In the early days of the pandemic the military put a stop order for all military moves and orders. Luckily, medical training was considered an essential service so all the incoming residents were exempt from the stop order. I joined a military move facebook group for tips on the moving process and it was filled with people posting about contracts expiring, but not being allowed to move yet or closing on houses, but not knowing when they would ever get to that house. If the non-military member decided to move ahead of time they wouldn't get reimbursed because they moved without orders. It was a nightmare for hundreds of families. So, if I mention things that were frustrating about this move just know that I know it could've been much worse.
When you move on military orders you have the option of doing a full self move, a partial self move, or have movers do all of it. We did the partial move, which just means that we took some things in Ben's car, but overall the movers did most of it. We were really tempted to move ourselves because sometimes you make quite a bit of money. The army will pay you what they would've paid movers to move your things and if you have enough stuff, going far enough it's a good chunk of money. In the end, the idea of packing up all our stuff while trying to contain our 15 month old just didn't seem worth it.
We couldn't schedule our move until we got our orders, the orders usually don't come until a month before your report date. Well, we had to actually be in Maryland 2 weeks before our report date (or so we thought...rules kept changing, but we still wanted to get there earlyish) so that meant we were only going to get our orders 2 weeks before we wanted to be moving! People would ask me how the moving process was going and I would say it wasn't really going anywhere. Then they'd ask when we were leaving and I'd tell them oh about 3 weeks. Those weeks were very anxious weeks. If we got the orders and called the travel office and they didn't have an open moving day soon we would have to move ourselves and that would be a nightmare.
All things worked out and we were able to schedule a moving day that would get us there right when we were hoping. It's a great thing we didn't end up moving ourselves, prepping for the movers actually took quite a bit of work and I was so glad we weren't doing all of it! Using movers is a very interesting thing. It's really a gamble if you are going to get people who know what they are doing or are going to pack things properly. Our movers were pretty good overall, only a few things were damaged in the move.
The day the movers came I was tasked with keeping Riley out of the apartment with nothing open or available for us to do. We walked around Home Depot for a while, went to a park, and when it was nap time the Shumways said I could put her down at their house. The Shumways are the best part about Fort Worth and definitely the thing we will miss the most. We've still been having semi-regular online game nights with them, but it's just not as fun as being able to go over for dinner and watch our kids play together. We so lucked out with the Shumways. They were newlyweds just like us when we moved to Texas. They were married just 3 months before us. Lizzy had just struggled with the job search like me. My first conversation with Lizzy felt so natural and personal. It wasn't another small talk conversation like every other person I was meeting. We talked about real things and real struggles. I wanted to be her friend so bad that for a few weeks we went on 6 am runs together. I definitely slowed her down, but she was nice enough to act like she was tired too.
Jonathan was a 3rd year when we moved there so while our friendship was blossoming it was in the back of our minds that they would be moving in two years. The best day ever was Jonathan's match day when we found out they matched to a hospital in Fort Worth!! Seriously the best news! They had a baby right before Jonathan graduated med school, about 8 months before we had Riley. After going through the newlywed phase together, we got to go through the new parent phase together. They are the best friends and we really hope they end up in Utah so we will be able to visit them more often! :)
Back to the move...we had shipped my car to Maryland the week before and Riley and I flew in the day after our apartment was packed up. The flight was better than expected. The one good thing about pandemic times are the amount of people on a plane. If we ever go back to planes at full capacity I'm gonna be real distraught. We aren't supposed to be that close to strangers!
The drive to our new home was just as beautiful as it was a year ago. Walking into our new home for the first time I was 100% sold. The space, the hardwood floors, the kitchen size...it was perfect for us! We've now been in Maryland for about 4 months and we are loving our home!
What we didn't love was the then 3 week wait to get our stuff. You wouldn't believe how long 3 weeks can be until you've lived it in an empty house that you can't leave. They had told us the max amount of time it would be was 3 weeks. I kept hoping that it would be shorter than 3 weeks and Ben kept insisting it would take 6. It's not even like it took them 3 weeks because they were driving all over delivering other shipments in the same truck. When they called and told us they would be there in two or three days they were still in Fort Worth! You're telling me they really didn't have anyone available before then?? I feel like it's a sham. Looking back, it's really hard to say if the benefits outweigh the cost in this whole military move thing. Next time we may try to do it ourselves. Especially since we have stuff we like now, and they aren't always super careful with things.
We hope to see y'all in our neck of the woods some time! Yes, we now have a roommate living in our guest room, but there are plenty of couches around here. :)
