Flynn’s off living the good life with his grandparents in Ohio at the moment. Apparently the following conversation took place in his grandma’s car:

• Flynn: I’m moving to Mexico!
• Flynn’s three-year-old-cousin: Why?
• Flynn: Because I need to learn Spanish.
• (His cousin starts to cry.)
• Flynn’s grandma: What’s wrong?
• Cousin: I don’t want my cousin to leave me!

He needs to learn Spanish? What? Glad to know we’ve hammered the importance of bi- or tri-lingualism into his little head, though.

In any case, being far from family is definitely one of the harder things about the Foreign Service life, but when I start to feel bad about that I remind myself that we actually managed to see family nearly as often when we were in Benin as we did this past year while living in the Washington, D.C. area. Admittedly we did manage to get back stateside a lot while in Benin. In Mexico, I’m not sure the same is going to be true. We have a finite amount of vacation time, and there’s a lot of regional travel we want to do. Luckily, in Mexico, something tells me we’ll have a little more luck luring visitors to us.