My wife is active duty, I have a very good job in the health field, we both have minimal debt, no school loans, and both have credit scores over 750.

We plan on using the VA Loan, seems to be a no brainer, I will be getting some documentation together this week and calling in to get "pre-approved"

From there, we are going to use USAA Home brokerage services. We are pretty set on 3 neighborhoods we would like to live in.

Anyone have any tips/suggestions/things you would have done differently?

I don't have any experience with VA loans specifically but:

My wife is the brains of the operation here and is telling me that you should get "approved" for a loan vs "pre approved" as that will give you more leverage during the negotiating process, close faster, and less chance of a lender backing out, changing programs, or whatever other hassle you might run into when the lender sends things to an underwriter.  

Getting that all out of the way ahead of time while you are still in the searching process saves time.

We had a deal fall apart because of the mortgage company who had pre-approved us for a loan could not get us approved.  We were under contract for over 6 months on this place while the broker tried and tried again to get the loan past the underwriters (multifamily in Rural Alaska, already a PIA to begin with).  HE finally got the the loan through the underwriters  and we were ready to go with it, but the Mortgage insurance company would not insure it so the loan fell through.

We were out 6 months of time and energy, the owners were out time and rent, and our broker ended up quitting his job.  

Watch out with the VA loans.  There are still additional charges the seller will have to pay (though they have been reduced over the years) and in some cases they will not accept a VA contract for this reason.