As you can probably guess we’ve been busy!

We had a yard sale on Saturday which went great. I’ll do a write-up on it shortly.

In the meantime we’ve been packing up a storm… while St. Louis storms. It’s been thunderstorming all week. We did take a break yesterday to celebrate our 2nd wedding anniversary :)

Peter and I like to randomly wave our iPhones at each other with this countdown on it to remind each other how close we are getting. This application is called Big Day Lite. It’s free for the iPhone and iTouch, and you can customize the background picture to suit your countdown.

I just fetched a dozen towels to sop up water from our basement floor. Our basement floods every time it rains. I can’t wait to move out of this house!

Lately Peter and I realized we were both thinking the same thing… “Will this be the last time we ________ in St. Louis?”

Yesterday we were on our way to see The Watchmen and Peter mentioned there was a good chance this would be the last theater movie we would see in St. Louis. I laughed and told him how I had been thinking that about silly stuff… like, will this be the last time I have to buy shampoo before we leave? The last time I eat at this restaurant? etc.

It’s silly but when you have already made a decision to leave a place you find yourself “checking out” so to say. I guess this is part of that realization. And another manifest of our excitement. Oh, the day when I get to buy shampoo in Portland. Ha!

Peter and I met in college in St. Louis, Missouri in 2001. We married, rented a home, and started our careers here. Although there is a lot to love about St. Louis, we did not plan for it to be our permanent home. We have no family here and since we are self-employed we can work from anywhere. Aside from our friends who live here, we have no ties to the city itself. And so a year or so ago, we started discussing what direction we want to go and compiled the list below.

Things in our dream city:

• great public transportation
• pedestrian friendly
• into recycling & eco-awareness
• clean air
• natural beauty (beach or mountains)
• nearby international airport
• lots of parks and free things to do
• smoking ban
• liberal
• good public schools
• few big-box stores, more independent shops
• not a lot of snow, if any
• low humidity
• diversity
• good tech industry & venture capitalists
• friendly people
• affordable cost of living

Based on this list and our following months of research, we narrowed our options down to just a few cities. Portland, Oregon wasat the top of the list. Upon visiting it in October 2008, we fell in love. It is as close to perfect as we can imagine. And while it doesn’t meet every criteria (St. Louis is definitely more affordable), we think the great qualities make it come out on top.

Since we returned we have been setting the wheels in motion to relocate to the Portland. We plan to move in June 2009.