LooOoong Story ( no pics )

I forgot how BADLY I needed to update my blog.  It is a HUGE case of making a long story short less long.

Chris commissioned and everything, and I mean EVERYTHING went nuts. 

We had some big decisions to make, and hardly had the time to make them.

The first thing we were up against, was that Chris wasn't due to begin active duty in the Army aka, bringing in a PAYCHECK until November.  It didn't take long to figure out that it would be next to impossible to find a job where the employer would be ok with him hiring on with a pre set termination date.  So what he did was volunteer to be on staff for LDAC ( Leadership Development Accessions Course...I think) at Fort Lewis for the summer.  During that time it would be up to me to make our household move from Kuna Idaho to Fort Benning Georgia go smooth as buttah.  Chris would be gone right up until the time we would need to pack the things we needed and get into the car for a grueling cross country trip with four kids, one of which thinks that being in a car just to go a block or two is torture and has an affinity for asking every form of "Are we there yet".  It often will come out, (as we are putting her into a buckle) as "Is this going to be far?"  "Will this take long?"  "Is this going to take foreeeeever?".  She detests the car.  By the way...whoever invented the in car entertainment systems, and the Leap Frog people... THANK YOU!!!

I had the fun of trying to throw away everything that wasn't nailed down   organize the house, and the garage...all three bays of it.  Which by the way, each of the three bays were loaded full.  It was harder than you might think.  One bay was food storage, another was camping gear and antique furniture, with a little office supplies thrown in.  The last had useless things in it, like a motorcycle and a lawnmower, tool chests, treadmill,two chain saws.... (I will quit there, I am getting tired thinking about it all).  What it comes down to is that as a Second Lieutenant in the US Army our household is allowed 15,000 pounds.  Which sounds like a lot, until you add in all the said food storage (more on that later), mechanical and camping hoo ha, and the nice quality furniture I have managed to hoard on to collect.  None of which were a pleasant thought of tossing out.  But things did go, and off the went, and it made my heart heavy and I let it go.  Except the freezer.  MAN I wish I had an upright freezer. 
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The movers came, it all went ok-ish.  There were defiantly things I would have done differently, but nothing was a disaster.  I was way over it by then.

Our things didn't fit into the Mayflower truck because our goods were sharing the load with another house that had already been loaded.  They offered to do an "overflow" shipment, and I declined.  I could just see all of the "over flow" which happened to be things like a gun safe, a  motorcycle, a barbecue grill/smoker ...all of which are my husbands dearest things...gone forever due to it being in it's own little limbo.  I was also terrified of our shipment going overweight, which....was a valid concern.  The penalty for going overweight?  ONE DOLLAR PER POUND OVER.  Yes ma'am, that's about what a can of soup weighs and I did NOT have the kind of money to blow off getting stuck with overage fees. It would make overage on a cell phone bill look like lunch money.

We ended up loading a few loads of extra stuff into my Dad's 6 horse trailer, and going west with it to my parent's farm where we would meet up with Chris, and then decide what we could do with what was left, or if it was going to go away.

We ended up taking the two largest U-Haul trailers and both vehicles packed full.  It took us 2 days to drive to Cleveland, Missouri to visit Chris' family and we took 2 day RnR there and 2 days to hit Columbus..

After that were 14 days in hotel hell limbo as we waited to see if we could live on base.  On day 14, when we were just THIS close to being too broke to stay in a hotel any longer and out of money for a down payment on an apartment or rental home things broke through.  Literally, Chris' brand new  (to us) vehicle broke down just outside the housing office.  He went inside to use the bathroom and to wait for the tow truck and the housing rep saw him coming.  I guess I might have been dinging them about availability, because she met him in the reception area with the good news that she had a house she could show us and we moved in a few days later.  It was such a relief.  Chris' car was supposed to cost over a thousand dollars that we didn't have, but SOMEHOW the dealership got the warranty to cover it.  It cost us the deductible which I think was like 80 bucks or so.

We got our things from Mayflower the following Friday and we were off and running (limping) and have been ever since.  Getting the kids into school was a nightmare.  We found church, and found out we were attending the wrong ward.  Chris started ABOLC (Armor Basic Officer Leadership Course), and it has been going fast and furious since.  We have done a few things I am hoping to do separate posts on. 

Museums, history, geoColton did play football and Braden has been in JROTC and has been on the North Side High School rifle team.  Savannah's school doesn't have an orchestra (what's that all about) and so she took a semester of guitar lessons and really liked that.  Colton has had to deal with wearing a uniform to school ( I love).  And Olivia has started kindergarten.

We are due to move to Fort Stewart soon.  Chris is done with ABOLC on Feb 10 and it's all kind of up in the air from there.  I am hoping I have learned enough to have this move go a little smoother, and hopefully we will get housing on post again.  I really like having in house security guards around my subdivision.  It's gated living at the maximum don't you think?

I also had to get a new computer.  So I have pictures all over the place, and don't have any to share.  I will work on that.