Since 2005, my life has gotten busier and plain out of control! My business took off, Mark lost his job and I found myself the sole bread winner for our family.  With Mark not finding work for over 2.5 years, I’m thankful that I had the skills and ability to make the income we needed; but honestly, a ‘career’ and being the breadwinner of the family was not what I had ever wanted.

The only career I have ever wanted since I was a little girl – was to be a wife and mother:  a homemaker.  That’s it.  Can anyone else relate?

I learned web design, and all my technical skills, because I discovered I had a knack for it and I really like it.  So while I have always treated my clients with the utmost professionalism, I took work as I chose to, and Mark has always said the income I earned from my web design company supported my dog habit. LOL

All that changed in 2009 when Mark lost his job and after months of searching, it quickly became evident that the job market was not great and I had to do something.  So I did.

I’ve done very well, had a record year in income in 2011; but all that “success” comes with a cost.  With my health issues, and the long hours I’ve had to work to keep up with the work load, my home has suffered. Tell me I’m not the only one!

The Lord has been speaking to me about this issue, and with prayer, I have come up with a solution. Today I started a new daily home routine for me, a new schedule of household chores not only for me, but also for the three children we still have at home.

I created the housekeeping schedule, breaking down the work into manageable chunks, spreading it out throughout the week, to keep me from getting overwhelmed and also to work around my health issues, which limits how much I know I can do in a given day.

Today was day one, and so far so good. The children seem relieved, and honestly, so is my husband.

It will take a full week, possibly two, before I’ll see the full results with every room being cleaned and organized to my liking; but I have a plan.  We’ll get there.

In Him,

This is wonderful!  I love that the flight attendant was moved to tears.  This is beautifully performed.

After 2.5 years of being unemployed – over 600 job applications submitted, a handful of ‘final interviews’ my husband finally got a job and starts work tomorrow!! Praise God!!

What a long road of faith this has been.  We are so blessed to have fared it all as well as we did.  God used my skills to provide for our household – without lack – during this entire time.  Everything was paid, we had food and clothes to wear!!

It was not always easy – there were times that the house payment was due in 2 or 3 days and we had no clue where the money was going to come from.  I just had faith it would and kept working.  Then out of the blue – a new client would sign up and it would be almost to the penny what we needed to make the mortgage!!  This happened at least 3 times that it got that close.  Our God provides.

Just like 2.5 years ago when my husband came home full time after losing his job; and we then chose to pull the children out of private school and go back to homeschooling (although last year we put them back in the private school)- and all the changes that came along with that.  We’re back full circle to more changes.

Funny how you get used to things over time.  So hubby going back to work will take some getting used to.  He stepped up and helped out tremendously around the house as my work had me busy 12-14 hour days (thus the reason for my lack of blogging)!!  Now there will be another shift in our daily routine.  A welcome shift – but a shift nonetheless.

So I drafted a new daily routine – in part, to accommodate the return to homeschooling.  Yes, we’re homeschooling once again; but for different financial reasons….

After my husband lost his job, we paid off all our bills except our mortgage.  We also did not put the children back into private school at the start of the next school year – we were trying to be frugal with our money.  We also learned some very hard lessons after having acquired all that debt years ago – and we liked not having all those payments every month.  Our mortgage payment is big enough!

So even though we could technically afford to send the children to school – we do not have the money to pay for the whole year up front; and the thought of that monthly payment has me remembering our previous struggles in paying the bills.  We decided that we do not want to have monthly payments for school.  We intend to live within our means:  which for us means, what we have cash right now to pay for – not how much payment we can afford.

Even though my hubby now has a job (again – thank you Lord!!!) it does not pay nearly what he used to make and not near enough to pay all our living expenses with our current mortgage and utilities, etc…  So I will continue to work, hubby will work and together we will homeschool the children.  I work from home, so my schedule is flexible and I do have a Team who works for me too.

I’m starting my new routine tomorrow, on hubby’s first day – so I can just make changes and adjustments now and get used to them.  We won’t start the homeschooling until after Labor Day.  Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of our lives…. I’m ready.