I always joke, “Same station for 3 years and yet we still have made 3 moves!” but the eye twitch is real y’all….haha. Have I initiated most of those moves? Yes. Have those moves all been for valid reasons? Yes. But does moving still suck? YES.
When we first moved out to McChord, we did the smallest amount of research possible and decided to rent (a really cute house) in a town that did not fit our lifestyle at all. I was constantly driving all over kingdom come to meet up with people or just to do fun activities-which got old reallll fast. I was still in school at the University of Arkansas when the movers arrived to our rental and with that being a military move, it was essentially a piece of cake for me. We planned to move out of that home as soon as our lease was up and coincidentally, that fell during my husbands first deployment. Yay me! Moving from rental to rental wasn’t the worst in my opinion, the biggest burden was the clean up of the old place. I am so blessed to have an amazing dad who flew out for a weekend and actually coordinated everything with the movers and even unpacked boxes for me, all while I went to work and didn’t worry about a thing! Ugh, family is so huge! To say we loved our last place is such a huge understatement. If you have been around for a while, you may have seen our view; water, mountains, and so many of Gods most impressive sunsets <3 I still miss them! We lived there for 2 amazing years but soon the condo life began to feel too cramped and we wanted to set some roots down here and buy!
I was lucky in that I got to do the casual house hunting with my husband before he left. And we felt no real rush-clearly we didn’t know better, ha! We had an amazing realtor, Ryan Knicely, who is in the Army Reserves so he really understood what we were looking for and needed as a mil-couple. He was able to put us at ease with the whole process and made sure everything went as smooth as possible. Once we decided on the house we wanted, I honestly thought the hard part was over! *face palm* If you follow us on IG (you should!), you may have been with me on this crazy journey. Buying your first house is a feat in and of itself, but add on top of it the whole “doing it solo” part and it’s suddenly on a whole new level! My game plan was simple: do as little as necessary by myself.
If y’all knew me personally, you would know right off the bat that I am a pretty chill, laid back person. I don’t often get overwhelmed and rarely ever do I stress out. Okay, raising a puppy kinda stressed me out but aside from that, RARELY do I stress;) This adventure definitely tested me. As much as I had everything lined up perfectly, day 1-close, day 2-Movers, day 3- Cleaners, day 4 officially out of condo, this move felt WILD.
Enough with the stories. Here are some things I learned from this move! First off, you can totally close on a house by yourself, but you have to have a power of attorney which can be easily handled on base in the JAGs office while your spouse is still home. Aside from that, when you do sign to close the deal, you may (like me) have you sign your name AND your husbands name AND a thousand other words saying you have a power of attorney a BAJILLION times. I thought my hand would never write again after an entire hour of scribbling.
Second, I learned that even if you have saved all the money in the world for this transaction, you can still get very stressed out and overwhelmed by it all. I would love to meet the people that can put deposits down on homes without a little sweat…on second thought, that may just be depressing. But regardless-if you go through the home buying process and are stressed and feel alone, I was right there with you! Finances can be tough to talk about, although we will be doing plenty of that this year;) The hardest part for me was feeling ashamed that we were going from having a happy “nest egg” to almost nothing after the purchase. It is still something we are rebounding from and working daily at!
Finally, I realized that although I thought I had it all handled, I needed to rely on those willing angels around me to get me through. The coworkers and friends who came to our rental to help with some corrections and then offered to carry out the trash and some boxes for me? ANGELS. The people I saw daily who treated me with white gloves because I was a nervous wreck? ANGELS. The best gal who stayed with me for my whole first weekend in the house and refused to merely sit back and watch me unpack but instead guided me, kept me focused, and helped me unpack almost the entire home in one weekend? ULTIMATE ANGEL.
You will hear Kirst and me say over and over again, this Air Force family is unlike anything else. I was amazed by how kind and willing everyone in our lives were to help during this move. As someone who works in my husbands squadron, I felt a bit more comfortable reaching out to some of the guys for some help when I needed blinds hung or other various odd jobs around the house done. I was so grateful for those connections. But regardless of where you work or how connected you feel-those angels are still out there. This AF family has its shortfalls, but it is built on a foundation of community and support- something I fully experienced and hope each and every WAF gets to know and experience at some point in their journey!
Xo, Jen
