The Long Road to Paradise

(The Air Force stationed our family in Hawaii from the middle of 2008 to the middle of 2011.)

Reposted blog entry from Sept 4, 2008

Now that we're here, we are never leaving. I don't say this because Hawaii is considered to be a paradise, but because of the 8 hour plane ride it took to get here.

A road trip is my idea of fun. Strap the kiddos in and there's no more need to chase them, separate them, or clean up after them (at least until the end of the trip :). They make a lot of noise in such an enclosed space, but since I don't mind and no one else can hear them, its not a problem. The best trips even end up like this...



A plane trip, however, is not my idea of fun and I don't relish the thought of doing it again any time soon. The kids are still in an enclosed space but now its with lots of other people who DO mind their noise. They only have to stay strapped in until we're flying high and I spent the whole trip cleaning up after them. We also don't get to stop every so often to stretch and get out excess energy. The kids didn't misbehave and we even got comments at the end of the trip from fellow travelers telling us how well they did on the plane, but we had to spend the entire trip actively trying to make that happen and that is very tiring. Jet lag was not fun either. my husband and I only took a couple of days to adjust, but Asha took a whole week and Daniel took two weeks! Ugh!

But we are here and it is beautiful. It has been sprinkling on and off for the last week or so and we have seen so many beautiful rainbows. We happened upon the famous beach in Honolulu just as this rainbow was over it. The photo does not do it justice. We could almost see the end of it on either side.


I think I'm going to like it here :)

In Motion (Part 2)

To read Part 1 go here.

In 4 weeks we are set to fly out of Osan Air Base, South Korea on a military flight (The Patriot Express) which will stop in Okinawa before arriving in Seattle.  From Seattle we were supposed to take a commercial flight through St. Louis and then Atlanta before arriving at our final destination in Montgomery, Alabama.  The 5 leg trip with 30 or so hours in flight + 3 high-energy, jet-lagged kids makes me stressed just thinking about it!  Since we were last stationed in Hawaii and only one vehicle is authorized here at Osan, our second car is still on Oahu.  The plan was to have it shipped to Alabama in time to be waiting for us when we got there; we would keep using our van here and ship it just before flying back.

About 3 weeks ago, I had what will probably turn out to be the worst idea I have ever had.  Why not have the van shipped to Seattle and drive from there to Alabama?  This is why not.  But I'm a glutton for punishment so we scrambled around frantically trying to get our van shipped ASAP.  We had to get a move on because it can take up to 55 days to go from Seoul, Korea to Seattle, WA and we were only 50 days out.  My poor husband.  For a man who always has a back up plan for his back up plan, trying to change plans that he had already made months ago for our flight and make new plans for driving and then back up plans for in case the van was delayed... If ever there was proof he loved me, this concession is it. :)

In Motion (Part 1)

Even though we have about 6 more weeks before we fly back to the United States from South Korea, we are already in motion.

The movement began with an assignment.  We were originally suppose to be here in Korea for two years, but after we had been here for just a few months, we found out that we would be moving to Alabama after only one year.  At that point, plans began to be made and life began to take on a temporary feel.  We had to get housing set up for the new assignment right away (you can read about that here).  Conversations started to include the statements '...before we leave...' and '...after we move...' While we waited for orders (official paperwork), our calendar started to fill up with dates for the process of moving, the first of which is getting our stuff from here to there.

Since it takes a few months for household goods to make the trip by boat, they needed to be sent ahead of us.  The moving company had an inspector come to evaluate our move.  This is the beginning of the part that makes me feel unsettled.  I don't like people looking in my closets and cupboards, and though it may not be true, I always feel like I'm being sized up.  Being in Korea didn't help this at all.  The inspector kept making comments about us having too much stuff and our TVs being too big, etc.  Since English was not his first language, and he kept smiling while saying it, I could never figure out whether he was insulting us or complementing us.  A week later the movers arrived at 8am and had us packed and loaded on the truck by 3:30pm of the same day.  Previous movers have always taken at least 2-3 days so I was up all that night wondering if they broke anything in their haste.  The guy in charge kept assuring me that Korean movers are the most careful ones.  I hope that proves to be true.

