Let's start at the very beginning...

I wrote this quickly to get it all down and just to start somewhere.  So excuse my mistakes and lack of interesting topics and dialogue.  :)

On Sunday, June 15th, 2014 my parents drove us to Baltimore MD to get a hotel for us to catch our early morning flight to Hawaii.  Our new home for the next 3 years.  We had been "moving" for almost a month already.  Our moving journey really started May 15th.  Early that morning Jason and I dropped kids off at helpful neighbors houses and we drove 7 hours to Baltimore to drop off my car in hopes that by shipping it a month early, it would be waiting for us in Hawaii and we wouldn't have to rent a car.   We had 2 different babysitters lined up for that weekend, and just the logistics of that alone took me a week to figure out.  We shipped our car and my mom, Josh and Lindsey picked us up in Quantico, VA and drove us back to NC.  My mom took all 3 kids and Leonidas (our dog) back up to PA and I started prepping the house to move.  Due to the holiday weekend our movers started packing on Friday, May 23rd, took a break for the weekend and  finished up on the 27th.  We lived among boxes until they picked it all up on May 29th.  We had our final inspection for base housing on May 30th and said goodbye to the town we have called home for 4 1/2 years.  It wasn't easy and I cried, a lot.

 I loved our house on base.  It was a great place to live and will always hold a special place in my heart.

Everything we owned fit into 11 crates that would be shipped to Hawaii.  Each piece of furniture had to be taken apart in order to fit in crates.  

Trying to figure out what to pack to live with until our shipment of household goods arrived (we didn't know how long it would take and if we would have a house to receive it when it did arrive) so packing was a challenge.  This is what I ended up with.  12 pieces.  Amazing how much stuff we need, yet how much we can live without. 

 Saying goodbye to our family dog, Leonidas, was just as hard as I thought it would be.  He was family and I couldn't explain why we had to leave him.  The suitcases made him anxious and I know he expected us to take him in the car like we always do when he  sees the suitcases piled up.He is doing well and loves his PA family, but we really miss him.

Especially Ryleigh, Leonidas was her sleeping buddy and bedtime here has been hard without him.

Our first flight on June 15th was from BWI to Denver.  Our flight was at 7:30 am.  We were up and moving by 4 am and caught the shuttle to BWI just before 5 am.  When we finally checked our luggage, it was a huge sigh of relief.  ALL of our stuff was on it's way to Hawaii now.  No more figuring out what to take and if it would fit.  We were on the finally on the last leg of this long moving process.

The kids did great on the flights.  Our almost 4 hour flight from Baltimore to Denver didn't seem too long.  The kids read and slept.  We had a layover in Denver, but only enough time to eat and take bathroom breaks.

After a LONG 7 hour flight from Denver to Honolulu, we arrived home.  Or what was now home, which has been lots of places for this family.  It didn't seem like home and we were cranky, hungry and tired.  It was 2:30 in the afternoon local time, but for us it was 8:30 and we were starting to drag.  Marine Corps friends that were already stationed in HI met us at the airport and that was a lifesaver.  They directed us to our rental car (our car did not make it despite our shipping it a month in advance), helped us find our way to food and to our hotel.   By the time we made it to bed we had been up for 22 hours.   It was a long Monday.