Okay, I guess an update would be good

I haven't posted much about our move or what being in NC has meant. So I guess I'll do a condensed version now.

Firstly, getting a house was a HUGE hassle. We live near Fayetteville, which is consistently about twice as high in crime as the national average. What this meant for us is we WANTED DESPERATELY to live on base. Military bases aren't perfect, but they are significantly safer. However, there was a 4 month wait for a two-bedroom house for us (we didn't qualify for a three-bedroom due to our having only one child). So I was trying to find us somewhere to rent, but it's really hard to find a place to rent when you don't know the area at all. I was doing research and trying to choose safe neighborhoods, but how was I supposed to know? And I couldn't find a realtor that would rent anything to us without us looking first, so we were risking moving across country and having no where to live--scary!

We found out that Pope AFB is going to be absorbed by Fort Bragg. All of the Air Force personel are going to be given orders to other bases by March 2011...our family included. Why we were sent here, I don't know, but we were.

So, I wrote to housing asking them to take us off the list. If we weren't going to have a house for a few months after arriving in NC, it wasn't worth it to us to live on base. That would mean moving twice in less than a year. That makes no sense. Thankfully, the base has privatized. What this means is that an outside housing company is responsible for the upkeep and leasing of homes on base. This also means they are paid every service members BAH (housing allowance). So when I said that we would be taking ourselves and our BAH off base, suddenly we were eligible for a three-bedroom house, and were able to move in the day we arrived in Pope.

So that has been our situation so far. We will only be here for 11 months. And we have a remodeled, 3-bedroom house that we all love. Guess it could be worse. ;)

Now our only problem is that the house is a duplex. This is totally fine with us, a lot of base housing is duplexes. The problem is the people next to us moved out and their home was not remodeled (the company remodels older houses that are still in good shape, tears down run-down homes, and builds new ones), so it is being remodeled now that it's empty. So there is a construction zone next door, dumpster and all...woo-hoo...