We were only in the hotel for a couple nights when loaner furniture was delivered to our empty apartment so that we could continue to live there until it is time for us to leave.  This part is nice.  Well, mostly nice.  The double mattress that the base loaned us is not really big enough for two people to sleep on so I have spent many nights on the loaner couch.  Its also smallish, but so am I, so it mostly works.  What really works though, is having less stuff.  I already miss things like our bed and my desk, and eventually I would miss the rest of it too.  But for a while, less stuff is nice.  Its less to take care of.  Less to be responsible for.  There are less dishes and laundry to do, though that also means they have to be done more often. *sigh*  I must say that I do like having less toys to convince the kids to put away.  I think I might even be hoping that the box marked 'toys' gets lost during the move.

To read Part 2 go here.

House Hunting International

So we aren't even quite moved into this place when we get the news that we are moving in about 7 months.  Let me point out first that this is not a complaint post.  We are excited about the move and even the timing of it.  But it is odd to be unpacking boxes in Korea while shopping for rentals back in the U.S.

We are moving to Alabama in June/July to attend a year long training class.  There will be many other students in this class all moving at the same time and so the mad dash to get the housing that you want before someone else gets it has already begun.  The internet makes house hunting internationally SO much easier, but it is still a challenge to get information to make decisions with when you are on the other side of the international date line.  It is even more challenging because my husband has been on a trip to Hawaii for the last week and will turn around and fly back out to Florida two days after arriving home.  We've been house hunting via Skype.  I love Skype!

Here are the options that we are looking at.

The walking path
Yes, please!

1. Student housing on base is fairly crappy while still taking up all of our housing allowance, but it is super safe and super convenient with the bonus of a good Department of Defense school.

2. A much cheaper house just off base would let us save money and still be fairly convenient, but is not nearly as safe.  It would have the option for Daniel to attend a Math, Science, and Technology focused magnet school, but we wouldn't know if he was accepted till after we moved and Asha would have to attend a separate school.

3. A nicer house in a nicer neighborhood with a creek at the edge of the backyard and a beautiful walking path just behind.  It has a good school within a mile and a new YMCA nearby, but the drive to base for my husband each day would be 20 min instead of 5-10, and we would not save any money on rent. 

Which one do you think will win out?
*Did I mention option 3 has a private Jacuzzi hot tub out back?

Moving On (Part 3 of 3)

 To read Part 1 go here.

Even though it would be our 3rd move in 1 year, I was super excited for our next assignment.  Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii!  Yeah!!  I think this was payback for the year of moving.  When we arrived there, we lived in a hotel for the first two months.  I'm not complaining about that...with a new baby in tow, having a maid everyday was wonderful!

The complaint starts when the only available housing on base were the houses that were set to be demolished in 6 months.  Really?  This is already our third move in one year!  I took what was given, but with the promise of a brand spankin new house as soon as they were completed in 6 months.  Scratch that.  8 months.  No, wait.  A year.  Okay, how did we end up being the last family in the neighborhood?  They already had the construction fences up around our old house.  The construction workers were knocking at our door asking when we were going to leave.  We'll leave as soon as we have a place to live, darn it!

When we did finally get to move into our new house in Hawaii.  It was fantastic.  Great location on a little cul-de-sac with fantastic neighbors.  There was even a little park built just a few yards away.  I could see the kids playing there from almost every window in our house and almost every day was a perfect day for playing outside.

After 3 years in Hawaii, and 2 years in that house, it was time for our next assignment.  Korea.

Wow.  We were not expecting that.  To be honest, I was disappointed.  Hawaii was beautiful and wonderful, but it was too far away from family and I had hoped to move closer for a while.  Like it or not though, we were going, and I was grateful.  Grateful because the assignment was originally just my husband going there for a year without us.  We got permission for us to go as a family and in the process it was changed into a 2 year assignment.

