What the next few years hold for us

There is a way to post blogs from the iPhone. Yesterday I wrote this great blog on soda and why I love it and what to look for in a soda, but it didn't work. Today, Rhia has a blog on soda, and she stole my "glass bottles are better" premise. So, instead of redoing it, I'll save it for the future.

Some of you know that Emily is in nursing school. Right now she has ten and a half months left (I count more than she does) and then she takes the NCLEX (the big nursing exam that makes you an RN if you pass). Assuming she does pass, she'll work for a year locally, then we'll join a traveling nursing program. But more on that later.

First, we want to have another child. We were going to wait until Emily had been working for a year, have a child, then start traveling. We decided that it would probably be easier to travel with a child that is at least six months old than a newborn. With that in mind, we will try to have a child by next May or July meaning we'll try to get pregnant around this August or September. This will allow Emily to have a winter pregnancy, which would sure beat her summer pregnancy with Will, and give us a child that's a little older when we start traveling. It'll also give Will a good playmate.

For now we're hoping for a girl, just to balance out. We had a name ready when we decided to get pregnant the first time, but Kaylee Sue just doesn't sound right on a boy. I even have a name if we have another boy, though of course Emily gets veto power. For a second boy, I'd like Nicholas Matthew. But more on that when it happens.

Getting back to the traveling nurse program, what you do is sign on with a company and then tell them where you'd like to go. Most major cities have openings so we get to pick where we get to go. The benefits of the program is that Emily will learn a lot, the pay is almost double starting nurse salary, and we get to live in different cities for a few years. We'd probably sign on for each city for a 6 month term so we can get to know the city. The end goal is to move permantly from Kansas City and settle somewhere else.

Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike Kansas City. I've lived here most of my life, not including being born in Allentown PA, living a few years in Topeka KS, and serving my mission in SLC UT. The major motivation is that I'm getting tired of living in a city that has no temple and probably won't get one until the second coming. I miss being able to go to the Salt Lake temple every week if I wanted to and Emily misses getting to go to the Winter Quarters temple almost every week.

So, our main criteria is being near a temple. The other is finding a place where we'd have close friends. The cities we've picked so far are Omaha, NE; Louisville, KY; Atlanta, GA; and Dallas, TX. Each city has a temple and each has either friends or family. We figure that a 6 month stay in each city would give us time to figure out if we'd be happy there or not.

The time traveling would also help me focus on my writing and to determine if I will be able to have any kind of success at it.

So for now, we need to figure out if those are the cities we'd like to go and what are the pros and cons of each city. Any help? Anyone want to sell us on their city?