It's PCS Time-God Give Me Strength.

It's been a while since I've written because so much has happened.

First of all, we FINALLY got our orders for Okinawa. Due the nature of my husband's training, they would not give us orders until he had officially completed all of his training. Now that it is done, we received our orders. It's really real! We are going to Japan.

Secondly, we've been dealing with nothing but hick-ups and setbacks during this whole entire process. Let's just say that it has been a learning experience for all of us. We've been misinformed which delayed our paperwork. Transportation never sent off our contract to the movers to get our household goods picked up. We got our storage, and our unaccompanied baggage taken, but NO household goods. Talk about frustrating.  So last week we packed our stuff, organized what was left into the proper shipments, and waited. For nothing. So instead of sitting around Fayetteville, we took off to see our nephew perform as "Billy" in Billy Elliot up in Toronto, a much needed get-away. But now it's back to reality.

Plus our rental company (First Class Property Management) is awful. For anyone moving to the Fort Bragg area, I would not recommend that you use them. They do not treat you well at all. I will not go into the details since the purpose of my blog is not to do that, but I will say that if you use First Class, you will be sorry.

Moving right along. . . Finally our movers came and packed up the remainder of our items and took them today. The kids and I sat isolated from the mess and the madness in our one small upstairs room with all of our stuff that is coming in our suitcases. God bless computers and video streaming, but it will be an interesting experience sleeping on the floor tonight.

Also, we learned a few things while we were in Canada. We still get netflix, but we get the international version. That means that most of the American tv shows I've saved probably won't stream in Japan. Second, my friend Tracy was right. You can't watch American shows via the network website while overseas due to copy write laws. Boo.

Another little detail that is gumming up the works, is that apparently the Army will not fly us from our "leave location" to Okinawa. Despite the fact that we are going home to spend a couple of weeks with our families before we move to the other side of the planet, and it would probably be cheaper for the Army to fly us from, oh, Chicago, rather than Fayetteville, so we either have to call the airline directly and change it ourselves (for a fee of course) or figure out how to get ourselves and all of our stuff back here.

In addition to that, our current itinerary goes from Fayetteville, to Raleigh/Durham, to Washington Dulles, to Tokyo, to Okinawa. Great. Just great. THAT sounds like a ROCKIN' good time with two small children. Wouldn't it just be easier to do it our way??

So in conclusion-I hate using that but in the face of this whole debacle, it seems appropriate. My husband, children, and I are going to be sleeping on air mattresses, ordering pizza, and my husband and I will drink cheap wine. We still have to clean our place, ya know, wipe down floors, pray we get our security deposit back, etc, and then we are outta here. Iowa or bust.