St. Louis - Trip 1

So my first trip (of many, I'm sure) to seriously plan about living in St. Louis was, all-in-all, a successful one. Erin went with me, which proved to really be a really brilliant move...it was so good to have someone to bounce thoughts off of and see things through the eyes of one not native to said city. (Michael couldn't come, so otherwise I would have flown solo this trip.)

The first order of business was to investigate schools. I'm kinda' a nut about Christian education (not that a Christian education can't happen in home-schooling or public schools, but I love the idea of my kids explicitly learning a world view and their teachers putting priority on developing kids' characters and hearts along with their minds). It just makes my job as a parent so much easier. This brings about a bit of a problem for me, because private schooling in St. Louis is a bit of a monster: expensive, exclusive, frequently pretty disconnected from reality and almost always homogenous. I don't mean to digress into an apology of Christian education or about private schooling in St. Louis, but for the sake of those of you who aren't native.... So, needless to say, I was pretty thrilled to find that I could have my cake and eat it, too: a covenantal (as opposed to evangelical) Christian school with a startling level of diversity (racially, economically, you name it), a wonderfully warm, creative, and child-oriented environment (read: not rigid or overly structured), and very visionary in terms of training kids, even in elementary school, to be discerning adults who can live with integrity in our (often crazy) world. Oh, and good academics. Also important. Love it. Love, love, love it. Now we just have to get her in. If I have to tie myself to the flagpole....nevermind. Bad mental image.

Second order of business: househunting 101. Also a complicated venture in St. Louis. Again, for the sake of my not-native readers, a primer on St. Louis real estate: St. Louis is made up of the city and the county (the city, fyi, is not itself part of any county, and is the only city in our fair nation like this except Washington, D.C.). St. Louis County is divided up into many (50ish?) municipalities, most of which are completely self-governed...have their own police, fire departments, etc...So living in St. Louis feels a lot like small-town living since you do lots of your existence in one or two basic municipalities. (Ex: my parents know the cops in Glendale, and the cops know when my parents are going to be out of town, which lights in the house are on timers, and they'll actually drive by the house a few times a day to check on the place. Not quite so in Jackson, where alerting the cops to your absence would most certainly lead to you "donating" all of your worldly possessions to said law enforcement (and their peers). But I won't digress into crime in our fair city.) So, the task is to narrow our search down to a few municipalities, so that it isn't quite so overwhelming to determine where to live.

Our biggest constraint about where to live (other than money, obviously) is that Michael needs to be able to get to the hospital in 30 minutes or less (I mean, if you're having an MI, you don't really want to wait, ya' know?). So we're looking along a few basic routes to the hospital...most of which are completely unrelated to territory I'm familiar with. I grew up in Glendale (Kirkwood, for all practical purposes), went to elementary school and church in Clayton, and jr. high/high school in Ladue. So when I'm driving around with my realtor in Olivette, University City, parts of Ladue I don't think I've ever been in before, etc...I really feel like I'm house hunting in a different city. It's a wild experience. Exhausting. Disorienting. Fun, too, at times. At the moment, I'm really intrigued about U. City...older homes (which I love...really don't think I could stomach new construction), a tight community feel, definitely more urban, within walking distance of parks, downtown Clayton, close to the Loop, etc... We'll have to see what Michael thinks of it...might be too urban for him, but he does surprise from time to time. He'd definitely have a smaller yard to mow, which he's all for.

So who knows where we'll live. To be honest, money is a huge issue, as alluded to previously. Real estate is just much more expensive in St. Louis than we're accustomed to. Which is sad in so many ways. We hear that it's a good buyer's market these days, we just hope that holds true next spring, too. Until then, we keep sifting through the listserve that our realtor has set up for us...

After all of that, needless to say, I was exhausted. So we shopped for maternity clothes for E, played with Mary Catherine and her sweet family, and came home. Home to the girls, that is...Michael is in Rochester, MN (Mayo Clinic) for a 6 day Cardiology Board Review Course. Brutal stuff - 12 + hour days spent listening to Power Point presentations and lectures. Poor guy. Will be so glad when his Boards are behind him. And when he's back with his girls.