Goodbye Shakopee, It Was Fun

Well, we did it. We moved away from Shakopee. Our town home now belongs to someone else. Karen and I bought that first home together on a "3 or 4 year plan." According to that plan, we would establish ourselves, find out where we really wanted to live, and move into a single family home before we had any kids. As we all know (some of us with amounts of pain and frustration equal or more than ours), the housing economy tanked. Suddenly, we lost many 10s of thousands of dollars of value on the home; never to return. We realized we had to buckle down on the budget and start overpaying as much as possible. We needed to simultaneously save for a down payment for a new home and hope against hope that there would be some sort of recovery that would bring at least some of our current home value back. A year passed. Then two. Foreclosures began popping up all over. The "3 or 4 year plan" was a distant memory. We looked at the housing market when our stomach could bear it. It was never good news. We talked through our options time and again. Every time the decision was the same. We had to wait. Pay down the mortgage and save money. Be patient. Before we knew it, we had been living in our Shakopee house for 8 years and had two amazing boys helping to make it a home.

I am relieved and excited to report that chapter of our lives officially closed. We now live in what we feel is a fantastic house (and already feels like home) in Apple Valley. All of our commutes are shorter, the new daycare for the boys is extremely close and of the same variety they were in before, and we are close to amazing parks, lakes, and as luck would have it, we are also very near Owen's beloved Minnesota Zoo.

It has been a whirlwind of activity over the last 3+ weeks since my last post. We didn't take many pictures during all of it but for the sake of the historical record, I will post a selection of what we did take. I am going to try and catch up to the present moment.

I will begin with what might be the last photo taken in the Shakopee home. Karen and the boys chillin' on the couch. No doubt watching Jake and the Neverland Pirates (Owen's current favorite).