The Story of an Early Assignment

So, here is the crazy story of how our life took an unexpected turn. Bill was TDY (stand for Temporary Duty, but means on a trip) to Alaska when he got a message to call the boss immediately (never good). He was then told that he was to report no later than a specific date in January to Kunsan, Korea for a year long remote. I know, you guys are thinking that we just got to SC, how can he be up for reassignment? We were wondering the same thing. Turns out when you are on station for two years (it was less than a year and a half at the time we found out, but will be two years the end of January which is what they count), you are vulnerable to move. Having never been on a remote, he was red hot to go one and because they didn’t have enough volunteers for Kunsan (why would they, it sucks to live there and be away from your family for a year) he got non-volunteered. Needless to say, we were shocked. No one was expecting this. Even his commanders were saying, “but Kelso isn’t even on the VML (vulnerable to move list). “ Everyone has been really great about the whole thing. Everyone who could fight for him fought to get the assignment changed, at the very least to Osan, Korea where at least the kids and I could go with him and live off the economy if he couldn’t get us sponsored. Everyone who couldn’t fight for us, was pissed for us. Bill has been a huge asset to the squadron and no one wants to see him go before his time at Shaw is up. Unfortunately, this was all to no avail and things are to remain as they were handed to him. The worst part of being blind-sided the way we were is that we were four time zones away from each other and we weren’t able to be together during the most stressful time of our married life so far. Which will be quickly trumped by the deployment/remote that is rapidly approaching.
We take solace in the fact that the Good Lord has a plan for our family and we know that His plan is a great one. This situation still sucks though! As far as our plans as a family, we have been back and forth (more than a few times) about what we should do and have decided to get the house ready to sell and put it on the market in the very near future. We have been in our house less than 18 months and are very worried about not being able to sell it and also about having to take out a loan to pay off our mortgage if it does sell. So, we are going to list it with MilitaryByOwner.com and try to sell it on our own. If it sells, we will move home and if it doesn’t we will stay where we are. This was we can just sit back and let God work instead of second (and third and fourth) guessing our choices. If it hasn’t sold by September of next year we will hire an agent and go from there. Please pray that it sells!
I have a great support system here with the squadron and my friends here are awesome, so I am not too worried about us without Bill. I am honestly more worried about him without us. As hard as being a single mom will be on me with no breaks and all of the household and parenting responsibilities, I know that this year or so will be much harder on Bill being away from me and missing being a daddy in the daily lives of our children. They will both grow so much while he is gone. He will miss many milestones in their lives like sending Kaitlyn off to her first day of kindergarten, her first dance recital, and a year’s worth of holidays, birthdays and anniversaries. I think the hardest thing will be that he will leave a baby who is barely walking and barely talking and come home to a little boy who will be running circles around him and speaking in sentences. Bill is also supposed to deploy this fall with his squadron and we are still waiting to hear if that is going to happen. If he goes, he will leave in a few weeks and be one for a few months before the remote. Please pray that this time apart will strengthen our family and make us closer in the end.
Okay, so wipe your tears (I just read this to Bill and it was much harder to read than it was to write) and know that we will be just fine. We are blessed that he is going to Korea and that he will have all of the technology that we have here. We will be able to Skype with him (webcam and phone through our computers – check it out if you don’t already know about it http://www.skype.com/) and have a bunch of ideas up our sleeves for making the time apart as easy as possible for the little ones. We will also be able to go visit him out there and experience a little bit of Asia, which will be totally cool. The 14 hour flight with two kids by myself? Probably not as cool, but at least I’ll have some great stories to blog about. I can already see the nasty looks as we board.
Right now we are trying to spend as much time together as a family as possible before Bill leaves and we are looking forward to being able to travel abroad and see family and friends while he is gone. Even though it will be a difficult time, we will be making the best of it and we know that on most days, the time will fly.