Mom. Wife. Military Life.

***I figured I would start a small series as we go through this move. I will walk through our steps as we get through little turning points that deserve the notarization. For all my non-military friends a PCS is short for Permeant Change of Station… The military is EXTREMELY acronym heavy… Everything has some sort of term or abbreviation, ill do my best to break them down as they come along.

From the second you find out your moving everything seems to move in 2 motions, hyper-speed and snail-speed. Of course the things you want to move hyper-speed (orders, the time movers are suppose to arrive, paper work, medical clearance appointments… I could go on forever) seem to drag on for what seems like eternity and the things you want to move snail-speed (family time, time left in your home, time with friends) seem to fly by faster thing you can blink an eye at.

I’m sitting here writing at my dinner table looking around at my house with empty walls. This home, for over 4 years, has provided so much more then a roof over our heads. We have brought 2 babies home here, and celebrated our oldests’ 1st birthday here. We have had some of our hardest family moments in this house, and also laughed the hardest we have ever laughed here. We had the opportunity to have friends become family within these walls. We watched first steps for all 3 kids in this living room. We have been through 2 deployments as a family in this house. We have gone down into that stubborn tornado shelter more times then I care to remember. We hung pictures, we decorated a garden, we made this temporary house a home. This may not have been our dream house or forever home but for the time we have been here we have made it ours.

I think when you start realizing your leaving somewhere you begin to look around and take things in a little more. Inanimate objects begin to have a story, and deciding what things go in the stay/leave pile get a little more foggy. As I sifted through boxes that have sat in my garage for the past 4 years it clicked to me. These things I’m holding on to aren’t something that can be taken away or boxed up. These things are memories and moments that get to go with us wherever we choose to take them. Sure our next house wont see first baby steps, but it will see us do something we have never done as a family before and that’s… only having each other…on the other side of the world…as a family.

I expect our next home to see growth within us. I expect it to see tears of joy. I also know it will see days with tears of sadness missing the ones we love back in the states. We will have highs and lows and moments we will never forget. Our walls will be decorated the same, our furniture will be familiar, and even the pillows we lay our heads down on will hear the familiar prayers that we say every single night. That is my future prediction.

These empty walls don’t mean its the end, they just mean they are moving on along with all the memories that we have collected at our time here. Our friends will always be our friends, this home will always be the home we grew our family in, and the rest we will see in a few months.

As we watch our friends back home build their forever homes I can say part of me has some jealousy. The kids will go to school together for as long as they can remember. They can change their cabinets and wall colors to match their mood. They have backyards they can put pools in. They have family within a phone call away. They have something my family wont ever know… longevity. But do you know what? That’s ok because you know what my family will get?….

We will get to be immersed in a culture that most kids only read about in world history books. We get to consider the East China Sea a weekend swimming pool. We get to go back to the basics with no fancy cars (and expensive payments) or big houses and put our time and funds into seeing the world, not just looking at picture books about it. We get to meet new friends and grow our circle to welcome in people we never knew could become so close to us. We get this opportunity…. and opportunity (like this) is the thing that many friends back home will never get.

So here we go. The movers will begin to box things up next week and we will wave our stuff goodbye. I’m dreading the actual farewell to friends and family, I’m not gonna lie. But we will save that for another day once we get settled in our new home. I’m pretty set on the next blog in this series to be on the actual travel process….( lets pray I don’t have a lot to write about there).

Thank you again for reading and enjoying! Please feel free to share when and if you feel so moved!

Inspire.Believe.Succeed.

-Kinzy