Checking out Westmoreland on the Sly

This house is a block away from our house today.

I didn't want to tip anyone off to what the Capital City Asays are mulling, so I've purposefully kept this hidden until now. But I wanted to capture the experience while it was fresh in my memory.

Today stake conference was scheduled to begin at 10:00 a.m., but after Meg stepped out of the shower she announced that she had a crazy idea. We've been thinking about moving back to Portland, and Meg had earlier in the week driven through some neighborhoods in SE Portland after visiting her friend in Vancouver. Her visit had confirmed what I had figured out on paper: Westmoreland was a reasonably-priced neighborhood (relative to other nicer areas of Portland, at least), with relatively high number of kids/young families, and very accessible to ADP.

So her crazy idea was to skip out on stake conference and attend the Moreland Ward, which is where we would go to church should we move to Westmoreland. The church building is on the main thoroughfare in Westmoreland. The ward appears to draw members from the Brooklyn, Westmoreland, Eastmoreland, and Sellwood neighborhoods; they share the building with a ward from Milwaukie. Using Google Maps, I counted about 26 parking spots for the building--but that's about right, with the number of people that attended Sunday's services. We arrived about 5-10 minutes before sacrament meeting was slated to start, and we had our choice of about any seat in the chapel (in our ward in Beaverton, we had to get there at least 10 minutes early to avoid sitting on the hard chairs in the overflow section). All eyes were on us the whole meeting; they weren't staring so much as they were curious as to who we were--plus our kids were like the only ones making any noise, so it felt like all in attendance could hear what the boys were saying. Our kids alone doubled the size of the nursery and increased the primary by 10%. We emphasized that we were just checking out the neighborhood, but they seemed very excited at having a young family move in. There were maybe three or four families our age, with the majority of the attendees being older couples or widows. But we felt very welcome, and the boys said they enjoyed their classes (well, Edward didn't say that, but he made it through without crying) and wanted to go back again. Meg put it well by saying, "Nothing there made me want to make the decision right now, but nothing told me that we shouldn't consider the area." Or something along those lines.

So why move after migrating south just a year ago? Being separated 50 miles for most of the day all week is draining us mentally. While I don't mind waking up at 4:50 each morning, it is nonetheless physically draining. The consequences of the hour-long commute is only going to get worse as the kids grow in age and number, as I won't be able to attend their activities as readily if we lived closer to my office. We certainly won't find as nice a house for the same amount of money, but we're open to buying an older place and fixing it up ourselves (i.e., paying contractors to do it), or if we're lucky maybe we can get a foreclosure on the cheap. The Portland market is growing at a faster rate than Salem, so potentially our money is more wisely invested. The Westmoreland neighborhood school, Llewellyn, is highly-rated, strongly supported by parents, so we would feel comfortable sending the boys there.

If we do end up moving, I'll probably scrap Alice. We most likely won't have more than a one-car garage (if any), and Bernice has first dibs on that. I would get a free bus pass from ADP again (only a ten minute ride), to use on rainy days when I didn't ride my bike the 5 or 6 miles (on dedicated bike paths) to ADP. I'm also considering a moped/scooter.

The nearest Fred Meyer is about five miles away in the Hawthorne district--it's the original Fred Meyer, actually--but there is a QFC in the neighborhood, and we all know that Fred Meyer bought QFC before Kroger bought it--so we're still good.