New Year, New Blog...Are we moving yet?

In my efforts to fulfill my time efficiently while I am working I decided to start intense process of researching various Caribbean islands to be able to declare which islands would be the best suited for our family.

Now, Nate thinks that this is all premature, since we have several goals before we can follow through with this plan of moving to the islands... However, what else am I supposed to do while working a 24 hour shift and sometimes we are not always busy.

Neither of us make decisions on a whim when it comes to these sort of things...although, the people that know us and our history of our very short courtship before our betrothal would argue that point; however, for the sake of argument I have to say that in every other aspect of our lives we research the heck out of everything. Example...Nate came to my station one day while I was working right after we got married and it took us about 2 hours to decide which checks had the *perfect* pattern for us. (we decided on penguins, by the way)

Anyway, I digress....so the goals that we need to accomplish before we can even consider moving anywhere include a lot of things that the time to complete them is completely beyond our control.

For example...Nate feels that he needs at least 2 years experience in an ICU before he can write his own ticket elsewhere. I agree. He hasn't been at YH quite a year yet. So, obviously we can't control how fast time moves.

Nate also feels as if it is absolutely necessary to pay off all our credit card debt. I agree as well since when we move we not only want to feel as if we have to work as much as we do now (especially him, he is working crazy mad amounts of hours) But we both also agree that while we need to buckle down to get things paid off, we don't want to stress each other out and just not have any fun right now. So, that is just going to take time too.

Then, we are dealing this this custody nonsense. Once and for all I am hoping that we can seal the deal this third go around with it. Otherwise, if we just decide to up and leave the country I would have to deal with International Child Abduction issues, and I don't think I want to deal with all that. That might be too traumatic for Ty to deal with.

But other then that...what's holding us back? Doesn't every person long to live in paradise...I mean, someone has to live there, it might as well be us, right?

And I can say that we have been making remarkable progress on the debt front. We were just going over some bills and out of the 10 or so debts that we have we have managed to pay off 3 in the past few months, and we are on track to pay off another 2 by march. This of course is mostly because we are following the "pay off the lowest amounts owed first, and then work your way up to the bigger obligations..." So, does the $300 Target card really count? YES! It does! It's one more notch on the tree...it's progress. It makes me feel better anyway. It's the last 2 that I am a bit more worried about.

So, even with all of that I have managed to remain optimistic and narrowed our island choices down substantially. After coming home from work one morning and declaring to Nate that I decided that the perfect island for ME has been chosen, he tells me that maybe we should just move down south for a while, and THEN after Ty is out of school we make the big move.

I did find in my research that we are not the only Americans crazy enough to consider doing this...some people actually have gone through with it, even after they had children. On a lot of the "not so poor" islands there are even schools set up for expats and their children...so Ty wouldn't be a minority. And we would go to a primarily English speaking island, so it's not like we would all have to learn another language.

But still, after all of this...Nate is still shaking his head saying that I am acting in haste. As he might say it, since I am a women I am genetically pre dispositioned for a few things...complaining, whining, and demanding instant gratification. What's the harm in dreaming? So what if I bookmarked island real estate websites and picked a modest beach cottage on the west side of Dominica. Is that really so bad...as long as I am not buying plane tickets and ordering shipping materials, I'd say that it's all harmless dreaming at this point.

Living the Dream: Maybe I should just charter a plane and be done with it.