This morning while Facebooking around 6am (Kevin's alarm woke me up and Kerriann was still sleeping), I stumbled upon a photo that one of our friends from Ft. Rucker had been tagged in. It was of a home decor item that said "Home Is Where The Army Sends Us" and listed Ft. Rucker and their current post below it. I've seen similar signs before, and love the idea, just didn't think one would really work for us since Kevin is National Guard and we aren't required to move every three years like active duty military families.
Seeing this sign got me thinking of all of the places we have been and lived over the past three years. It made me want to list them out here so I don't forget them someday. Right now it's all so fresh in my mind, but I know it won't always be like that. Hopefully we will be able to really settle down somewhere after this deployment, but I never want to forget what our lives were like during this time.
A few days before January 1, 2009, I moved to Baltimore to live with Kevin. We originally thought we would be there at least until July (and that Kerriann would be born there), but the Army (and God!) had other plans for us. Soon after I moved there, we found out that Kevin needed to report to Ft. Rucker, Alabama by April 1. So I quit my amazing internship in the city, we packed up and headed south where we spent the next 19 months. While we were living in Ft. Rucker we lived in two different houses. The first was a rental that we found and moved into within two days of arriving, and the second was what I like to call our first "home." We bought a beautiful house with a pool in the backyard which happened to overlook Shell Field. We still own and rent this house.
In October of 2010 Kevin completed flight school, ending the chapter of our lives at Ft. Rucker. It was hard leaving the place where Kerriann was born and where we made all of our memories of her first year, along with all of the friends we had made there, but that's the way Ft. Rucker is. Everyone is only there for a short period of time. When we left Ft. Rucker we did some traveling over the holidays to visit family, and then settled in with Kevin's Aunt Patty for a few months until we could figure out what our next move would be.
In February of 2011 we got word that Kevin would be up for his first deployment around the start of the next year. We decided that the best move for our family would be for him to work with his unit to prepare and forego the civilian job search for the time being. We moved to a beautiful little condo in Havre de Grace, Maryland.
And that brings us to where we are now. After learning two weeks ago that Kevin will be deployed much, much sooner, we are gearing up for
another move. And going into this move I know that we will be moving again in another year when he returns. But hopefully this will be our final move for awhile. I am so ready to settle down and have a real family life. I'm really looking forward to Kevin holding a civilian position with regular work hours and actually being able to spend time with Kerriann and me. The past three years have been crazy, but I know that they have been necessary to get to the place where we want to be as a family. And if I can just survive one more year I know all of the moves and this crazy on the go lifestyle will have been worth it.
Continue to keep us in your prayers as we pack up our lives here in Maryland and move back to West Virginia, the place where Kevin and I met and officially started this journey!
