A New Chapter

At 7 am this morning, my husband will walk out of police headquarters for the final time as a police officer. 25 years over just like that. Where did the time go? It was a good run. Most importantly, he is in one piece, something to be extremely thankful for in the climate of law enforcement today. Career wise, he served both our community and his co-workers with a dignity and kindness that has become increasingly rare these days. And he (almost) always did so with a smile on his face.

On a more personal note, it seems our whole lives together have revolved around his job. When I met him, he was a recent college graduate and working hard at getting hired in law enforcement while working as a lab assistant in a local hospital. His dad was also a cop and so it seemed to be in his blood from an early age.

He began the police academy the same week he turned 25. As soon as I finished college a couple of years later, we were married.

This was his first "official" picture. So young and full of promise.

We renovated multiple houses top to bottom while raising our 3 baby boys. By working lots (and lots!) of overtime, he made enough money so that I could stay home with our kids - something I never took for granted and will be forever grateful for. We dealt as best we could with his constantly rotating shifts. Our boys missed their daddy's presence on weekends, holidays and - most of all - on the regular evenings when his seat was empty at the dinner table. So we eventually saved enough of the profits we earned from all that sweat equity and remedied his absence by buying a fixer upper in the town where he worked so he could stop home on his breaks. This very fixer upper that I have been blogging about all these years. :)

We had originally planned on Billy working 30 years here and then moving on after our youngest completed school but you know what they say about the best laid plans...

The word retirement seems to conjure up thoughts of a life of leisure but that is not where we are headed just yet. With 2.5 kids to still get to and put through college, we are very much still in the midst of raising our family. We do have an opportunity to make some changes in the next year after our middle guy finishes high school and our youngest graduates from middle school, but we are just not sure about that right now. Billy will be beginning a new job in security in a few weeks. He will still be working nights and weekends. Turns out, we are so used to having time off together during the week, that we actually prefer that schedule. Go figure!

Billy also turns 50 this week. And we celebrated 22 years of marriage. What a week! What a journey it has been!! Oh, and I should also mention that our oldest boy (the little boy in the picture below) is in college studying criminal justice (what else?). Life just has a way of coming full circle, doesn't it?

Thank you, Billy. Thank you for always putting our family first, no matter what. I will never forget how you have provided for and supported our family as it grew all of these years. The loss of sleep and willingness to always work hard did not go unnoticed or unappreciated for one second. Congratulations on a job well done! Onward!!

Thank YOU so very much for reading this little blog and continuing to be a part of our journey. I hope that now that we are settling into this next chapter, we will have more energy and time for house projects. The stresses of uncertainty coupled with job hunting definitely zapped our creativity for a while. I am happy to say I have a to-do list a mile long and lots of ideas swirling in my head!