Hi-ho, Hi-ho, It's Off to Work I Go

For those of you who don't know, here is the latest news in the Gulland family. I (Steph) am returning back to full-time employment outside of the home beginning Monday, January 23rd. The time has come. I am ready, but most importantly David is ready to venture out without mommy around all the time.

I will be working in downtown Minneapolis at Wells Fargo as a customer service rep in their trust operations department. Ed and I won't be working in the same building, but we will have the same hours so we will be carpooling together. We are both excited because this will give us uninterrupted time of conversation which has been in short supply since Ed began school in April 2005.

Everyone's first question is always, "What about David?" Thanks for asking! God has really blessed us with a phenomenal opportunity. Our friend, Kristin, has offered to watch David for us. David is very excited about going to school at Miss Kristin's house. We even made a special trip to Wal-Mart for preschool workbooks. While we were there, David asked if he could get some smiley face pencils with smiley face earser tops, and I simply could not resist!

Kristin homeschools her four children whose ages' range from five to eleven. The eldest, Kelsie, has already baby-sat for us once. David simply adored her. He also had fun running around and playing with the youngest two, Kaitlyn and Kiley, a few Wednesdays back at church.

We are excited because this was an answer to prayer for both of our families. While we were looking for preschool opportunities, Ed had said that he would prefer to send David to someone's home that we knew. Unfortunately, I didn't know anyone who was looking to take care of a child during the day. We had actually become accustomed to the idea of sending David to KinderCare. There is one in Osseo which is on our way to work. We checked out the program and the teachers. We were really impressed with their program and had even reserved a spot for David. Then on Wednesday, January 4th, I was talking with Kristin's sister, Kari, about my return to work. Kristin told me that she would be willing to watch him because she was looking to return to work temporarily, but she wasn't pleased with the options that were available to her. Ed and I talked and prayed about sending David to Kristin's house. Although KinderCare would have been nice and would have worked, we are convinced that David being at Kristin's is God's best for our family.