The Orders Saga [is still going on]

First off I want to give a huge thank you to all of you who have been praying and thinking about my family for the past few days.  It means a lot that I know you guys care about us.  Thank you for your friendship.

We finally have everything sorted out with regards to when Brandon is going to school.  It actually makes a lot of sense and part of me is like, "why was I so stressed out? This is perfect?"  And then I remember that for a while there no one had any idea what was going on and it wasn't perfect.  

Let me explain.  

No, there is too much, let me sum up.  

Basically, there were two options for how this whole moving to Alabama thing was going to happen.  

Option 1: Brandon goes to WOCS (Warrant Officer Candidate School) at Fort Rucker, Alabama while the kids and I stay at Fort Hood.  Brandon would still be part of his unit here at Fort Hood, and so this was just considered traveling for training.  At some point Brandon would come back to Fort Hood, out-process from Fort Hood, and we would all move to Fort Rucker where he would begin the flight school part of his training.

Option 2: We all move to Fort Rucker before Brandon starts WOCS. This is called a PCS (Permanent Change of Station).  He would out-process from Fort Hood, and would be all done with this place.

We didn't really have any say in what option we'd get assigned.  There were many different departments in charge of this whole thing.  Human Resources Command (HRC), the S1  (I think the S stands for Staff, but maybe it's Support) people for Brandon's unit, and the Soldier's Center at Fort Hood. They would all give feedback and we'd just kind of go with it.  At first it seemed like we'd do Option 1.  Then for a while we thought it would be Option 2.  Then it was back to Option 1.  Everything was just about all set up for Brandon to go to training and then come back.  But then suddenly we were back to Option 2 - except no one could confirm it.   

That was about two Friday's ago.  Brandon got stuck in a crazy limbo where no one would take responsibility for actually getting him his orders.  Every department just kept referring him back to the other departments.  It was pretty awful.  

On the first Sunday in March Brandon and I fasted for everything to be resolved. We felt calm about everything and I expected a resolution that week.  But we still didn't get one.  

I started getting really nervous about the whole thing.  As it stood we were still on Option 2 - the one where we moved.  Brandon's school date was coming up, and while I was hoping to move right away, I didn't want to have to do it on short notice.  We'd been planning to have the Army take care of moving us, but with short notice we might be forced to do it ourselves.  I even went to a move out information class with housing to learn what I could expect if we had to leave in a hurry.  (They actually were really reasonable.)  

One of the people over Brandon introduced Option 3: Which was, maybe it would just be better if Brandon waited to get this all sorted out, and went during the next rotation.  We thought that might work until we found out the next rotation for him wouldn't be until August.  That was NOT acceptable. 

So Brandon continued to try to get any sort of help.  Everything seemed to depend on a woman at HRC who no one could get a hold of.  I even called her, and her supervisor, and left messages.  I'd heard through the Fort Rucker Wives Page on Facebook that she had been on leave.  Someone said she should be back on Friday, but we never heard back from her. I was hoping to know something concrete by the weekend, but instead everything was left up in the air.

This is the point where I asked for prayers from all of you on Facebook.  I'm the type of person who likes to know things in advance.  I do not do well when I don't feel in control of a situation.  I had about 6 different contingency plans running through my head, and I didn't know which one I should be acting on.  Should I be dejunking and packing - or were we still going to live here for 5 months?  Should we start deep cleaning the house - or should we spend time as a family?  My head was spinning from all the options. 

Sunday was actually a really good day.  It's the day of rest for a reason people.  Instead of worrying about all the things I through I should be doing I just focused on doing the things I knew I should do on a Sunday.  So we went to church.  I didn't worry about cleaning or packing or anything like that. 

At 8:00 am on Monday I tried calling the HRC lady again.  I was planning on just leaving a voicemail, but instead she answered!  I was a little flustered at first because 1, I wasn't expecting to actually have a conversation, and 2, I realized how dumb it sounded to say things like, "I'm calling about my husband's stuff because I'm trying to figure out my life."  But even though it felt kind of odd, the lady was still okay about it.  She told me that she couldn't really talk about it with me and so I handed her off to Brandon who was just as stunned that she'd actually answered her phone. 

Brandon talked with the lady for a while and got a lot of good feedback from her.  Even then it still took most of the day to get everything resolved.  The First Sergeant ended up having to go with him to the Soldiers Center to get everything straightened out with them.  It was kind of dumb because Brandon had been there 3 weeks earlier and they hadn't given him the time of day.  But as soon as the First Sergeant showed up they actually did their jobs.  Army life can be super annoying sometimes. 

Brandon got his orders today.  They actually are kind of a combination of the other options.  For those of you keeping track that means we are on Option 4: It's a PCS in that Brandon out-processes from Fort Hood this week.  He'll go to Fort Rucker and start WOCS training next week.  However, the kids and I wont go to Alabama yet.  There just isn't time for us to do a move.  I'm hoping that we can get things set up so that the Army will take care of moving us while Brandon is at WOCS.  I'd like to be there when Brandon graduates, and I know he'd appreciate being able to come home instead of worrying about a move.  We'll see what happens with that plan.

I'm just so glad that I finally know what plan to act on.  Things are so much easier to plan when I actually know what's going on.

Thanks again for all of your support.  I'll definitely keep you all updated during this transition.

Update March 10, 2015 6:51 pm

Well that was fun while it lasted.  Brandon just told me his orders are still screwed up and so he isn't going to flight school until August.  I'm too upset to tell you more than that.