and then there were just two....days that is!

(taken from Steve's blog...)

Well, it is hard to believe, but the time is here that I finally go home! And with the job at West Point pending, hopefully, this will be my last deployment at least for another six years. That sure will be a blessing for our family.

We finished up all of the swap out activities, we call them RIP activities (relief in place), on the 1st, so since then we haven't done a whole lot of anything but wait. We preplanned in a little extra cushion into our plan in case things didn't work out, but it turns out that everything worked out just fine with very few setbacks, so that is good. We handed over all of our equipment and our buildings and we are pretty much homeless living out of our tents. I've found a little corner of our old office to put my laptop to continue to check email and chat with Tiff in the evenings.

Things are all set and I'm super excited to go home. We did learn of one snag in the plan this week though pertaining to housing. This has been an ongoing challenge for quite a few months now. We thought we had it solved by using temporary housing on post, but it looks like that turned into a pretty solid dead end this week. On Post housing will not be available until some time in May, probably mid-may at the earliest, so our plan was to stay in temporary housing at Fort Riley until that time. Well, Tiff called up temporary housing this past week 7 days out from when she is planning to head out there (on the 10th) and they told her that we wouldn't be able to stay in there as priority goes to incoming Soldiers and families that are moving from other locations, not to redeploying Soldiers. And even if we could get in there, we would only be able to stay for a maximum of 3 days at a time. The frustrating point is that we have called them quite a few times prior and this is the first time they have mentioned anything about this limitation. Secondly, even if we could get a reservation they are completely sold out for at least a week after Tiff is scheduled to be back at Fort Riley and I come home. So we've spent the last few days looking at other options such as finding a place that is willing to do rent month by month or find a hotel that has suites and a long term rate.

It is amazing how many obstacles we've hit with this situation. This definitely brings new meaning to the scripture "there was no room at the Inn". There is only one place that has suites in the area that has a close off second area, but they wouldn't budge on their $135/night even if we were to stay the whole month there, so that would end up costing a prohibitive $4000+/month to stay there. After talking to a bunch of owners and Realtors, I've yet to find anyone that is willing to do month by month rent too. The shortest they will negotiate for is 6mo. My Battalion Commander even tried to call in a favor to the Post Commander to get us into temporary housing, but to no avail. He tried to call in some favors to housing to see if we could get a house earlier, but there really is just nothing available right now. The ward back in Junction City has been trying to help us find something to rent, but again, nothing has come up that we can do month by month. So it looks like we'll be in a one room hotel for a month (because the girls are too young to have their own room) until we can either get a house on post or head off on leave in May. It is looking like we'll be on leave before we actually are offered something. We'll continue to pray for it to work out one way or another.

One potential silver-lining is that the one hotel we found that actually has a room available for the whole month also turns out to have the best room rates we could find. Also, we found out after some inquiring with a clerk yesterday, that they have a few rooms that have a connecting door, so we might be able to work a deal with the manager next week for two connecting rooms and make an ad-hoc suite so we can get the girls into their own room at least part of the time which would be a nice blessing for naps, sanity, and sleeping arrangements.

Well, just a couple more days and my days of Iraqi living will be over (hopefully indefinitely!). I sure do appreciate all of the support and prayers that have been said on my behalf and the behalf of our family, I have definitely felt them and been the recipient of many blessings while I've been here and our family has been well taken care of. My thanks and gratitude to everyone.