Army Life: You Sure Handle It Well

Ah yes, I get it a lot. You sure handle it well.. the whole moving all the time and uncertainty that is the Military lifestyle. What can I say, you kind of have to be that way or atleast it helps! It’s bad enough I have some anxiety already, why make it worse right?

Funny thing I get asked a lot is, “What did you think when your husband mentioned coming back into the Army?” Honestly, I don’t remember how it went down exactly or what the moment was like when we told our parents.. I have some serious issues with memories for some reason. Not that it was bad or anything.. I blame the whole mommy brain. Anyways..

How do I deal with the fact that every two to three years we pick up our family and move?

Here’s how I really feel:

-I’m actually pretty ok with the whole situation. I look forward to the new area we are moving to. The opportunity for my husband and the opportunity it brings to our family as a whole. We love to travel and we have gotten so see so much of our beautiful country, thanks to the military. Moving is a bit of a problem, as packing up and then unpacking is a huge pain. I was easily able to get courier quotes when trying to find a delivery company so that wasn’t a problem. It’s just a lot of effort. But I’m not complaining, like I said, thanks to the military I’ve seen a lot of our beautiful country.

The biggest headache I guess is the in between. After everything is packed up and picked up by the movers, we are sleeping on an air mattress with only a few things. The driving is a fun part of the moving. The drive is always nice to catch up with my husband. We are big on talking and we laugh and chit chat the whole way. Then it gets gray again when we sit in the hotel day after day while we look for housing.

Being the new kids in town, what’s that like?

I always wanted to be the new kid in school when I was little. I guess I thought it would be neat to re-invent yourself or make new friends or I’m not sure what I was thinking. But it was always a fantasy. Who would have thought I’d get that chance as an adult! It’s actually a little unnerving but I do it well.. LOL That’s one thing I recall everyone would tell me when the topic of us moving would come up, “Oh you’ll make friends easy, don’t worry!” We have been very lucky to make wonderful friends at every duty station so far. Don’t get me wrong, everyone runs into some that you’d rather not be friends with but we make it work. Keep it positive people!

The Hassle of changing everything  ie. learning a new phone number, address and learning a new area. I bet that’s a pain.

It’s actually not too bad. One of the trickiest things is forwarding/stopping your mail. Specially if you don’t have a forwarding address just yet. Luckily it has gone without a hitch in our last three moves. One of the things I was worried about from our last move was missing out on prizes from sweepstakes! I actually stopped using our address and was using our parents address for a lot of sweepstakes for the last two months we were in Tampa. Should be pretty easy this next move.

Does it really feel like home when you are in and out of places?

It’s always a home as soon as we move into it. Some people have a favorite picture that they put up and as soon as it’s up, “it’s home.” We have always said, as long as we are together we are home. It’s cheesy but it works for us. Of course as soon as our household goods are delivered it’s really home. It always takes me forever to get stuff on the walls and decorated. I’m not sure why, lazy, busy with other things.. the next move I hope to get it decorated pretty quick. My husband always tells, me worry about that later.. Let’s get all this stuff unpacked. One of the first rooms to get unpacked is the kitchen. By this time we are so tired of eating out I welcome getting my stove going! I always find that I get into a cooking rut too.. Hopefully I won’t go thru it this time. Where I can’t decide what to cook or nothing sounds good. I guess that’s part of the moving process for me.

Here’s a couple questions for you:

How do you deal with change during a move? If you are a military family is there something that you notice to be a constant during a pcs? Or leave me a comment with a moving question.