Our friends Liz and Kevin visited us from St. Louis this past weekend. We actually know them from Oakland, but they’ve been living in St. Louis for a few years now and we’re all excited to be living in the same time zone! They came to see us, but also to run the beautiful Nerstrand Big Woods Half Marathon located about an hour south of the Twin Cities. The weather could not have been more beautiful, and we were thankful to them for giving us the excuse to discover a new part of the state. When they weren’t running 13.1 miles, we hung out, laughed, walked around St. Paul, and ate great food. Kevin brought his amazing camera and Griffin ended up the star of the show. From the pictures, you’d think all we did was sit around and admire the one-and-a-half year old! While there was definitely plenty of that, we really just had a wonderful weekend of being with great friends. Thanks again to Kevin for the fantabulous pictures (and you can click on the image to take you to the whole album)!

We rolled into Minnesota on Thursday, July 29, in time for dinner.  We spent Friday setting up the fabulous new guestroom in the basement of the Stocco’s house.  Today (Saturday) Sarah and I left Griffin with Grandpa Jeff and Grandma Pam so that we could drive up to St. Paul to start scouting out possible apartments.  We figured we would see some places today and then setup more appointments for Monday and Tuesday.  Our fingers were crossed that we could sign a lease by next weekend to have this big hurdle behind us.

At 10:30 we arrived at our first appointment.  The Craigslist ad sounded good, but didn’t have any pictures so I was skeptical.  The outside of the duplex was nothing special, though we liked the neighborhood.  As we reached the top of the stairs, however, we were blown away.  It was fantastic… beautiful woodwork, a great layout, lots of storage, updated appliances, free laundry… everything we were looking for.  This seemed too good to be true, so we decided we had better look around at some other places.  They sucked.  And they cost more.  And they sucked.  We called the landlord and signed a lease.

We have no pictures yet, but here is the original post from Craigslist:

Perfect 2 bedroom
Date: 2010-07-21, 11:30PM
awesome upper duplex. wood floors and all woodwork recently redone. walls painted in subtle yet fun colors. classic st. paul style with sunroom, living room, dining room with gorgeous built in buffet, updated kitchen with dishwasher and huge modern fridge, good sized bedrooms and closets, updated super clean new bathroom with oversize new tub with jets, free garage parking with opener, FREE washer and dryer just for your unit in clean basement, tons of storage space in basement and attic, cute yard with patio and grill….this is a great home for a family, or for roommates… close to st kates, mac, stthomas…email if you would like more info or to set up a showing. 1200 a month, landlord pays water and garbage.

Feels pretty unreal to have walked into our dream apartment on our first try!

And two bonus pics of Griffin after the movers left:

It is hard for me to look at Griffin and say that he definitely looks like either Andrew or me. I can always see it in other peoples’ kids, but Griffin has been more of a challenge. Lately, most people have been saying that he looks like his dad, so I wanted to hunt down two photos of Andrew at one year old that his mom, Sandy, gave us. When she passed them on, Griffin was only three months old and it was difficult for me make the connection. So today in my mad packing frenzy they resurfaced, and WOW; It’s pretty hard to deny that he and Griffin look amazingly alike!