The housing on the base in Korea is in high-rise towers.  The unit we were given was one bedroom short of what we really needed.  So just to be consistent, the housing company waited until a month after we moved in -to offer us another unit with more bedrooms.  Really?  We would have happily waited in the hotel for a month to get the bigger unit, but now that we've moved in, and settled?  No, thank you!  We've already moved 16 times in 16 years.  We'll make it work.

*This just in!  During my husband's promotion ceremony yesterday, the general announced that my husband was selected for a training school in Alabama.  When we leave Korea this summer (after only one year here) it will bring the tally up to 17 moves in 17 years.

Moving On (Part 2 of 3)

To read Part 1 go here.

One year after our 3rd move in 3 years,  it was already time for our next assignment.

Back to Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

The housing at Vandenberg was split into two locations.  One group of houses were on base, the other group of houses were just outside the base gate.  This was the group we ended up in, way back in the back.  I loved it because we were on a corner lot just across from a nature preserve.  I could see the mountains and trees from my kitchen window and thoroughly enjoyed the occasional encounter with the wildlife.  We lived here undisturbed for 3 whole years!

And then...

The base decided to close down the housing outside the gate so they moved us to the housing on base.

And then...

The military decided to turn the housing on base over to be run by a private company, and that private company decided the street we had just moved to four months earlier (and just finished painting) would be the first street of houses to be torn down for new ones to be built.

So then...

They moved us to yet another street.  On Christmas Eve. 
My husband left for a 6 month training in Nevada a few days later.
We already knew we would be moving to our next station when he returned.  UGH!

This would be 3 moves in 1 year.

To read Part 3 go here.

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.

Moving Sickness

 Moving Sickness: When you are disoriented and overwhelmed by moving.


There are boxes everywhere!
You'd think after moving 16 times in 16 years that I would be good at moving.  I'm not.
I love the new experiences, but the process itself is painful and highlights everything I'm bad at.

To start with, I don't like people touching my stuff.  By the time we are packed up though, the movers have laid hands on every item I own and are intimately familiar will all of it.  This also makes me feel exposed, which I really don't like.

When the movers come, it takes about two full days for them to pack up all of our stuff.  Its a crazy two days.  And very stressful.  I run around like a mad woman giving instructions, answering questions, and cringing every time I see them touching something I love (Please don't break it!)

There are boxes everywhere.

On day three they start putting it all on the truck. This part is actually pretty quick, and as they pull away, there is a sense of relief.  Its done.  I don't have to think about it until we get to our new house.

When we get to the new house, it only takes a few hours for the movers to unload all the boxes.  Then the real stress starts.

There are boxes everywhere!

But where is anything?  The pillows and blankets?  Where are the shower curtains and towels?  Where are the shower curtain rings?!?  There are labels on the boxes, but I cannot read most of them and experience tells me that it wouldn't matter if I could.  The contents are an odd mix of any thing, from any room, that would fit, and a random label that describes something that was somewhere in our house.  Its anyone's guess where anything is.

Enter the mindless unpacking of box after box after box.  Some of it is stuff I didn't even remember I had, but more of it is stuff that I should have gotten rid of a long time ago.  All of it is stuff that I don't know where to put.  Now there are boxes AND stuff everywhere.  And this is the part that I'm really bad at.

There will be boxes everywhere and stuff everywhere for months.

I will feel disoriented and overwhelmed for months.  I am not good at setting up house. I don't know where to put stuff.  It will feel discouraging to watch neighbors move in after me and get set up before me.  And even more discouraging to know that when I finally do get all the boxes unpacked and all the stuff put away, it will still look like I just moved in because I don't know how to decorate.  I don't really know how to arrange stuff to make it look like a comfortable home.  And by the time I think I might, its time to move again.

And once again, there will be boxes everywhere.