Stressed and Blessed

Maybe you've noticed that I haven't written in three months, and never posted photos from our last voyage overseas. (Or, more likely, you hadn't noticed.)

Well, 2018 has been pretty real so far for Tony and Meghan. We had to change our short- and long-term goals half a dozen times and suffer through quite a few reality checks before I could summon the courage to sort out my thoughts and feelings as we enter April.

• In September, we returned home from Asia, not a care in the world. Our main priority was readjusting to our own culture, and we were definitely taking things one day at a time.
• In October, our plan was to go abroad again to teach, this time in Peru. We were busy interviewing and planning.
• In November, we got good news and bad news on the Peru front. The good: a job offer. The bad: the salary would hardly cover our student loan payments. 
• In December, we cut ties with our international dreams and decided that Tony would go back to school to get his teaching degree and I would find a university job to pay back the support he gave me during my master's program. Many more applications went out.
• In January, the world stopped spinning when I took three pregnancy tests and they all came back POSITIVE. Back to the drawing room, everyone!

Since then, we've a) decided to stay in Pittsburgh and find jobs to be near our families for support, b) been unsuccessful in finding jobs in Pittsburgh, c) expanded our search radius, d) had a lead on a university faculty position in Mississippi, and e) been offered the job in Mississippi!

So it looks like that is the final (tentative) plan. The challenges that will undoubtedly come with finding a new place to live (and a new doctor to see), moving in the Southern summer heat during the third trimester, beginning a new career and taking a leave of absence mere weeks later, and welcoming a brand new tiny PERSON into our lives... It can be daunting. But I know that this is an opportunity, not only for my own career, but more importantly, for our new family. The opportunities simply weren't there in Pittsburgh, try as we did to seek them out. So, we will move to where the job is, and we'll take on a whole new definition of the word "adventure."

Source: southernmiss.com

Source: my uterus