This weekend, Dan and I attended the New Mexico Press Association's awards banquet because I somehow won a couple of awards for my work in the last year. One of the awards meant a lot to me because it was first prize in the columns competition in my state division for a pair of columns I wrote about Aaron and Ryan and everything that has happened since we found out Aaron was going to be deployed to Iraq last year. The first one also won honorable mention in my division of the Serious Column category of the National Newspaper Assocation competititon earlier this year. My parents, because they are proud of me and the fact that I have gone on to be mildly accomplished even though I can't do math, say that I should post the columns here so that you all can read them. After this, I'm thinking about attaching magnets to the back of the plaque I got so I can hang it on the refrigerator. Here they are. These were originally published in the Valencia County News-Bulletin on the dates listed.

October 16, 2004
By Haley Wachdorf

I was standing in my kitchen in Albuquerque two weeks ago talking on the telephone and rummaging through the refrigerator to check the expiration date on a half-gallon of milk when my mom told me that my little brother Aaron is going to the war in Iraq next year. It's funny how the big news in your life hits when you're least expecting it, and you just can't quite think of what to do. I actually kept looking to make sure the milk was still good before I sat down on the floor and cried.
My twin brothers, Aaron and Ryan, are 21 years old, but it's hard for me to remember that. Instead, I remember the days when my family had a weekend cabin in north Mississippi. When I think of my brothers, I see both of them standing at the top of some hill on our land, shirtless, skinny little ribs poking out of their 8-year-old bodies, holding sticks in their grubby hands in place of guns and declaring that there would be "No girls in our fort, Haley." All five kids in my family were born with these enormous chubby cheeks that prevented us from pronouncing our words properly, so it always sounded more like "No gulls in owa fowt, Haley."
Naturally, I have been thinking about Aaron a lot lately. I love Aaron, and the little kid in me is ready and willing to beat up anybody who says anything bad about him, but I'm not going to deny that it's a wonder we didn't kill each other when we were kids. Now that I'm older, I recognize that Aaron and I are just a little too similar to one another in personality to get along easily. We're both stubborn, or, as the older folks in Mississippi would say, "ornery", we're both unflinchingly passionate about the things we believe in, and we both have a hard time admitting we were wrong about anything. Ever. We fought pretty much from the moment he was able to stand up and talk. I think my parents considered putting muzzles on us.
But in more recent years, the most amazing thing has happened. I have really started to enjoy my brothers. When they tell stories about things we've done or things my family did a long time ago, I laugh until I can't breathe even though I've heard those stories over and over. They're both tall and good looking and smart, and it's been a while since any of us threatened to tell on each other to Mom. Of course, we're not above the occasional childish prank. When I got married, the boys gave me a live lizard wrapped in a gift box at the wedding reception. It jumped out of the box, and everyone screamed. Since I was in my wedding dress, I didn't chase them down, but they ran anyway.
When Aaron told the family that he was going to join the Marine Reserves last year, I was proud of him, but a little worried, too. I know he's really an adult, but it seemed wrong somehow for my little brother to be a warrior and carry a real gun instead of a stick. Also, I knew that with a war going on, there was a good chance he would have to go overseas at some point. I just didn't want to think about it. But now I have to, and I am afraid.
Aaron, in his typically confident way, got on the phone the night I heard the news and told me not to worry, that he will be fine. I want that to be true. I so very much want that to be true.
Aaron is supposed to be deployed in March, but he leaves in December for a few months of training. On November 20, I'm going home to see him get married to his long-time girlfriend, Kelly, before he leaves. It's going to be a great wedding, and I can't wait to go. But if Aaron think he's going to get off without any pranks from me at his wedding, he's clearly forgotten the lizard incident. I'm already digging through my boxes of old photos to find the most embarrassing pictures I can find to turn into slides for the rehearsal dinner.
If I cry on the pictures a little bit in the process, no one has to know.

