No place like home?

In my parents' generation, families stayed together. In the small towns they came from, "together" meant several generations living on the same street, if not the same house. However, it is not uncommon for today's American family to be scattered from coast to coast. While I have never lived outside the Southeast, it has been over a decade since I have lived in the same state as my loved ones. With the addition of Amelia, this has become a more pressing issue. It seems as though Meggan and I are in a struggle, in the broadest sense, of prioritizing where we want to live personally vs. the available living options near family. It's not a simple story as we are not a couple who met, fell in love, and moved away from the hometown we grew up in. That's easily solved - move back. In our case, we met while living in a city that was foreign to both our families and have subsequently moved to another city with no relatives. So, without getting into the fact that Meggan and I have jobs, a house, a future school for Amelia, etc. yet there is zero contemplation from anyone to consider moving here to be close to us, let's just say for us, moving near family will require a major sacrifice of one kind or another. There are very few cities that are up for debate due to our careers - and none of them are cities we would consider moving to if family was not in the picture. Our families don't live in the same city, so there is the obvious dilemma of the zero sum game...moving closer to one means moving further from the other. Ultimately, we would love to live near both families, near the beach, in a large city with career opportunities and is a good place to raise Mia. Unfortunately, this is going to take the formation of a new city in the South or an even bigger miracle - total relocation of us and our families. Since neither of these seem likely, I'm not sure what we are going to do with the mounting desire to live near relatives and the stress related to the hurdles of that prospect. In the meantime, I'll just keep hoping we win the lottery so we can live here, there, and everywhere.