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Heather and I are pleased to announce that we are no longer home owners. No more mortgage payments. No more home owners associations. No more stressing about the falling Twin Cities housing market.

We received an offer on our townhouse on April 12th and closed the transaction on Monday. Instead of being in debt to Wells Fargo for another 25 years, we should be able to pay off the loss in a year. A huge thanks goes out to our parents for making this transaction possible. Thanks also to my brother Tim for giving me an old fax machine which made it much easier to complete the 22 page purchase agreement at 8pm on a Saturday.

Last night we found a few stray cats on our doorstep. We got curious because we hadn't seen them before so we looked around and found them hiding under the pine trees behind our townhouse. Heather called animal control to see what to do about them, but they said they don't pick up stray cats. After a little more investigation, in the dark with a flashlight, we found a house and litter box someone hid in the trees.

Tonight we went to look at it again while it was still light out. We found the three cats in the trees again. While we were looking at them, a neighbor came out on her deck and started yelling at us. We asked about the cats and she did not want to be civil. She was swearing at the top of her lungs for us to go or she would call the cops. We let her. The yards are all common property in our development and there's no reason we couldn't be there.

I can't say I'm going to miss this neighborhood. I've said it before. It's just a bunch of houses.

It's early Tuesday morning and I'm already sitting in the Surgical Waiting Room. We got to the hospital around 6:30 this morning and by 8:00 they came to take Heather to surgery. It turns out the hospital added free WiFi so I should be able to update everyone easily. Perhaps I can even get some work done. I also noticed a sign on the wall that they are building a new surgical waiting room, it couldn't be done soon enough.

Our weekend was great, we really needed the break. We drove up to Saratoga and stayed with Jer and Danielle. It was great to see them and Ian again. Danielle is ready to pop! She could deliever Campbell before we fly back to Minnesota. We also got to see Dug and Sharon and Chuck and Caleb. We played croquet and wiffle ball. I haven't swung a bat since I was in little league for one year in elementary school. I was surprised I could hit the ball at all. I think I was having a little too much fun hitting the ball because my right forearm is still sore.

On Saturday we started looking at houses in the areas around Saratoga. We didn't find anything we wanted to put an offer on, but we got a better idea of what was around and our realtor got to know our tastes better. I think it'll be a challenge to find a house remotely. We'll probably have to move into a rental after our townhouse sells then restart our house hunt in earnest.

We've been thinking about moving back to the east coast for a while now. I got the OK from my boss to work remote so I don't need to worry about finding a new job. We decided less than two weeks before we left for New York that we were going to put our house on the market before we left. It was a frantic 8 days of cleaning and packing things away. We signed the paperwork the day before we left and the house is now listed on the MLS. We're hoping to get some showing while we're out-of-state.