An hour and 20 minutes into my drive home yesterday (only another 10 minutes to go), my cell phone rang!! It was DC (Dear Child) #4 – our USNA plebe making that first Plebe Summer phone call!! 
I was driving back from the Ohio airport after just having dropped off DC #3 so he could catch his flight to the east coast to begin his Senior PLC in Quantico. I told our DC #4 plebe kid to call DH who was at home with DC #5 and DC #6 (our special needs kids) - right away and I would jump back in the conversation as soon as I got back in the door –within 10 minutes or so. DH had stayed behind because he had to pack and get ready for his week away, he's only home on weekends now. He was notified on May 15 that effective June 1, he was being transferred – and promoted! – to the Chicago area, 6 hours away from our home here in Ohio – oh, p.s. DH received the “you’re being transferred” call two hours west of Roswell, New Mexico as we were driving along a wide-open Texas road on our way to pick DC#4 up from NMMI - he’d just finished his Foundation prep year the day before! So anyway, now we’re in the process of selling our house and looking for and buying a place out in Illinois while our military children (3 of our 6, 4 of 7 if you include son-in-law) going here and there and being inducted and reporting for duty and whatnot – including DC #2 in Pearl Harbor being promoted to Captain three weeks before her baby- our first grandbaby - is due! Even DC #1, although not military (he’s a special ed. high school teacher), is involved in all this organized chaos of summer 2013…he happens to be the one DH is living with during the week because his house is only about half an hour from DH’s new office.
We did find a house while DC #3 and #4 were still home
– actually a week before I-Day we ALL went on an intense, extremely focused, one day house-hunting expedition to Illinois and with their input honed in on our next home! So here we go – on the first day of USNA PPW, the moving truck will be pulling out of our Ohio driveway with our stuff at the same time as I will, with DC #5 and #6 (not positive how DH’s work schedule will be, he may or may not be on hand for this). Anyway, on the first day of PPW, the moving truck will head west to our new home and we will head east to hopefully make it in time for DC #4’s first liberty of Plebe Summer the next day. We’ll stay as long as we can on that last day of PPW, Sunday, but the closing for the new place is Monday – and that’s about a 15 hour drive to the closing office which includes a stop back at the old house to scoop up the sleeping bags, cleaning supplies, vacuum cleaner, etc.. The truck is scheduled to arrive the next day in Illinois which will give us a couple days to unload stuff and then be back on the road again to the east coast to attend DC#3’s OCS graduation and pick him up and drive to his by-then out of state college to begin his senior year classes two days later. In the meantime…that new baby in Hawaii could be saying “aloha” to the world!!
I think I will refer to Summer 2013 as our "Blender" Summer – toss a whole bunch of good things into the container, put the lid on, hit the button and voila!!!
Don’t know how all those things managed to be in that container at the same time, but they did -- and it’s all good!
I was driving back from the Ohio airport after just having dropped off DC #3 so he could catch his flight to the east coast to begin his Senior PLC in Quantico. I told our DC #4 plebe kid to call DH who was at home with DC #5 and DC #6 (our special needs kids) - right away and I would jump back in the conversation as soon as I got back in the door –within 10 minutes or so. DH had stayed behind because he had to pack and get ready for his week away, he's only home on weekends now. He was notified on May 15 that effective June 1, he was being transferred – and promoted! – to the Chicago area, 6 hours away from our home here in Ohio – oh, p.s. DH received the “you’re being transferred” call two hours west of Roswell, New Mexico as we were driving along a wide-open Texas road on our way to pick DC#4 up from NMMI - he’d just finished his Foundation prep year the day before! So anyway, now we’re in the process of selling our house and looking for and buying a place out in Illinois while our military children (3 of our 6, 4 of 7 if you include son-in-law) going here and there and being inducted and reporting for duty and whatnot – including DC #2 in Pearl Harbor being promoted to Captain three weeks before her baby- our first grandbaby - is due! Even DC #1, although not military (he’s a special ed. high school teacher), is involved in all this organized chaos of summer 2013…he happens to be the one DH is living with during the week because his house is only about half an hour from DH’s new office.
We did find a house while DC #3 and #4 were still home
– actually a week before I-Day we ALL went on an intense, extremely focused, one day house-hunting expedition to Illinois and with their input honed in on our next home! So here we go – on the first day of USNA PPW, the moving truck will be pulling out of our Ohio driveway with our stuff at the same time as I will, with DC #5 and #6 (not positive how DH’s work schedule will be, he may or may not be on hand for this). Anyway, on the first day of PPW, the moving truck will head west to our new home and we will head east to hopefully make it in time for DC #4’s first liberty of Plebe Summer the next day. We’ll stay as long as we can on that last day of PPW, Sunday, but the closing for the new place is Monday – and that’s about a 15 hour drive to the closing office which includes a stop back at the old house to scoop up the sleeping bags, cleaning supplies, vacuum cleaner, etc.. The truck is scheduled to arrive the next day in Illinois which will give us a couple days to unload stuff and then be back on the road again to the east coast to attend DC#3’s OCS graduation and pick him up and drive to his by-then out of state college to begin his senior year classes two days later. In the meantime…that new baby in Hawaii could be saying “aloha” to the world!! I think I will refer to Summer 2013 as our "Blender" Summer – toss a whole bunch of good things into the container, put the lid on, hit the button and voila!!!
Don’t know how all those things managed to be in that container at the same time, but they did -- and it’s all good!