April 2, 2005
By Haley Wachdorf
News-Bulletin Staff Writer

Friday, March 18, was just another day for me. I came to work, wrote a story, went to a school to take some photos, and then went home. I remember that I was in a really happy mood as I was driving down Highway 47 looking at the beautiful countryside and thinking about all the little errands I needed to take care of on Saturday.
I didn’t know that at that very moment on the other side of the world, my brother was gravely injured, lying in a building west of Baghdad waiting for the fighting around him to subside enough that a helicopter could land and take him to a hospital.
It has been about six months since my family learned that Aaron, one of my two Marine brothers, would be deployed to Iraq. Since he left in January, I think each member of my family has visualized what would happen if we ever had to hear news telling us that Aaron had been killed in combat. It’s a morbid thing to do, but somehow it’s impossible not to think about it.
In my vision of that moment I hoped would never come, I knew that I would be told on the phone, most likely by my mother, and that I would know something terrible had happened immediately, because my mother would be crying.
On Saturday morning, just as I was starting in on my second cup of coffee, the phone rang. My husband answered it. He handed the phone to me. It was my mom, and she was crying.
Some people claim that when you get close to dying, your life flashes before your eyes. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know that in the moment when I thought Aaron was dead, it was like someone had flipped a switch that turned off all the lights in the world and started a rapid-fire series of images in my mind.
Instead of my kitchen cabinets, which were inches from my face, I saw Aaron when we were little, clinging to the top of the magnolia tree in our yard with his twin brother, Ryan. I saw them walking in front of me on the way to school on cool fall mornings, starting off at a casual walk and then eventually breaking out into a full run, racing one another to the stop sign at the end of our street. I saw them dangling their skinny, tanned legs out of the window of our two-story playhouse, daring one another to jump out into the summer twilight. I saw them land safely and roll around in the grass, holding their sides in hysterical laughter at their brush with gravity.
Then I tried to picture it all without Aaron. Ryan without his brother and best friend Aaron. Kelly, Aaron’s beautiful wife, without Aaron. I tried to see our big loud family, with our marathon meals and poker games and fireworks and inside jokes and constant laughter, only with four kids instead of five.
This is the moment when the nightmare comes true for some families, and my heart breaks for them.
But for me, a few seconds after that moment, the words my mom was saying to me suddenly turned into English again, and I realized that Aaron was alive. The Humvee he was driving in Iraq struck an improvised explosive device planted by insurgents, and Aaron was injured in the explosion. His leg had to be amputated below the knee after he was taken to Germany by helicopter.
It’s not good news. The idea that someone would lie in wait to hurt or kill someone you love so much is absolutely hateful. Knowing that my brother will have to go through life without his leg makes me sad.
But I’m thankful that we don’t have to go through life without him.
In the next week or so, I’m going to travel to National Naval Center in Bethesda, Maryland, to see Aaron. He is recuperating marvelously and will be learning to walk with a prosthetic leg soon.
When I see him, I’m not sure if I’m going to hug him or beat him senseless with hospital pillows for frightening all of us so much, but I know that I’m going to talk to him for hours and hours.
Because I still can.

As a note to all those of you who follow our press service here, it sounds like Aaron is actually going to be featured pretty extensively in an article written by the Sport Illustrated reporter who covered the Army's ten mile run back in September. I'll find out more and let you know. Of course, one of these days, we're told Aaron is going to be on the Today Show, but I'll believe that when I see it at this point.
Goodnight, all.

I am on my way out the door to work, and from there I will head to the airport, where Continental Airlines is supposed to let me get on a plane and go home to Mississippi to attend the Picayune wedding of Lindsay Burrell and Chris Carr, two dear friends. I love weddings. But I thought y'all might want to know about something the rest of my family will be doing this weekend on the other end of Mississippi. Aaron and another young man from Mississippi State University who was hurt in Iraq are going to be honored during half time at the MSU football game on Saturday. Now, if the game is televised in Mississippi, I don't know if they show the halftime festivities or not, but if they do, watch for it. And if you're at the game, as I'm sure some of you will be anyway, cheer loud.
Love to you all.

Well, the blank space on this blog is freaking me out, so I thought I should post a note that we are, in fact, alive and well, but just trying to get through the tail end of three very busy weeks that seem like one long week that just won't end. Between a business conference, a trip home for a wedding and the general craziness of life, I haven't had time to write much here, but this weekend, I plan to post some pictures from the wedding I went to, some pictures I took of my parents' place post-hurricane (I think the photo at the top of this blog may now be the only historical record of all those beautiful trees) and generally update you all. Until then, hang in there, only one more day until the weekend. I realized today that what my car looks like is usually a good indication of how my life is going. Right now, my car is covered in dirt on the outside, and in the backseat are my gym clothes, a pair of dress shoes, a bunch of files from work, travel coffee mugs, and a lot of miscellaneous trash. That pretty much sums it up. I need to get my life in order. How about you?

