd better "officially" introduce myself. As you can see by my siggy, I have a 10 month old son (who sleeps through the night but I'm still sleep deprived, hence the dark circles under my eyes in the picture LOL).
My DH is Shannon, we met and married in 2002 - neither of us had ever married before and we both were about ready to give up on ever meeting "the one" when we found each other. My DH is 41, I just turned 38 yesterday. We are members of a Lutheran church here in central North Carolina, I was raised going to Lutheran churches, DH was raised going to Baptist churches.
I just became a SAHM on August 1st, I'd worked in accounting/insurance/auditing for years and had planned to continue even after having our baby since I earned more than DH and had all the benefits. After putting my son in a top quality day care he caught his first virus at 3 months old, and it seemed that just as he overcame one cold or ailment, he caught another. We prayed about what to do, and me quitting didn't seem feasible, but God found a way! On one particularly hard day, where I found myself taking my son to daycare with a low fever but hoped it would stay low enough so that I could do my work and not get into trouble for taking more time off, I called my DH in tears. We resolved that there had to be a way. I was in charge of the finances/budget/bills so we got it all out, we went line by line through the budget and on each line made the decision - was it a need or just not really necessary - and we eliminated a ton of things (and we thought we were pretty frugal before!) Eventually it came down to a car payment being in the way of me staying home, so we sold the car and used part of the "profits" and part of some savings to purchase a good used car. Turns out the used car was previously owned by a couple from our church and we found out the excellent care that had been given to it so we felt God's hand was even in that! Our income has dropped by over 1/2, our cost of health insurance has increased, but somehow, each month we are more than "making it" and we feel this has been such a blessing to our family. Even my DH & I are getting along better, enjoying our time together without a huge list of things to be done in what was before - our precious time off. I highly recommend to anyone thinking it can't be done, to rethink, and most importantly, to pray about it!
Well, that is it for now. I hope to be around more and "meet" the regulars, and maybe we can find some more ladies to join over here. I'm very active over on the November 2005 Playgroup board, I think I'll try to recruit a few :)
