St. Charles, IL

Well we're pretty sure we found a place to live! Yay for not being homeless. We thought we'd have signed a lease by now, but we're still working out some details. Jeremy and I flew out last week to explore "Chicagoland" and we had a great time! Thanks to my parents, we were able to go without kids and it was our first trip ever without them. We definitely don't want to wait another five years to do that. :) We spent most of the time in the car with the GPS going, but it was still nice to just be together and explore our new surroundings.

After much searching, we found a great townhouse in the city of St. Charles. We drove all around Naperville, thinking we may end up there, but then we met our friends from business school over in Batavia for dinner the first night and we fell in love with that area. St. Charles, Geneva, and Batavia are part of a "tri-city" area along the Fox River about 50 miles west of Chicago. St. Charles is the largest of the three (still only about 35,000 people) and the furthest north. We just loved the smaller city, less crowds, and the beauty and character of the river. It's also a lot closer to Jeremy's work than the other areas we looked at, so it was kind of a no-brainer. Unfortunately, there aren't a ton of rental properties over there, so we weren't sure if we'd be able to find something, but we did!

(St. Charles is way on the left, Jeremy works in Glendale Heights, pretty much straight east).

We didn't want a townhouse at first, but I think it will be really perfect for us. We'll only be here a year again, so it will be nice not to have to worry about the yard or the snow removal because that's all taken care of! It also has an attached 2-car garage and is the end unit surrounded by lots of beautiful grass and walking paths, so there's still plenty of space to run around. It's less than a mile from the elementary school Eli will go to and between us and the school is a giant park. Jeremy's commute will be about 25 minutes. The half nearest our house will be through the unincorporated area of Wayne, which is full of some beautiful giant homes and horse farms and as he gets closer to his office he literally passes by every major store imaginable - Walmart, Target, Costco, Kohls, Home Depot, etc. etc. ("Honey, can you pick this up for me on your way home?") Very convenient.

The house is two stories plus an unfinished basement, which I imagine we'll put to good use in the winter months...and maybe the extra muggy summer days too. :) All the bedrooms and laundry are upstairs along with 2 bathrooms and then the living, dining, family room, kitchen and half bath are on the main level. I have actually never lived in a two-story house in my life (crazy I know) so it will be something new! Luckily Anna is old enough that I think she'll handle the stairs just fine. In fact, she'll probably have a blast the first few days climbing up and down over and over. And I told the kids if we need more exercise in the winter we'll be running up and down the stairs. So much to look forward to.

(Oh yeah, did I mention it was SNOWING the day we found our house? May 16th? Haha. Awesome.)

I'm actually really excited for the location. I was worried at first because we're kind of on the outskirts of St. Charles and it's a little far from the grocery store and the church and pretty much the whole town, but I think we'll enjoy our little spot up there. It's right by the riverbend and we can easily walk over to the trail along the river (and a footbridge that crosses it) and I think we'll do that a lot. I have a serious need for some good quality nature :) and I'm happy to know that I'll have somewhere nice to go once I leave the Garden of Eden here. Jeremy and I have been running lately too, so we'll have some nice places to continue doing that.

Here's a more zoomed in map. We'll be near the riverbend. The park near our house is not actually on this map, but as you can see, there are a lot of big parks and forest preserves, which is great! And there are walking trails all along the river that looked beautiful!

That's all I know so far! I know several of you have been asking what I've "found out" and researched, so I better get on it. :) And I have several other things I need to blog about, so I'll try to catch up soon!