(Note: No, your eyes did not deceive you. I did post this, then take it down for a couple of days, but not for any reason that impacts our plans. If you really want to know why, email me -- haley at wachdorf.com. I'll be happy to share.)

The first real conversation Dan and I had was an argument. I know this will shock those of you who know us in real life. I am now so mature that I would never backtalk my husband in public (Ahem), but when I was 21, I didn't have a husband, and I was just backtalking some random Texas A&M Aggie I found myself sitting across from at a pizza place on a Sunday afternoon in College Station, Texas. It was the first time I had ever been to Texas and I was not overly impressed. I was just there for the weekend to help my friend find an apartment since she was going to be starting a new job with Reformed University Fellowship at A&M. We had done what we came to do and that very afternoon I was going to get in my car and drive back to Mississippi. We went to church that morning and then went to get lunch with a bunch of A&M students. I sat down across from Dan and that is when the trouble started.

Dan to this day is convinced that I was hitting on him during this conversation. Possibly I was flirting with him a little. But that is not the point of this story. The point is that what we were arguing about was whether or not Texas is, in fact, the greatest place on earth, and whether or not I should drop my plans to find a job in Mississippi and move to Texas instead. Dan was in favor of all the above statements. I was not. Neither of us was backing down. We did not agree to disagree. No phone numbers were exchanged. I got in my car. I went home to Mississippi. Haley: 1. Dan: 0

According to my sister-in-law Dinah, who was there that day, when she and Dan got back in their car after lunch, Dan turned to her and said "That is the kind of girl I could marry." If what Dan wanted that day was a wife who would leave no ridiculous statement unchallenged for the rest of his natural born life, then he is a man to be congratulated for having gotten exactly what he set out to gain. But today he is also be a man to be congratulated for having finally won an argument with his wife -- an argument that started when she wasn't even his wife -- the argument over Texas.

Why does he win? Because we are moving to Texas. San Antonio, to be exact. I can hardly believe it myself, but it's true. After almost nine years of living in New Mexico for me and almost eight years for Dan, we have decided that Dan will take a great job he has been offered in Texas so that we can be closer to our families. Dan's folks live in San Antonio, and from there we can drive to see my family in Mississippi. Nine hours in a car isn't my idea of a great time, but as the kids get older it will get easier to do. And when we do the math on what it costs to buy four airline tickets for, say, the Christmas holidays, a nine-hour drive sounds like an absolute dream come true.

The being nearer to family makes us very, very happy, and it's good to have that motivation. Because moving -- the actual act of getting all your worldly possessions transferred to and put away in a new home -- is basically my worst nightmare. When I was pregnant with Isaac I had this insane compulsion to go through all our stuff, get rid of junk and finally organize every corner of this house. It might not look like it on some days, but there actually is a place for everything. After four years in this house I accomplished that amazing feat just in time for us to move, put everything in boxes and never find it again.

I suppose a decision to move on to a new place always brings with it a certain amount of reflection on the old place. This is no different, and the entire process has been tinged with a feeling of mourning even though we are so excited about this new chapter in our lives. I have really come to love it here. We came here as newlyweds who did not know a soul in Albuquerque. We leave as a family of four, and we leave behind dear, dear friends. We're leaving the house we brought our babies home to, and that breaks my heart even though I know it is just a house. I will miss the proud little quirks of Albuquerque -- I don't imagine anyone puts up a tumbleweed snowman on the side of the Interestate at Christmas in San Antonio, for instance. And good gracious, the heat and humidity we are going back to are enough to make me weep for the high desert. I'll admit that the West did not immediately strike me as beautiful, but I have come to appreciate the enormous sky and the ability to see everything for miles and miles around.

The blog name will stay the same. I still miss Mississippi, I'll just do it from a more nearby location, and I'll get to visit more often. I think I'll always be more of a displaced Southerner than anything else and I doubt that I'll ever really consider myself a Texan. I'm under the impression that in order to truly qualify as a Texan you have to get up every morning and sing a song extolling the greatness of Texas, and I'm definitely not doing anything like that. But Texans do seem to have pretty strong powers of persuasion/brainwashing, so maybe in a couple of years I'll have a Don't Mess With Texas bumper sticker on my giant pickup truck. Stranger things have happened. After all, Dan did finally convince me to move to Texas -- and it only took nine years.

Dan: 1. Haley: Moves to Texas.

Obviously, this move has been in the works for quite a while and I've just put off writing about it here. Now that's it's almost upon us, I have no doubt my posting here will be even lighter than usual, but I also imagine I will emerge on the other side of this process with some stories to tell. I am fairly confident one does not move to another state with a three-year-old and an infant without a few bizarre moments.