OPINION: The final PCS?

This year, our family will embark on our final PCS.

Yep. Last time to meet with Transportation. Last time for the packers to come. Last time the huge moving van pulls up on cue. Last time to weigh our empty trailer and reweigh when it’s full. Last time dealing with move.mil and DPS, and last time using the HHG, UOD, APFT and POV acronyms on a regular basis.

While we have been through fewer moves than many military families over the course of my husband’s long career, we understand first-hand how any move can affect your family — especially your children. While they are always troopers in the end, the day-to-day worries of moving to new schools and making friends weigh heavily upon them.

Saying goodbye to friends is always hard — no matter how many new ways there are these days to keep in touch…and no matter how old you are. It always seems like just when we finally know where all the neat places to go, the best back roads to get there and who you really need to talk with to make things happen… it’s time to move again. However, this time, we intend to learn all of these things only one more time.

We are both excited and anxious about what our future holds, and we find ourselves spending hours looking on real estate websites and apps. We now have access to thousands of prospective homes on the Internet, leaving us in a daze of digitally enhanced potential dreamhomes — and they all begin to run together in our minds, leaving us to question which ones we really did like.

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My husband has often said that he intends this move to be our LAST — but his dreams of having 100 acres don’t always mesh well with good school systems. With our oldest starting high school this fall, and our youngest with a few more years before he starts kindergarten, schools are a big part of the equation, for sure.

And while schools are of the utmost importance, we really don’t want to be packed into another neighborhood with the potential for annoying or busybody neighbors, or where you have to say hello to five people just to go check your mail. We want room to roam and room to play in peace. Our kids just want a pool.

But this time, instead of the Army telling us an approximate area where we will live for the next few years, the whole world is open to us!

It’s a little intimidating.

Hot? Cold? Mountains? Beach? Humid? Dry? And then there are the schools to consider, and what type of house we want — Rural? Suburban? Single-or multi-level? The choices are almost overwhelming!

But, like every other huge task in life, the key is taking one step at a time.

So now, what once seemed so far in the future, is almost here, and all those steps we took to get to this point now are starting to snowball.

We have narrowed it down to a region in one state. I am about to go check out five school systems, then houses in each area, to see if we can become even more focused in our search.

Burning through tanks of gas and staying with friends and relatives nearby these areas helps a lot. Once again, we are reminded that old friends (some of whom we’ve met during our years with the military) and family can never be taken for granted. Fortunately, we have been blessed with true friends and a loving family that welcomes us with open arms — and a spare bedroom.