New job, stress and moving

This post may be all over the place. I apologize in advance.

Josh is getting out of the Army. He is currently on terminal leave. He got a job in DC and he started today. I am so very proud of him and his accomplishments. He has worked his ass off to provide for our family and I am forever grateful.

The thing is we live 66 miles from DC. We need to move closer. We have been looking at houses right outside of DC and in the panhandle of WV (which is just as far). Pretty much any where around DC we are trying to find a house. We are first time home buyers so this is so foreign to us. We. Are. Stressed. He had to get up at 3 in the morning to catch a train so he could be at work by 845. That's a lot of commuting and very tiring.

I've always known it is expensive as hell to live in or around DC. Did you know that 200,000 dollars will get you a 1 bedroom, 1 bath, 450 square foot condo?! Holy crap. So basically the further out we go, the more bang for your buck. But the commute sucks. So downsize and pay a ridiculous amount of money for no space but the location is amazing, or go further out and have 3,000 square feet but a ridiculous commute? It's stressful. Plus figuring out when to put in 30 days notice here so that it coincides with moving into our new house. Oye. Big decisions for us. We also have to make sure we are in a great area with great schools.

Until we figure everything out he will just take the train. I don't think we will see much of him during the week which sucks, but I'll take it. We've been through 3 deployments so we can stand not seeing each other much during the week. We just have a lot of thinking to do and searching.