So....we're moving

 from this....

...to this.

I have visited Oahu three times in my life.

Each time, I distinctly remember saying something like "Nice place to visit, wouldn't ever want to live here."

For me, there are just too many people in one place.  I decided to see just how many that was.

There are approximately 900,000 people living on Oahu.  There are only 31,000 people in Juneau and 625,000 people in the entire state of Alaska!!  71% of Hawaii's total population lives on Oahu, which is only 9.2% of it's total land area.  Oahu has an area of 607.7 square miles with 112 miles of coastline. (44 miles long by 30 miles wide).  Juneau's land area is 2716.7 square miles

Today we got orders to move to Oahu.

We were actually made aware of this situation on February 16, but couldn't tell anyone for sure since we didn't have orders.  Darwin called me and told me the detailer called him and told him that they wanted to move him this summer to Sector Honolulu Investigations Division.

(I guess I should insert here that we kind of knew we might have to move this summer and were hoping that we wouldn't have to.  Darwin had a rank advancement in September, and is now the same rank as his boss.  Originally, his command wrote him a letter of recommendation requesting that he stay in his position for the remaining year we had in Juneau, but somewhere along the way that letter became obsolete...just because...)

Anyway...

After he got that call, he called me to let me know.  I have to say that the second he told me, I had an adrenaline rush...like something amazing just happened.  I was so excited!  Then I caught hold of myself and tried to be upset that we had to move.  I've tried not to act too excited either, but really...I am excited.

When we found out that moving might be a possibility (I would say that we have know this might happen since December) Darwin went in and filled out his "dream sheet"...the list of places that he would like to live that had jobs that he was qualified to do.  His top few picks were Seattle, Portland, Yorktown,VA, and I think one in California.  He did have Honolulu somewhere on his list, but not for the job he is going to do.  We haven't ever had this happen before.  We have pretty much picked everywhere we wanted to go, because EVERY SINGLE ONE of our moves have been overseas...Idaho to Kodiak, Kodiak to Washington DC, Washington DC to Juneau, Juneau to Maui, Maui to Juneau, and now Juneau to Oahu...and when you go "overseas" you typically get one of your top picks.  Now this Juneau tour was #20 on our "dream sheet", but the detailer called us and asked us if we would like to go back to Juneau or Kodiak (and we could turn both down if we wanted)...and we picked to come back to Juneau, so I count that as picking where we got to go.  

The only person that isn't really excited is Brooklin (she cried when I told them all).  We set her up with an email account and a facebook, and I think that this time will be a little easier on her.  She is trying a little to not focus on it or be too sad about it.  We keep reminding her of how much fun she had scuba diving and going to the beach.

My only concern is what we are going to do with our house, but God seems to even be helping with that too...almost even before I had a chance to worry about it.  We have had three different people call and ask us if they could rent our house before we even had our orders!  I don't know anything about renting out a house, but that is on my list of things to do this week...call around and find out what there is to know about renting and property managers and that kind of stuff.  I'm pretty sure that we couldn't sell it for what we owe on it anyway because since we bought it, prices have fallen a little and we financed some of our closing costs.  Who knows...but I'm glad that it is hopefully going to be a small worry and not a big one.

So that is the big news.

This is also my 300th post!!  hehe =)