Hooray for Fred!

I've spent the past couple of months in a state of loosely controlled anxiety, worrying and wondering about where we'll move next summer. We submitted our list of desired locations shortly after the Worldwide back in October, but we still weren't 100% content with the order we had put them in.

Fred called his assignments guy (AG) on Wednesday to request that a couple of places get switched on the list, and AG said, "Hey, I was going to call you today anyway." Turns out Fred was an alternate on the selection list for the War College, and a spot has opened up! When Fred called to tell me about it, he prefaced the announcement with "Are you sitting down?" which is kind of a stupid question when you think about it, because let's face it--I'm generally sitting down. I was totally shocked (in a good way) but managed to refrain from falling out of my chair.

Fred didn't want to say anything to the kids until he got confirmation that it was a go, but he got the confirmation yesterday, and we held a little family meeting. War College is a 1-year assignment, and we really don't want to move Mike for his junior year and then AGAIN for his senior year. He's happy where he is, and Annabelle is settling nicely into middle school after somewhat of a rocky start. So we have decided that the kids and I will stay here, and Fred will rent a hovelan apartment in Carlisle, PA, and come home on breaks.

The next year we're going to have to do some finagling to keep us here one more year to get Mike through his senior year. Best case scenario would be for Fred to get another assignment here. Worst case would be another deployment. Somewhere in the middle of those 2 extremes would be a 1-year unaccompanied to Korea or Fred just going off on his own to be a geographical batchelor wherever his next duty station is. We'll jump off ofcross that bridge when we come to it.

For now we're just celebrating Fred's very hard-earned and totally deserved success!