PCS Success!

Well hey, y'all!!

I bet you thought I had forgotten all about you. Not true! I posted a while back about finally getting PCS orders, and in the last two months, we've been incredibly busy getting everything sorted out, moved, and resettled.

So let me tell you all about my very first Permanent Change of Station. Kick back and relax-- this is gonna be a good one. :)

When we were notified of our PCS date, we had less than a month to get ready and go.. (More after the jump!)
We decided to do a DITY (Do-IT-Yourself) move (they're called PPMs (Personal Procurement Move) now) because we were living in a pre-furnished rental and we didn't want to deal with the stress of having movers come in and potentially pack something that wasn't supposed to go. So, two weeks before we left, I quit my job to stay at home and pack boxes full time! I reviewed just about every single PCS-Checklist on the internet to be able to make one that was more personalized to our situation.

Here are some PCS Checklists that I found especially helpful:
The 8-Part PCS Checklist from Military.com
8 Steps to a Smooth DITY Move from Military.com
The Ulitmate PCS Guide from SargesList.com

So we went week by week..

• The first week was setting out plans: Plans for traveling, plans to rent the truck, plans for how to pack the house, plans for purging, etc., etc... 
• The second week was action week: Selling things, donating things, accumulating boxes, and packing less-used items including pictures and wall art. 
• The third week included doing some serious packing. We set aside a week's worth of clothes for each of us, and packed all the other clothes. We packed closets, drawers, cabinets.. you know it. 
• Then during the last week, we drove back home (where our parents live) to have a going-away party and pick up any random things we had left there. Then when we came back, we cleaned out the refrigerator, got our moving truck, loaded up all of our worldly possessions, and HIT THE ROAD!!

So, Hubs, Walker TR, and I rode together in a moving truck for 2 days, and we finally made it to our new duty station! Now, up until this point, things had gone incredibly smoothly. Like, PCSs don't go this smoothly, from everything the internet had told me! You know, like Murphy's Law.

Well don't worry, we hit a pretty big snag once we got on base. We had been on the waiting list for housing, but we basically counted on not having a house when we arrived (snag!), so we had booked lodging at the hotel on base in advance (score!). The only room available for our first week in the TLF (Temporary Lodging Facility) was a single (not family-sized), non-pet-friendly room (snag!). We were told over the phone when making our reservation that our dog could be kept in the room as long as he was in a crate, so we got a crate from some family for free before we left (score!). When we checked in, we were told that the information we were given was incorrect, and pets weren't even allowed in the building without risking a $300 fine (snag!) It was almost 5pm, and all the kennels and boarders were about to close (snag!), not to mention the outrageous fee to board your dog for a whole week on short notice (snag!). Luckily, the spouses on this base are super friendly and very socially connected through Facebook and I was able to find someone who would take our dog for the week for a much more reduced rate (score!) So, although that was incredibly stressful, we made it work and everything was okay. PHEW!!

Then there was housing. The next day, we went to make an appearance at the housing office on base to say, "We're here! Give us a house!" Although we were at the top spot on the waiting list (score!), they had signed away their last available lease that day and didn't have any scheduled openings for at least 2 months (double snag!). So, unless someone living on base magically got emergency PCS orders in the next few weeks, we weren't going to have a house on base. We decided to stay in the TLF for at least our reimbursable 10 days while we did some off-base housing searching.

And then there was the moving truck... The Air Force no longer pays for you to extend your moving truck rental in the event that you can't move in to a house right away, but they will pay for storage. So, we had no other choice but to almost immediately move into storage, or else pay $100/day out of pocket to keep the truck. That same night as the housing fiasco, we drove that thing to a [what-turned-out-to-be-kind-of-sketchy] storage facility and unpacked. By ourselves. In the dark. In the rain. To a unit on the second floor. I'm talkin' sketchy freight elevator, people. Three and a half hours, a busted foot (I slipped and fell), a cracked mirror, and a smashed finger or two later, we finally returned that daggone moving truck and didn't have to pay any extra fees. Boo-ya!

We stayed in TLF for about two weeks (eventually transferring to a family-sized, pet-friendly room with Walker TR) but no houses on base became available for us, and we weren't really expecting that anyways. We did some intense apartment hunting and finally found the perfect place! Ever since then it's been unpacking, getting settled, learning our way around our new town, making friends, sightseeing, and become a real military family!

In the upcoming posts, I'll tell you about our very first Thanksgiving as a married couple, and all the Christmas preparations that have been going down recently!

Thanks for being patient readers during my big move! :-)

Here's a picture of Baboushka Walker to reward you:

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