The Big Move

After two years in our home in Surprise, AZ, the time had come to say goodbye. In theory, hubby and I were relatively at ease with our impending move across the country with our baby girl and Bloodhound. Then we got a bit of bad news. As with all things military, our move was not going to go as planned. To make a long story short, the military will generally send in movers to pack and ship all of your belongings when making a military move. The catch is that you have to have your orders before the movers can be scheduled, and hubby was not issued his orders until less than weeks before our move. Which led to the movers not having any openings available to move us before our move date. Enter huge expenses and amazing friends/family!
I had not planned on having to pack my whole house in a matter of days, and could not have done so without Sarah, who spent a great deal of time taking care of little Miss Tennessee while I packed and David worked. Our good friend TSgt. Kelly ran David around (did I mention David's truck died a couple of weekw before we found out we had to move ourselves?!) to buy packing supplies. At this point we developed a new plan: Rent a ginormous moving truck (thanks to Penske for the military discount and great service!) and drive cross country. Sarah and Tennessee would ride with me while Kelly, Duke and David drove the Penske truck.
We managed to do a little sightseeing on the trip, well, at least Sarah, Tennessee and I did. We stopped at the Alamo and made a detour through New Orleans.

We also decided to rent a house, site unseen, so we had a place to drive the truck with everything we owned in it. I was not at all comfortable leaving the truck in hotel parking lots any longer than necessary - not to mention I didn't want to have to pay for hotels any longer than necessary. Yes we will be reimbursed, but it's a lot of cash up front when you're renting 2 hotel rooms a night and paying for fuel for 2 vehicles across the country!

The house has turned out to be pretty perfect. It has a few weird quirks, like the travertine flooring being uneven enough to make chairs and our side table wobble, and we get to hear the guns from the C130s all evening, every evening. It has the 4 bedrooms we really wanted since I will need an office when I start working from home in a couple of weeks. Speaking of work, David got all checked in last week and they gave him a week off to get settled. So his first official day of work is this Wednesday. I'm hoping he likes it since we'll be here at least 3 years. After that, who knows.

We can see the bay from our house, provided you look through our neighbors lot since the uncleared lots have trees too thick to see through. The sound is about 3 miles to the south, and then it's about another mile and a half to open water. The area is very touristy, but right where we live is fairly sleepy.

Duke is getting used to all the new sounds that come with a new neighborhood, and has been very needy since he's still a little unsure of where he is. One thing that has remained the same is how protective he is of Tennessee. He likes to sit in front of her and guard her from whatever harm could possible come. Tennessee is growing (and eating) like crazy! Not to gush too much, but I swear she gets more beautiful every day.