A Little Background

In February of 2006 we moved from Temecula, California to Leander, Texas. Big move. My husband didn't have a job yet. He had come out here a month earlier with our son (who was 19 years old at the time) and stayed with some friends to look for a job and a house. Two years prior we had started looking at leaving California. We were about to have a daughter and I wanted to be a stay at home mom. Instead, we refinanced our house. I still couldn't stay home. I had to work. I hated it. We lived in Temecula but worked in La Jolla. For those of you who don't know the geography of the San Diego area, I will educate you a bit. Temecula is north of San Diego...way north, and east too. It's kind of this gray area of Southern California that everyone tries to claim as their own. Los Angeles considered Temecula a suburb. Orange County likes to consider Temecula a suburb. San Diego considers Temecula to be a suburb. I would say that we were closer to Orange County but since we were San Diegans and still worked in San Diego, we considered it a suburb of San Diego. We lived in a beautiful house, high up on a hill above the wineries. I loved that house. But I HATED that commute.

That commute was 55 miles each way. Since we worked near each other John and I would carpool. Which was great for the company. It was a miserable drive. The I15 is really the only freeway from San Diego to Temecula so EVERYBODY uses it. Our drive in to work took anywhere from 2 to 3 hours and the drive home was just as bad. To make matters worse, once I had our oldest daughter we brought her with us. I was breastfeeding at the time and would pump in the car on the way there and on the drive home. It sure made for some interesting drives but you do what you have to do.

When I became pregnant with our youngest we decided that we couldn't continue living like this. So we picked several places to move within the United States and did some serious research to find out where we were going to settle. We decided that we couldn't deal with super-cold weather so we settled on the South. We decided on Austin because of my husband's career path. He is in the computer industry and Austin has many corporate headquarters here (Dell, Apple, Samsung) and he really wanted to work for Dell.

At the end of June, our youngest daughter was born. We put our house on the market. It took several months but finally sold. In January, my husband and son drove out here and I moved in with my parents until our house closed escrow. I flew out after a couple of weeks and we found a house. We closed escrow and moved into our current home in early February. In March, my parents came out and visited. They loved it and bought a lot and had a house built in this area also. The moved here in July.

I guess you could consider us part of the great mass migration from California to Texas. There are many many former Californians here in Austin. We seem to be magnetically drawn to each other. It's strange, kind of like a sixth sense. The vast majority of former Californians love it here. Every once in awhile I'll run into one who hates it. Kinda rare tho.

Texas is a strange beast. It really is it's own country. Once you acclimate yourself to the Texas lifestyle you'll find that your outlook on things change. It is those things and observations of Texas life that I plan to write about on this blog.