Our PCS to Bliss

It felt like we had hardly unpacked at Ft Polk when we received orders to PCS to Ft Bliss. In truth the Army had given us 18 mos to make the turn around. We had to decide how to get 2 vehicles, one large dog, one 8 month old boy and 2 adults across the great state of Texas. We decided to use our large Suburban to tow our Saturn so that we could all travel together. Man, we packed the Saturn to the gills, added the necessities to the Suburban and then we all piled in. The packers and movers loaded up their truck and off we all went to El Paso.

We decided to take the northern route so our first stop was in Dallas. Yeah, it was real fun navigating a major city towing a car and hauling our crew. We ended up at what turned out to be a seedy motel. But the nice part was that we were able to pull the Suburban right in front of our door to keep an eye on it. John got up once in the middle of the night to check on everything and what did he see but a "lady" of the night walking down the sidewalk. You can believe that we bolted in the morning.

We had an uneventful night in Odessa, TX and then pulled into El Paso around noon the third day. It was the last Friday of the month and we really wanted to find housing ASAP. So our first stop was the housing office. Luckily for us they had a house available, as long as we were willing to do all the painting on the inside. We jumped on it since it was a single home with a great back yard. Rob and I spent the weekend at the hotel swimming while John and some of his buddies painted the house. Thank God for good friends.

Monday morning came, we check out of the hotel and went to the new house to wait for our household goods. The movers showed up before 10am and had everything unloaded by 5pm. Now the "fun" would begin. Box after box to be unpacked with a 8 mo old wandering around. It would be weeks before everything was in it's place.