Talking Plane Trips

We haven't been home in a long time.

Our family traveled to the states for Christmas last year, and stayed for a lovely 6 weeks. We returned at the end of January, and have not returned again since. Dave and I each made quick trips home, but the girls have been consecutively in Asia. Grammy and Grandpa came to visit in May, as did Nana and Poppa. Now we're coming upon 6 months without any family. That's a long time - especially for the under 5 set.

Here's the trouble.

We're really hoping that the State Department will ask Dave to begin training for his new job in either February or March. Really hoping. We'd rather deliver the baby in the states, near family and in a more comfortable environment. We'd love to attend Dave's family reunion in May. Dave's sick of his current job, and excited to begin the new one. So many reasons.

Trouble is, we just don't know what will happen.

So, here's the travel plans:

We will stay in Shanghai for Christmas.
Sad to not spend Christmas surrounded by family and old friends, together in the grandparents' homes, with snow on the ground and Christmas movies cycling through the cable stations. But pretty exciting to have Christmas in our own home, under our own tree, at our local church, on a schedule completely surrounding our sugarplum-envisioning children.

We will be in the states in either February or March.
Ideally, we will be moving to DC for Dave to begin training on March 29th (or Feb. 14th - even better!). By mid-January, it should become clear whether or not this will happen. If not, we will book a trip home for a few weeks surrounding Chinese New Year (Feb. 14). This decision would coincide with placing Dave on the Do Not Call List, a decision to stay in Shanghai until summer.

We promise not to keep our kids away from their family for any longer - a potential 14 months is too long already! But please join us in rooting for the March class, and keeping those international flights to a minimum!

**Clarification
Dave has NOT received his security clearance.
His investigation is finished - this is a good milestone. No one will be making phone calls or digging up anymore dirt.
But he has not received his security clearance. He has entered a nasty little purgatory called adjudication. As far as I can tell, Adjudication is where people keep putting off making a decision on whether or not they trust you. It can take months for them to look over the already collected information and decide whether or not to offer Security Clearance.
He has cleared a milestone, but only a minor one. Once he receives Security Clearance, we expect life to intensify mighty quickly.