Thanks Jura. Funnily enough, after I posted last night I saw your thread - good luck with your job! To answer some of the questions, ds's are 5 and 8 and although dh does some of the breakfast stuff, he's out the door at 7.45 and when abroad (couple of times a month maybe at the moment) I do it on my own and find very little difference. The boys are pretty good, capable of getting their own cereal etc if necessary and dress and wash themselves. We don't have to leave house until 8.30 so it's fiarly civilized. Dh is in the City and we live in Surrey so I am mostly in charge of the homework, bath, bed routine anyway and (whispers this bit) it's actually easier when he's not here. Because he's not always around, he actually tends to disrupt the nice routine I've worked out anyway!
Yes, I like my job which is four days a week and local and we have a great after-school nanny, who was fulltime with us before. As part of her hours she does one evening a week babysitting so I wouldn't be completely housebound in the evenings. Also have a couple of teenagers in our close who babysit sometimes for us.
Dh does very much want to do the job and, in so far as I have ever understood what he does, it sounds interesting. I think the commute will be tough but seems like it could be worth it in the long run. I do worry about the weekends and trying to fit a whole week's worth of chat, fun and house stuff into two days BUT right now, we have a gardener so that's taken care of, we moved into our house about a year ago and have done all the messy rewiring etc and had lots of exterior painting and other stuff done so for the moment we are over the main hurdle of spending every spare moment on that. We don't have a cleaner and I currently do that on Friday mornings (except when I'm on Mumsnet!) but that does have a habit of spilling over into Sat a.m. so might consider getting some kind of help - would be ideal if I could find someone once every two weeks maybe. In-laws live nearby and while not amazing with the kids could be relied on in an emergency. Know good local plumber etc if anything springs a leak or blows up, nanny's boyfriend is also a decorator and odd job man who has done work for us before and would therefore probably come round at short notice if anything major goes wrong.
Main worry left is what effect this might have on the boys, right now many evenings go by without them seeing dh before bed but they do see him in the mornings and I worry about how they would cope. There are a number of army kids in their school with dads in Iraq who seem perfectly well-adjusted so maybe I'll sidle up to some of those mums in the playground.
Gosh, this has turned into a long, rambling post ... best get back to cleaning! I guess I think we have covered a lot of the practical stuff but it's the emotional side which you can't really prepare for in advance which worries me. Hoping that some others who have gone through this will come along!