A Grand Adventure......

So remember when I said we were waiting for orders from the USAF for our move this summer? Well, Paul just  Skyped me from his trip and announced that our orders have officially uploaded to whatever magic military system we have been waiting for, and we now know where we are going.

We have a report no later date of July 27th, and we are heading to........

(drum roll please)

Osan Air Force Base, South Korea.

The kids are over the moon excited, and I am both in shock that it is real (we have had our suspicions for about a month) and ready to get going on this next phase in life. (I am really excited too!) This is going to be such a change for us, and we are totally ready for a great, and grand adventure. (we will be there between 2 and 3 years depending on whether we like it enough to extend a year, which we are hoping to do so that Isaac can start high school in the USA, and not have to move for those 4 years.) There are going to be a lot of changes as the kids will go to a Department of Defense school, we will be in the extreme minority as far as Air Force families are concerned because Korea is limited as far as accompanied slots go - most people have to go without their families for a year long tour, but we have a command sponsorship to go with him for a 2 year minimum, but there are only an extremely limited amount of those, (boy are we grateful!) so there will not be a lot of other American families there.

There will be a lot of changes for us in terms of housing, we are going to move from our own nearly 3,000 square ft single family home on half and acre of land, to a small high rise apartment with a tiny patio. Because I am a planner, I am actually pretty excited about the challenge of making the smaller space work for our family, although I am a little sad to be loosing my awesome studio space that I have here.

(a peek at the housing tower we would live in)

Paul has already gone to the housing office and sent me the floor plans for the 3 possible apartments we could  get, and they are all pretty much the same as each other with only small changes to one of the 2 bathrooms and the entryway. The living room, dining room, kitchen, and master are the same in all plans, and the kid's 2 bedrooms pretty much change by 4 inches of width depending on which plan you have. I have been wandering around the house measuring the furniture so that I can go to Pottery Barn's website and invent room plans in order to figure out what does and doesn't fit, what storage we will need to acquire for optimal efficiency, and what we will need to sell, so that we don't have any dead weight.

Anyway, blog-wise I am pretty excited to share our family's adventure with everyone, and I am excited to see what supplies are available for sewing, decorating, crafting, etc in Korea (did you know that many of the world's zips are made there? I didn't.) Apparently there is a fabric district in Seoul (about an hour away from the Air Force Base) that is AMAZING, which has me pretty excited, and since I won't be in school anymore, I will be able to really dedicate myself to the crafts and sewing that I haven't had as much time for over the last 2 years.

Anyway, come on May and my graduation, I am ready for the next chapter already!