The Good News or the Bad News?

Let's do the Good news first since I like it better ;) J has basically been offered a job half an hour north of where I went to undergrad! Not quite home, but close enough! It's about a 4 and a half or so hour commute, which is much more doable then ten hours! Yippee! Yeah! As long as his references check out alright (which I have little doubt they will!) they'll send him a contract to look over next week. We're very excited and grateful. Especially me as I wanted to be SOMEWHERE near family and his Aunt, whom I love dearly, and Uncle (who is very funny/nice) live about ten minutes up the road, so that meets my "How am I supposed to start a family without family around to help out?" cry. And I still have friends that live close by from my five years living half an hour away, so that's way cool. Plus I LOVE all the outdoor recreation that is very popular in that area.

Bad News: No way can we make it home for Christmas, we just got Jim's schedule-it's very yucky. Plus we'll be going six+ months without a vacation and could use the few days off to catch up on sleep/relax. So I've decided to fly up the weekend BEFORE Thanksgiving (Nov 18th?) late that Friday night and help Grandma out Sat. with preparing for AA's 60TH (!!) Birthday party that the family is invited too. Plus I'll be bringing up our Christmas presents for people, so if you have any for us that you'd like to send back (wrapped) with me, that'd be cool as it'll save you on postage. ;)