Moving On (Part 1 of 3)

Out of 16 moves in our married life, 7 of those were to various suburbs of the Dallas/Ft Worth area before we even joined the military.

I say 'we' because when one member of the family joins the military, everyone is in.
The military is not a job, its a life...
and life as a military family necessarily includes moving...
and moving...(which we clearly already had a knack for)
and moving again.

Even still, our story of military moving is unique.

I'll start at the beginning.

After my husband finished 3 months of Officer's Training School in Montgomery, Alabama, we received orders to our first station.  Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.  This was for about 8 months of specialized training.  Scratch that.  Clerical error stretched that into 12 months and a detour to a different specialized training.

Once that training was completed, we were off to our second station.  Cavalier Air Force Station, North Dakota.  Cavalier is a town of roughly 1,000 people up by the Canadian border.  It is otherwise known as 'The Official Middle of Nowhere.'  In fact, the nearest McDonald's is in Canada.  The winters are -40 and pretty much anything you ever need is 2 hours away.  We had such a fantastic time there!  Seriously, my husband talked about retiring there.  I'll be honest though, I was never convinced.

But here's where the real beginning of our military moving story started.  The ten houses on the station were under renovation and we were told ours would be ready in a month.  So we rented a house in town with an open ended lease.  Good thing too, because that month stretched on and on into a year.  My husband often worked night shift and the trek from our rental in town, to the station about 20 minutes away, was pretty dangerous at night, especially in winter.  So when the newly renovated house was finally ready, we jumped on it (Even though this time we had to do the moving ourselves.)

That's 3 moves in 3 years.  You with me so far?

To read Part 2 go here.