A lot has happened in the past four days:

• On Wednesday we flew to Minnesota, duly documented via iPhone.
• On Thursday morning I met with the principal of the St. Paul Open School.
• Then we had lunch with Maddy and Zoe and I visited Laura Jeffrey Academy, an all-girls middle school in St. Paul.  I toured the school with some prospective parents and then had a great meeting with the educational director (their equivalent of a principal).
• Somehow in the midst of all this Sarah and I drove around various neighborhoods in St. Paul and Minneapolis to start thinking about where we might want to live.
• On Thursday evening we celebrated Griffin’s first birthday in Courtland with a whole passel of Stocco family friends.  It was fun and festive, and the cake was delicious.
• Friday morning began with a somewhat strange meeting with the principal of a progressive charter school in Minneapolis.  Sarah and I participated in their “morning meeting” and then chatted briefly (and awkwardly) with the principal who basically said he doesn’t have any job openings and has no ideas about where one should look for teaching jobs.  Weird.
• Then we raced over to Crosswinds Middle School in Woodbury (east of St. Paul) and met with a friend of a friend who has been teaching there for a bunch of years.  She was great and introduced us to her principal who was similarly great.
• The sum of all the meetings was that budget cuts will make the job search very challenging. On the bright side, I got many useful tips on how to best market myself and where to focus my efforts most productively.  At this point I’m focusing on charter schools and will start checking out possible private school options.
• On Friday afternoon Sarah and I met with a realtor and started looking at houses and exploring various neighborhoods in St. Paul.  Our first foray was a bit underwhelming (but things got better later).
• On our drive back to Courtland that evening we realized that we were utterly exhausted.  We called the realtor to reschedule our Saturday tour to Sunday morning.
• Saturday was our spring break!  We had a leisurely breakfast, napped, took long hot baths, and walked to the local park where Griffin loved the slide.  (First time he has ever been really into it — he just kept diving down this one, head first!  Pictures will be forthcoming.)  I also wrote thank you cards to the various people I had met with during the week.
• This morning (seriously, I can’t believe this was today) we raced back up to the Cities to meet with our realtor.  Today’s tour focused mostly on Minneapolis and was much more positive.  We saw a fabulous house in the Bryn Mawr neighborhood and a couple of other cool contenders in Southwest and near Lake Nokomis.
• Then a picnic lunch by the lake with Pam and Jeff who had just picked up uncle Bob at the airport.  Fun in the sun, and great to overlap with Bob for an hour.
• Then back to the airport to fly back to SFO.  Griffin had a harder time on this flight.  He’s got a molar coming in and was tired but couldn’t fall into a comfortable sleep.  Still, he handled it pretty well and is a pro at airplane bathroom diaper changes.
• When Ed picked us up at the BART station he handed us a bag with three English muffins from our favorite bakery.  He figured we might not have breakfast organized for tomorrow.  Is that not the sweetest thing?

Whew.  We would never have been able to get this much done if Pam and Jeff and Alli hadn’t handled Griffin during most of our trips to the Cities.  It was a win-win for everybody: we got a lot done and Griffin got to bond with his grandparents and auntie!

Here’s what Griffin thought about all of this on the BART ride home:

I can’t believe I have to work tomorrow!