So loved!

Yeah, I love comments.  You don’t know how happy it made me to read the comments.  It made me feel so loved.  I guess since I don’t get to interact very much with some people who live farther away, I enjoy their comments so much more as if I’m communicating with them. 

Yeah lately, I’ve been really missing or wishing for family the lived closer.  I guess it never really bothered me too much before, especially with my parents.  I knew they had to be away for three years in Hong Kong and I just figured I wouldn’t see them that much or talk to them as much, that it just couldn’t be the same.  That being said I’m terrible at keeping in touch with people though.  I like to talk on the phone but it can be a little time consuming and expensive if you don’t have that many minutes on your phone or a good long distance plan.  So hey even if my parents weren’t out of the country for three years, it might have been the same.  It was a little harder to just call whenever I felt like it because of the time-zone difference.  I had to think about whether or not they were awake, and typically when I wanted to talk to them they were probably asleep.  Point being, I had a forced separation from my family and I just dealt with it by ignoring them.  Basically so I wouldn’t miss them.  If I talked to them, then I normally hung up the phone and cried because I was thinking about them.  It got better towards the end, because we setup times that I would get to talk to them. 

Anyway, I guess with them coming back and trying to figure out where to live, I slightly entertained the thought, "What if they lived in Washington?  That could be fun."  But I knew it wasn’t going to happen.  They are very attached to southern California, what with my dad’s business down there and their friends.  But I guess it got me started thinking about what would it be like to have family close or at least in the same state.  In college I initiated family dinners with whatever obscure relatives happen to be going to school with us.  They turned out to be quite fun.  We always had a interesting mix of random roommates and friends.  But I loved being involved in people’s lives and getting to know their friends.  For example, Chris brought along Roy, and he became pretty much an honorary member of our family.  Roy totally rocks, he’s such a nice guy, very considerate. (Yes, I still love my husband, Matt.)  I thought it was great that after I left family dinners still kind of continued.  Josh had applied to UW and Lisa said the John might try to go there too.  So there is always the possibility of family coming, but I’m pretty sure the Josh won’t.  I guess it is sad for me because Gwynneth is missing out on spending all this time with her grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins.  There is a very tiny part of me that entertains the thought of "what if we moved to Denver?  That could be fun with a lot of Matt’s family being there."  As much as I love southern Cali’s weather, I just don’t enjoy the traffic and the crowdedness.  I don’t really desire to go back there.  The funny thing is Seattle has traffic and it’s expensive, but I love all the trees.  It helps me feel like I’m in my own world and we live where we don’t have to deal with the traffic.  So I guess that’s why I even consider Denver an option and not Cali. (I don’t want people thinking I don’t like my family. (-;)  It seems like I could like Denver.  I didn’t mind Utah too much and actually enjoyed that there was snow occasionally, and Matt tells me that Denver is like Utah but even better.  But Matt is so laid back that I could see us not leaving a place once we are settled.  Plus he seems relatively happy with his job here.  I guess the thing that really got me thinking about it was that he had told me that he happened to end up on a page that showed jobs at his level and it showed a job in Denver.  But we talked about it and he feels that staying here is better because it has more options whereas if we moved somewhere else he might get stuck in one thing.  I can’t really figure out who else we could get to move here, maybe Amy.  She seems like she has always wanted to live here.  Or at least what I wish for is family that lives close enough to reasonably drive to.  To get to Denver or southern Cali it would take at least 2 days driving to get there.  Hmm just looked it up.  Mapquest says it takes about 19 hours to get to each of those places.  That doesn’t include pit stops and stuff, and consider a young child.  Well we’re pretty much flying while she’s under 2.  Not too much longer though.

Not having lived that close to family since I was married, I don’t know what it would really be like.  Maybe I wouldn’t like it as much, because when family comes to visit it’s a big deal since you don’t see them very much.  If we lived close maybe we would hang out more but it wouldn’t really be that much.  At least that was how it was in college but we were busy students.  Or maybe I would just enjoy Gwynneth getting to see family and they enjoy her too.  I think I would enjoy being able to have family watch her so we can do stuff.  You know, people I know and trust and who probably actually want to spend time with her.  I have friends who help watch Gwynneth when I have appointments and stuff but I still feel like I’m using them.  Eh, who knows?  This is all hypothetical.