Shortly before we left for San Diego and Josue and Sarah's wedding, Andres received some distressing news about his job. And since I am disinclined to go into specifics about his employment situation on the Internet, I will have to leave it at simply that his company is undergoing a major downsize and that his job will possibly be affected. He may keep his job, but we may have to relocate in order for him to do so. Or he may simply be severed. In either case, we know something is coming, but we don't know what and we aren't sure when. It has been, needless to say, a stressful couple of weeks.

I have two semesters of school left, only one of which requires me to continue living in Kansas City. So when our lease is up in January, it would be an ideal time to move if the job situation remains rocky or we decide to leave the company. But in the mean time, we're in planning limbo.

To add to the complication of our inability to make a plan at this point is the fact that our trip home for the wedding really confused our feelings about a future city in which to settle. We'd been pretty set on Chicago, but had recently begun considering other major cities, namely Boston, Seattle and San Francisco. But San Diego offers something that no other city really offers. Help with our kids. Not in the "free babysitting" sense, although that is certainly there as well. But just a genuine sense that there are people there who love our children and are eager to care for them. In some ways, Chicago has a bit of that. But Sarah and Josue are very career-oriented and, truth be told, while it would be nice to leave the girls with them and go out on a date, we would more likely spend our time trying to find a babysitter so we could go out with them.

When we first moved to Kansas City, I was desperately lonely. Over time, though, I have filled my time (mostly with children, I confess), but I didn't realize how much I missed the support of geographically close family until this trip home. There are hundreds of reasons why moving back is less than ideal, but none of them seem to be able to surpass the one reason it seems perfect. We miss our family.

In some ways, it seems like it would be simple to just decide that San Diego is where we should move. But beyond the practical reasons not to (the high cost of living, the family drama that comes with living nearby), Andres and I are struggling with the idea of moving away from Josue and Sarah. While we don't live in the same city now, we see each other many times a year, because traveling back and forth Kansas City to Chicago is sure as hell cheaper than flying to San Diego and back. Moving to San Diego ensures that we would see them only a couple times of year at best and when they come to San Diego, we are far from being the primary people they want to visit. Being the Midwest branch of our family has made us all closer than we might have been had only some of us been out here. And I know Andres feels the same reservations I do about losing that particular aspect of family life.

All that to say, I've been stressed. And a blank entry page was daunting. I still don't know that I'll be able to come up with blog posts that aren't about Andres' work, since that's a lot of what's on our minds these days, but I think I'm going to try to process the other things going on with me (there are other things?) here so that I don't look back on this time and wonder what the hell was going on.

Your reward for reading all that? Pictures!

Alliclaus' pigtails with my Dad

She seems happy here, but moments later a fly dared to be in the outdoors near her and we had a complete meltdown.

We went to the San Diego Zoo and there were lots of grey baby flamingoes. I love them!

This guy was awesome! He did this pose at least a dozen times while we stood outside the enclosure. I'm bummed about the glare I got off the glass.

Alliclaus was very excited about the ocean - not so much the sand.

During the rehearsal brunch, Andres kept Alliclaus happy with crayons...

...while Josue spent some quality time with Mimiclaus.

Sarah's jewelry, which her aunt handmade for the wedding, was much more stunning in person.

Oh, look! Here it is from the back!

The guys stole my camera at some point and I promised I would post to the Internet anything they left on there, sure they would leave embarrassing pictures they would be ashamed for the Internet to see. Instead, the left a decent picture of Andres' old fraternity brothers. Things have certainly changed since college.

Well, not that much.