Promotion, Reenlistment and PCSing: AKA All Things Army

Joe went to the promotion board on Friday. He was pretty nervous going in but, as usual, he did really well! He now has his "promotable" status and will hopefully be pinned as E5 early next month! =D I'm SO proud of him and glad that with the jerk NCO gone, he was finally able to accomplish something. Sidenote: this particular NCO {who I talked about here} PCSed 5 days ago. Coincidence? I think not.

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Since he's all promotable now, he's in the process of reenlisting for the first time. We're hoping that he'll be able to choose our next duty station, and that we'll be able to get something much closer to home. Like the east coast. We actually spent part of Friday afternoon online looking at other posts to figure out where we wanted to be. We'd thought about maybe trying somewhere in VA, but they're all pretty much coastal and farther from NC than we'd like to be. {And no, Bragg isn't anywhere on our list. ::shudder::} We're hoping for either SC or GA because they're close to home. I'd almost rather be back in GA because we've lived there before and I feel like I could deal with familiar territory. I don't suppose SC would be too bad either, but I can't say since I've never been there before.

Talking about all of this promotion and reenlistment stuff just gets me excited to leave Hawaii. It's been nice and all, but I'm just ready to be done with this place. I know I've said this before...and recently. Most - not all, but most - of the friends I've made here have left or will be leaving soon. We have a church here, but we don't have any real friends to speak of so I don't feel like much will be lost by us leaving. Mostly though? I'm just ready to be within driving distance of family. I'm ready to be able to get in the car, drive for a few hours and wind up in a different state.

Source: reasonstobreathe.tumblr.com via Sarah on Pinterest

I know that when we move this time it'll be more difficult. This time around we've got a little person and all of the stuff she comes with. And since taking dogs from the island is infinitely easier than bringing dogs to the island, we have Jasper tagging along too. I know that maneuvering the HHG and UCB will be much more difficult/interesting because of the little person and her necessities. Though I do think we have the upper hand...knowing what to expect on the other end of an OCONUS PCS. I don't look forward to dealing with all that, but I know it'll be so worth it once we're back in civilization on the mainland again. I'd mention all the things that I'll love being able to do/see again, but is that really necessary? ;-) I think you guys have heard me complain enough about the lack of my favorite stores/food chains here.

I'm totally getting ahead of myself by thinking, dreaming and planning. We've still got about 8 months left here. And I really don't want that time to go by so quickly because that would mean my little bean would be growing up even faster than she already is! I don't think I could handle that. So I guess I'll just have to be patient...

Yeah. Right. ;-)