I hate to tell y'all this, but Aaron was on the Today Show this morning. I am so sorry, I had no warning or I would have posted information here. I haven't even seen it yet, because I only found out as I was on my way out the door to work, but Dan saw it and is using our computer to record it, and since it was part of their Veteran's Day coverage, I hope they will maybe post some kind of footage on their web site. If not, you can all go to our house if you're in Albuquerque or go visit my mom if you're in Mississippi, and we'll show you what we taped. More later.

Ok everyone, the today show has posted the video on their site. Click here to go to their site. The video is number 5 of 21.

This link should take you directly to the video.

I don't know how long they will keep them up.

This is Dan posting this, so if you see any typos, it's my fault.

I got to watch the Today Show segment Aaron was involved in, and I have to say, it was worth the wait. I'm not sure if it was worth me viewing a 30 minute segment on gastric bybass surgery on one of the days that the piece was supposed to run, but still. Dan posted the link to the video in the entry below, so thanks to him for doing that since I was at work and was temporarily unable to fill my role as Public Relations Officer for the Rice Family. (I will cut him a check later.) On a technical note, if you use Mozilla Firefox for your Internet browser, you're going to want to switch to Internet Explorer to view the video.
In terms of a review, I thought the piece was really nicely done, and I was glad that it featured a great organization called Team River Runner, which is part of the Wounded Warrior Project that has been very helpful for Aaron and therefore all of us. Check them out here and think about giving them some money. It's also always great to see my family, even if it is on video. I choked up a little when Aaron was talking, but I'm not sure if that's just me or if anyone else would feel the same way. Let me know in the comments section.
Also, not that anyone else cares, except maybe my brother Ryan, but props to the Today Show for the use of awesome music in the piece.(The Shins "New Slang" and Franz Ferdinand "Float On.") I know I am a nerd, but I think music is important, and those were both excellent calls given the content of the segment.
Let me know if you have trouble accessing the video, and I will consult our Technical Director here at Rice PR, Dan the Great. Thanks to all of you for wanting to see this. We love you.

As promised, here are some photos from the wedding I went to in Picayune, Mississippi last weekend. It's weird to know that I need to refer to my friend Lindsay Burrell as "Lindsay Carr" now that she's married to Chris. But I'm going to give it a shot. Cheers to Lindsay and Chris Carr, pictured here at their reception:

I was extremely blessed to have Lindsay as one of my roomates in college. Here she is pictured with our other roomate, Robin, who was my date to the wedding in Dan's absence. It was just like at Belhaven College, when Robin and/or Lindsay were my dates for almost every formal event. I think I could have done worse:

And finally, me with the bride. Tell me something, do I always look like this much of a giant?

True conversation that took place in our home on Sunday evening.

Dan: What's that song, the one about (sings) "I'm not sixteen for the moment" or something?

Haley: Well, that is not how that song goes at all, but it's a terrible song, so I don't wish to talk about.

Dan (laughing): Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot that "Thou shalt not utter the words to any sub-par songs in the presence of the Almighty Music Nerd." Forgive me, your highness.

I was going to argue in this post that I'm not that much of a nerd, and that Dan is exagerrating, but then while I was writing this, High Fidelity came on Comedy Central and so of course I stopped to watch it. (Because thou shalt not click past the best music nerd movie ever when it is on television.) But then I had to turn it off. Do you know why? Because I have seen that movie so many times that I know all the words, and so I noticed every time a scene was cut short so the movie would fit neatly into the time slot alloted for it. If I could use some of this brain power for anything even remotely useful, I could probably take over the world.
But instead I realize that my husband is right, and admit it on the Internet.
Still, that is a really awful song.

Who is ready for some really good news? Well, I've got what you want right here.
This week, my family found out that .....
Ryan is not going to Iraq in January after all!
Isn't that just the best thing you've heard in weeks? It is to me! You could call off Christmas right this minute, and I wouldn't care! I got my present at Thanksgiving.

We're not totally sure why his unit was deactivated, but the Marines tell us it was, and that's the kind of news you just accept without a lot of question-asking.
Ryan will at some point go to Iraq, we have no doubts about that, but I personally am really glad that he's not going right this minute. We'll all breathe a little easier this holiday season without that to think about. So join us in being thankful. It's a good time of year for that.
We love y'all.

Happy first anniversary to Aaron and Kelly, who got married on November 20, 2004. When I talked to them today they were getting ready to eat a piece of their year old wedding cake. Brave people.

