Career Change

Our family knows, but not a lot of our friends do. Allen is embarking upon a career change. He will be working with Satalite Communications for the US Army. He's wanted to be in the military since he was 17, and almost went into the Guard when we were 23. I, of course, was stupid, scared, and selfish, so I let his brother talk him out of it. We are on board with this decision as a family, though, and I am very happy that Allen has made a career choice that he's excited about. I've never seen him so happy, upbeat, and motivated. He's been pretty miserable in his jobs for the past 9 years, so it's about time that he choose something for himself that will be good for the whole family. Cael is excited about this adventure, as am I ("Daddy's going to be a soldier!"). Allen goes to MEPS on Thursday for his physical, swearing in, and signing of his contract. His ship-out date is Feb. 23rd (which, for Allen, can't come soon enough!:) He will finish Basic around the end of May in Fort Leonard Wood, MO, then head off for 27 weeks of Sat. Comm. training at Fort Gordon, GA. He'll get done with that around Thanksgiving. Cael and I will have plenty of "quality time" together if we survive each other that long. :) We'll find out where we will be stationed toward the end of Basic. That's what I'm excited about. Hopefully, we'll get somewhere really cool, so everyone will use us as their vacation destination! We'll keep you updated as things progress.

First day of school

Cael's long-awaited first day of school finally came in August. He's in the Monday-Thursday class, and loves it. With the look on his face, his teacher should have her hands pretty full! Some of you know that our wrestling program was cut at HLHS. Unfortunate as that is, Allen has had the offer of taking over the Centura Wrestling Team. This is pretty cool, since his dad was the head coach of that team when he was principal there in the 80's. I was looking forward to seeing Allen more this winter with no wrestling, but you can't take wrestling away from the Blake boys. It doesn't work!