PCS? Homeport change? Stress?

Since the Navy isn't considering this a PCS move but rather a 'homeport change' we got VERY lucky to have our things moved. According to the Navy, to have me, the girls, our car & our HHG moved from WA to VA Sailor's EAOS had to be ON or after August 1, 2012. His EAOS is July 27th, 2012. We got super lucky. For some reason, a lot of things have changed with the plans of this deployment & homeport change but I'm very thankful that they did change somethings! I'll be moving back home for a few months while the Navy stores our stuff in their storage on THEIR dime until we find a place to move into. & right now, I'm not even going to waste my time really looking for a place since we don't even know if they'll be in Norfolk or Newport News. It's either/or & I understand there are tons of places there that are gated. Any place that's gated wins us over! & any place that doesn't let shit bag people move in. We've had our share of bad neighbors & a bad area.

So, within the next 9 to 12 months, this is what a week of my life will look like (minus the trip to VA):

My parents made the drive from Point B to Point A back in April 09 within 5 days. I'm pretty sure, considering if they don't ship our car, it may take us about a week. If we still had our AWD Expedition, it wouldn't be hard at all to make it through the snow & mountains but now that I have a FWD Chevy Cobalt, we may rent a Uhaul to pull it or even just pay for them to ship it & get paid back. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it but it's always in the back of my mind.

I do have a few questions for you  guys.. have you ever lived in VA? What are good places to look into & what are the places to avoid? Right now, it's just the two of us & two small dogs.. I don't know what the future holds but we're looking for a spacious 2 or 3 bedroom house or apartment to rent that's within BAH & somewhere that has some utilities included and we can pay the rest with our BAH. I know it's a lot to ask but I know there are places out there. :)

With or without washer & dryer is completely fine. We have our own but we can always figure something out.

I know I'm jumping the gun but when we moved to WA we only had a month to get everything together, packed up into one place for the Navy, get our plane tickets, find a place to live & get our car out there so Sailor would have a way back and forth to work. I want to be prepared this time around.