The Other Five Paragraph Backstory...which is actually not Five Paragraphs.

Now that Sara has thrown down the Backstory Gauntlet of Doom...I feel I must respond in kind.

Why Move at All?
We have been considering a move to St. Paul for several years now, for several reasons.  It's never really gone anywhere because we've been complacent, the location of our current house is convenient moving is a lot of work AND...we've never found the right house.  At all. Some of the reasons we might want to move to St. Paul:

1.  The kids are both in school in St. Paul, and while I enjoy driving them to and from each day, I do not enjoy driving them to and from on 35E in rush hour each day.

2. St. Paul is Cool.  Tyler Olsen says so.   www.stpauliscool.com.  Eagan is cool too, but after 15 years or so in the suburbs, we feel like it's time to try a different flavor of coolness.

3.  Our current house, lovely as it is...Andrew keeps thinking is not really configured well for us.  2 bedrooms and a comic room downstairs, master bedroom upstairs, and we have all ended up in the wrong places.  I think we could rejigger and make it work, but, well, we never do.  It has always been about location first, kitchen second.  When the boys were at Tesseract, life was easy, but NEVER have we lived in a house that aligned with our idea of a "dream home."  Andrew has always wanted a brick house.  I have always wanted a nice front porch.  We've had siding and stucco and glorified front stoops, and I really can't complain as our homes have been very nice, but very little brick, very little porch.

4.  Lovely as our house is, much as there are many things I adore about it, Andrew is an Army brat, and much as he likes the concept of settling in and putting down roots, in reality, every so often he seems to get the undeniable itch to move houses, if not states, and we are definitely past due.

5.  Every winter, the Prius ends up in the snowbank at the bottom of the hill at least once.  I can't explain it, but I always have to dig it out.  There is a glacier in our front yard.  The driveway is very slope-y.  I embrace the challenge but I could also live without it.

Now up to this point, the benefits of moving did not really outweigh the pain-in-the-assiness of moving, and I figured we'd just ride out the joys of the commute, the big boxiness of the shopping, the lack of bricks and porches.  No big.  Occasionally we look at cool houses in St. Paul online, but mostly it doesn't make practical sense.

Enter Scott, Lucy and Emma.

All through our time in Minnesota, we have envied our friends who have extensive extended family in the area.  It's tough to juggle kids, work, home, dog, and a theater company with just two adults and no built-in sitters.  We've made it work, but there's often a good bit of scrambling, missing out on meetings, school events, etc. etc.  We've always said to directors "You get ONE of us for a given show."  And mostly it has worked.  But in the past year with Andrew as president and me, well, picking up some of the production slack at Chameleon and elsewhere, we have had to do even more compromising and juggling and asking the kids to take care of their own selves in order to make things work.

Our friend Scott has two daughters, now age 15 and 13.  He also has no extended family in the area, but the thing about working together in theater is that communities and friendships form quickly.  Every tech week is a bit of a crucible and at the end of it, either you never want to see each other again, or you're family.  Obviously we came down on the "Family" side.  In the past six months, Scott has gone from being a divorced dad with shared custody of his two daughters to being a full time single dad, after the girls' mom suddenly and unexpectedly died this past spring.

Over the course of the summer, we spent a lot time with the girls, even having them come out and stay with us for 2 weeks in Michigan while Scott was in the final weeks of production for "Steel Kiss" at the Minnesota Fringe Festival (and beyond), and we have been helping each other out with picking up and dropping off kids, errands, and some shared cooking, but since they are in Little Canada and we are in Eagan, it's sometimes not as easy as we'd like to be of assistance to each other.

Scott and the girls have been getting by in their 2 bedroom condo, but could use a little more room, now they are all living there full time.  At one point I said "Well, in a way, it's too bad we didn't buy that crazy old house on Summit last year, cause we'd have room for EVERYONE in a big house like that!"  Which got Andrew looking at big houses in St. Paul again.  And he found one that has 7 bedrooms, brick exterior, big front porch, fenced in yard, a small wood shop, an apartment on the 3rd floor, as well as ample garage space for all of our car and construction needs.  And the price was right, so we decided to go ahead and go for it.

Here we go!

We are looking forward to the flexibility of having 3 adults in the house to juggle time at home, pick-ups, drop offs and other challenges as we meet them.  Ultimately, the one really good reason that pushes it over the top and makes it all worth the trouble of cleaning out and moving:  Support.  Support and collaboration for the adults, support and additional adults as resources for the kids, and more kids for the kids to be kids with.  We'll also get space for a scene-type shop, a non-freeway route to the boys' school, bricks and a big front porch.  Not a bad deal overall, right?