As I am typing my husband is on his way home from his last drive of his almost 7 hour commute. To recap a little he took a permanent engineer spot just barely over 2 years ago and we both knew it was going to be a journey. The year before he accepted this position he was doing a LT spot a little over 4 1/2 hours away. Needless to say it has been a long hard and well worth it, 3 years.

This last February he got the phone call and was offered an engineer position in our hometown. I cannot explain the emotions that we both felt when he got that call. If you have been following along with me there has definitely been some stretching and growing pains. Our weaknesses were magnified and from that our strengths only grew. He was leaving in the middle of the day before his shift and getting home the evening when he ended his shift. For those who don’t know Cal Fire works 72 hours straight, no breaks. My husband was doing 96 hours a week. 24 hours of it unpaid and over half of that 24 was driving. And sometimes much more. I am so looking forward to getting that extra 24 hours back. And not only that but those days when my girls are having a understandably I miss daddy moment, we can drive 20 minutes to go see him at the station. Financially this will also be such a nice change.

My husband and I have talked about how we couldn’t have done this without one another. But it goes beyond that. Yes, we put our heads down and did what needed to be done. But I know for us it was also, the love and support from family and friends. And the crew my husband had the privilege of working with. I know he made some forever friends. They will probably never know the admiration and appreciation I have for them. They were always the light at the end of the long commute tunnel for him. I loved hearing all the stories and shared brotherhood. And one other thing is for certain, I know we couldn’t have gone through the past two err three years without our faith in God. Our driving force giving us the strength we needed for each new day.

So, with all that said I would also like to say, WELCOME HOME to my husband. I am so proud of you!

Our fire life story isn’t over (obviously) only a new chapter has begun. I have some new ideas brewing for this blog. So stay tuned as I work on those. And if you’re in a similar situation as what we went through or can relate one way or another to us, know the reward is so worth it if you don’t lose heart!