Thanksgiving (gulp)

We are going to St. Louis next week. For a whole week. It is much more than a "home for the holidays" sort of trip. It is another big piece of our transition to St. Louis. As such, it is really loaded with all sorts of feeling for me.

We are taking Lucy to Central School...the place we hope will be her educational home for the next seven years. It's going to be huge in several ways. Lucy is not excited about the prospect of moving. While we haven't told her definitively that we are moving (this is such a tough thing to explain to a four year-old...and I dread it, to be honest), we have talked about living in St. Louis "someday." In general, there's very little about moving away from Jackson that that appeals to her except living near Nana and Papa and her cousins. (Her whole life is here...people she loves and can't imagine living without, and I'm in a bad place to help her with that.) So, having something else that she can identify with as being part of her life there that would be fun or exciting, would be really helpful for us. Well, it would really mean a lot to me. I really want her to like Central.

We (Michael and I) are also spending some time with our realtor, driving around town and looking at areas of St. Louis that might be possible options for us. This is big, too...it feels really possible that, at such point in time as we find our home, it will be me who finds it, and if I do end up picking a house and telling Michael "this is it" and he doesn't get a chance to see it for himself (which does not sound like fun to me but may just be necessary), I at least want to know that he has driven through that municipality and has a feel for where it is, what the atmosphere is like, etc. Every little area of St. Louis has a different feel, and even for someone who lived most of her life there, it's a lot to learn about. Even more so for Michael, who knows little of St. Louis outside of our typical family haunts. I mean, this is a boy who has never lived outside of the Magnolia State...grew up here, college here, medical school, residency and fellowship all here...really unbelievable to me. I so do not want that for my kiddos, but I digress. So, it all feels pretty huge to be transplanting him in his 30s for life elsewhere. And a pretty different elsewhere, at that.

So, while turkey and dressing will be had, there is lots else hanging in the balance as well. I will let you all know how it goes. This move is such a strange thing - it feels seven months away, and yet it feels 7 weeks away, too. Yuck.

Oh, and the most recent home we liked? It sold. For $900K. Yikes. Have I mentioned that real estate there is out of control? Yep. I mean, it was 3BR/3.5BA, not over-the-top...nice and normal, just room enough for us...but still. So we're gonna' keep on lookin'. :)