What's With The Weather?

Chris's View:

Man... this has really gotten crazy!

A couple weeks ago, a pretty severe tornado (F4 on the scale) ripped through my hometown... about 1 mile from where my in-laws live.  It tore a path through Hattiesburg, from Oak Grove, all the way to Petal, where Maria went to high school.  So much destruction, yet I am humbled to see the outpouring of support my town is getting, yes, from outside of the city, but the support for each other from it's own residents is AMAZING!  Within hours the Hub City residents sprung to assist in whatever way they could.

One of the most amazing things that has come about is the posting of found pets.  This is mainly through Facebook, but I know that before we had kids, our dogs were our children.  If our dogs would have gotten lost after something like that, we'd have moved heaven & earth to find them.  It's pretty awesome to see the posts of the pets, I just haven't seen any getting claimed.  I hope they are.

You want to know the kicker here?  That tornado that ripped through our hometown has somehow jumped the Atlantic Ocean and is wreaking havoc in the Solomon household right now!  I found out a couple days ago that our retirement date is like 5 minutes from now!  Not exactly 5 minutes... 28 May 2013 will be my last official day on active duty in the United States Air Force.  What's the big deal... sounds like plenty of time, right?  Oh wait, I have 30 days to out-process, 30 days of permissive temporary duty to find a job & house, then I still have to burn 42 days of leave that I have built up.  So, in all actuality, we will be leaving Germany at the end of March.  My retirement ceremony is the 19th of March, so yeah, like right around the corner.  The next few weeks are going to be a whirlwind... shipping our household goods, shipping our van, getting out-processed of every section on base that you can think of, cleaning the house so we can turn the keys back over to the German landlords who have become somewhat like family to us.  Speaking of family, that's going to be the hardest part.  We have been here for 4 years now.  We have met so many people who have become such a large part of our lives, that this will be one of the hardest assignments to have to leave.  Yes, it's a fact of life that military members get ripped away from each other.  In the past, while we have made friends, due to us being here so long, we really bonded with our group of friends here.  It will be bittersweet leaving Germany, but we are excited to move on to the next phase in our lives... military retirees!

See ya'll later!