Big Announcement!!

Friends and family, please take the time to read.

This is quite possibly the biggest news I have ever put on my blog. ::Deep breath::

The Mister is taking the early retirement option and will be retiring from the Marine Corps this year. The paperwork was officially approved today and this a "no going back" decision. He will go on terminal leave towards the end of July. Terminal leave is when you take the leave you have on the books added with travel and job hunting leave. He'll still be active duty until September, but won't be actively working for the Marine Corps starting in July.

A lot of factors went into making this decision. A lot of soul searching. A lot of discussion. A lot of time. Hindsight is, as they say, 20/20 and if the Mister and I are completely honest, he should not have opted to reenlist clear back in 2006. We have been dissatisfied with the military life for quite some time. Did you know...The Mister is 36 years old (he'll be 37 this year.) He's been married for 18 years this May and will have a daughter old enough to enlist in the military herself this July. AND, he has to ask permission to buy a motorcycle. Or to travel to New Orleans over a weekend. We are simply, too old for this anymore. When you add in the current political climate here in the U.S., early retirement is, by far, the best decision that we could make. He will have his Master's degree before he officially retires and he has tons of experience behind him for job hunting. Basically, he's taking retirement while there's still any retirement from the military to be had. With our government downsizing the military, the Marine Corps will be significantly decreased over the next couple of years, there's a good chance he would have been forced to leave the military anyway. A better than good chance. Frankly, we don't like what we're seeing on the horizon and we certainly don't like the changes that have been made to the military overall that we have seen over the past almost 17 years. I'm trying not to get too political here, but it's really hard, lol.

I'll end this by saying that I hope the people that we care about most will support us in this decision and if you cannot, we didn't like you all that much anyway. ;) (I wink, but I'm not really joking.)