Soooooo... what's new?

I know it's been a while since I posted, and I swear I have a good excuse.  We've been crazy busy!  It's been NUTS the last few months as we filed for the hubs's citizenship and are making preparations to head to Mexico.

He had his interview last week and we're still awaiting the result.  The officer who interviewed him briefly mentioned his criminal charge, but didn't ask for more information, even though M offered it.  Hopefully that's a good sign, since I'd imagine that if they were going to deny you for a minor criminal charge, they should give you a chance to explain yourself.  We'll find out, and hopefully soon!

There is the possibility that he won't be granted citizenship. That we'd have to wait 3 years to reapply.  We've asked ourselves what we would do in those circumstances.  Well, that's not an easy answer.  If he leaves the country for extended periods of time, he could be considered to be abandoning his permanent residence.  In short, that would mean that all that we've been through over the last few years would, for all intents and purposes, be for naught.  All the money, all the time, all of the insanity and paperwork, all the suffering with all the crap that we've had to deal with with family members and that crazy bitch and police officer will all be down the toilet.  But, will it?  I know that some people would KILL to have the opportunity for their spouse to be in the US "legally", so what would it mean for us to just give that up?

I'm trying to approach this not from what other people would think, but what it means for us in our unique circumstances.  We've done nothing but suffer since coming to the U.S..  Our lives have become crazy complex and stressful in whole new ways.  We have much greater access to creature comforts, but is it really worth it?  Is the ability to drive to Target and walk down the clean aisles and spend money that I don't have for things I don't need worth it?  That's not the life I want for my kids.  I want them to play outside.  I want them to learn about their ancestry, and learn the language of their ancestors.  I want them to swim and run and get dirty and eat real food and spend quality time with their grandparents and see that the world is MUCH BIGGER than an empty, consumer-driven life.  If M doesn't get his citizenship, then it was simply not meant to be.  After everything that has happened here, it would be a nice end-punctuation to the quite clear message that we were not intended to be here.  And I'm okay with that.

So, it's t-minus ~2.5 months before Mexico, and I'm crazy looking forward to it.  We still have a lot of stuff to sell, and a lot of things to figure out- like how to take the dog and the cat, working out a trip to Philadelphia to register I's birth and get both the kids' passports, etc.  All of this requires dinero, and dinero is something we don't have much of these days.

I will update soon, since things are going to start moving a lot more quickly in the next couple of months. Yay! Mexico! :-D