The Move

So there we were...orders to Iwakuni Japan in one hand, facing an impossible move on the other hand.

Remember in the first post, how we had orders for Lejeune, but one of the big factors of choosing to have the family stay was the fact that the military couldn't move us because of Covid?

We've done our fair share of DITY moves ourselves, when we were a young family with one kid. But we've grown quite a bit since then!!

But what do you do when you are required to use the military contracted company for an overseas move, and you've tried over and over to get it scheduled because your house is closing and you need to get out of it by a certain time, and NO ONE will talk to you or schedule your move?

This was the predicament we found ourselves in. I was just praying and praying right up to the last two weeks when we needed to get OUT and we knew for sure that even if we finally got a call to schedule our move that same day, it would be too late.

So.....we decided to order some PODS.

While we were waiting for our PODS to show up, we got a call from our realtor about the appraisal.

We were SO hoping it would at least appraise at the asking price, let alone the offer price.

.....and it blew us all away.

All our hard work on the house paid off, as it appraised well and for the full offer.

We were so surprised and pleased, and were cleared for closing! Everything was in place to go smoothly....except this darn moving situation.

Luckily for us....Uncle Matt came to visit!

Uncle Matt lives in Alaska and wanted to see us before we shipped off to Japan for three years. He came for two weeks.

When Uncle Matt made his plans, we were not anticipating needing his help moving, but once he arrived, we found ourselves dumping everything into boxes.

He was such a huge help to us. I was very sorry we were only able to do one fun thing (Mount Vernon) while he was visiting.

And then our PODS came.

I was so anxious, it did NOT look like enough room at all.

We got movers scheduled to move our furniture and boxes into the PODS a few days before closing.

Another problem was.....where would these PODS go?

They were supposed to be a temporary place to hold our household goods and storage until we could get the military move scheduled.

Of course, they couldn't stay at the house, and we couldn't put them in the PODS storage because we needed access to them.

We have some good friends that had a few acres few miles away, and were so gracious to let us put our PODS on their land.

This was another temporary solution, because they were in the process of selling their house as well. But we SHOULD hear back from our case manager ANY DAY and get the move scheduled, right?

At least one thing was going our way. Our express shipment movers came.

We were their last pick up of the day, and they had limited room for us, but we got as much stuff as we could into the express shipment, trying to save space for our PODS. ALL my fabric, my machines, everyones clothes except one suitcase each, most of the kitchen tools, and the computer were shipped off to Japan.

A few days later, we were finishing packing up the house for the movers to move into the PODS. I checked my email, and saw a message from the overseas screener. I read the first line, screamed, and ran to Greg and Uncle Matt, who was leaving in an hour or so. I excitedly told them we had been cleared for Japan!

I grabbed my phone and started reading out loud, "I would like to inform you that everyone has been cleared for overseas assignment..." and then I felt the unpleasant sensation of my stomach dropping as I continued reading, ".....with the EXCEPTION of dependent Eden Hill."

Happy Sewing!!

-Shelley