For some reason, I woke up this morning very aware that it is going to be Christmas in 33 days. In fact, that's what I told Dan when he came in to wake me up. ("Hey, know what? It's almost Christmas." He told me he had to go to work anyway, but thanks for the update.) I knew this yesterday, so I don't know why it seemed like such an important fact this morning. I think I might have been dreaming about Christmas shopping, which since I don't really have any good ideas this year is kind of a stressful dream.
What is your Christmas shopping strategy? And am I the only one who hasn't started at all?

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Dan and I just finished cleaning up from the HUGE mess I made in our kitchen making cornbread dressing to take to Thanksgiving dinner. We're going to share the day with friends from church here in Albuquerque, and they are graciously allowing me to bring cornbread dressing, even though I am probably the only person who is going to want to eat it. Apparently, it's also unusual in Albuquerque to purchase just the inside parts of a turkey and not the turkey itself. (You have to call it "the inside parts of a turkey" because if you say "giblets" they look at you like you are speaking Swahili. Alas, the clash of cultures.)

Anyway, as I was crumbling up cornbread earlier amid all the dirty pots and pans, I was thinking about everything we have to be thankful for. It's a long list this year, too long to write down. It would just go on and on. But I realized that the one thing all the things I am thankful for have in common is mercy. God's mercy to us this year has been infinitely beyond what we would have even asked for if we had known beforehand how much we were going to need it. It sort of makes me laugh when I think about how I have prayed this year, and compare it with how good God has been to us. It's like what happens when you tell kids they can ask for anything. If kids were capable of thinking ahead and knowing what they will really need in life, they would ask for college scholarships or a million bucks or a reliable car. But they always ask for something immediate and not that hard for any adult to give them, like candy or a toy. I've kind of decided that's how we are with God. We can't even comprehend how vast our needs are in the first place, and even when we do know we need something, we still can't imagine how infinitely capable God is of giving it to us. So we ask for the things that we can wrap our minds around: that our families will be safe and we'll do well at our jobs and that we'll be able to pay our bills. And meanwhile, God gives us so much more than that. It's mind-boggling.

So this year, I am thankful for mercy.

"Now to Him who is able to do exceeding, abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever. Amen."
Ephesians 3:20 and 21

Love to you all. Be thankful.

As you may have noticed, my site is currently festooned with little Google ads. This was not my idea. If it annoys you greatly, you will have to take it up with Dan the Great. It is his idea to put ads on the Web site, not because there is any reason to think we could make any money, but because he has recently become fascinated with Google. He loves them. Not in the same way that you and I love Google because it's cool to type in people's names and find out all kind of crazy information. Dan is fascinated with Google as a computer technology business. He believes they are going to take over the world any minute now. So maybe the ads are Dan's way of making sure that when Google does launch its world domination campaign, they will know we are on their side and will not harm us. I don't know. All I know is that Dan could pretty much shut my blog down tomorrow and I would not be able to do anything about it, so if he wants to put some ads on it, I have to let him. However, we have argued over the placement of these ads, and if you still see a big blue box to the immediate right of this post, it is because Dan hasn't yet reached the point where he can't stand hearing me whine about it any more, but don't worry, he will get there soon.
Anyway, if the ads interfere with your reading expereience, let us know, but otherwise, carry on as usual. Until Google tells you otherwise.

This weekend, Dan and I were kind of debating whether or not we should go ahead and do the whole Christmas tree thing. We are really busy in the next few weeks, and we're leaving to go to Mississippi on December 15, so it's not like we'll even be here to enjoy our own tree. All day Saturday while we were making and revising Christmas gift lists for our families, a process that was seemingly endless, I was thinking that it would probably be better to just skip the tree this year. But then I changed my mind and set it up anyway. I'm glad I did. It's so pretty. This morning, we woke up to see the first snow of the year on the ground. It wasn't a great snow, but it was really and truly cold outside for the first time, and it was all cozy inside our apartment with our tree. Then tonight, Dan made his mom's sugar cookies. It's this complicated recipe where you have to refrigerate the dough for a day and stuff, but they are so good. We're going to take a bunch of them to our Wednesday night class of kids at church to let them frost and decorate, but tonight, we did a batch of our own. It was so much fun.

This is Dan making the frosting. He had to beat me back to keep me from putting my fingers in the bowl. It's soooo good.

Then, we made pink and green icing and had fun with sprinkles.

I made the butt-kickingest snowman ever, with a little green, flowerdy hat and a pink coat.

Dan made fun of this Christmas tree I made, but I think it was cute.

And now I think I am ready for it to be Christmas. All I need to do now is watch Charlie Brown Christmas.