Conley Update!

Well, I’ve been back in Texas for the last 3 days and it has been busy. I got 2 hours of sleep the night before coming and spent half the day in airports and airplanes. By the time I arrived I was already tired and coming down with a cold. Sara and I packed as fast as we could until I literally fell over at 9:00 PM. Early the next morning I had 6 friends come over and help me move all of our belongings to a storage facility. Unfortunately, we get to move twice since we don’t know exactly where we are going. Everything went very well and we are now almost done. Although all the big stuff is gone, it’s the little stuff that almost makes moving miserable. I’ve probably got 6 carloads worth of stuff to take to the storage unit (luckily it is less than a mile away). I worked pretty hard today and I’ve completely cleared the upstairs. The only rooms that have stuff in it now is the kitchen, living room (kind of a staging station for packing) and our bathroom. Hopefully we’ll get most of it done on Tuesday.

We’ve had some really good times with our friends. We’ve gone out for dinner with friends almost every night. We have so many great people in our lives here in Texas. It’s been good to pick up where we left off and enjoy the company. I had my 31st birthday party at Mi Pueblo (my favorite Mexican restaurant) on Sunday night where about a dozen of my good friends came to hang out.

Being away from Texas for a little while, you forget some things. First of all, I forgot how far away things are. We used to always joke that everything is 20 minutes away. Yeah, there is a reason why it was a joke…. everything is like 20 minutes away. I met my friend JD at the movies today. It took me 25 minutes to get there… and it’s a theatre I went to often. It’s just a matter of perspective. I got spoiled in GA when everything was 5-10 minutes away. I also forgot how much sky you see here in Texas. I think that this is more of a western thing… definitely true of most places I’ve seen out west. There aren’t as many trees out here (I’m used to endless forests of towering pine trees) so when you come up on a hill, you can see Fort Worth (which is 15 miles away) and in the right spot you might even see Dallas (a good 30 miles away). Due to less trees, you just see a lot more of the big blue sky.

Sara and I lived here in DFW for 3 years. We have loved it. From our house, to the people, to the weather to the culture… we’ve loved it all. What an incredible place. I can certainly understand why Texan’s get the reputation they do. They’re simply proud to be Texans. This is the first place we’ve lived where we both hope to find out way back here again. Things are still up in the air and we very well could end up staying in Texas. We’ll just have to wait and see. Just pray for the Conley’s. Transition is always hard and being patient while waiting to see what happens next is tough… but most of all we’re feeling a great sense of loss as we pack up our beautiful house and say goodbye (more like "see you later") to all our dear friends.