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The title of this painting is "Half-way Home."
The sign posts in the original painting really do read Los Angeles and Chicago.

Pyrzfamily.com has been online for almost a decade. For the first 3 years of its existence, it was little more than a place to dump some pictures and allow me to fiddle around with my web design "hobby."

The website took on a new dimension on August 2, 2003. That is the date Sue and I hit the road with Bingley, for our new life in California. That new life began in earnest on August 5, 2003, when we arrived at our new apartment in Beverly Hills, about 2,000 miles away from both of our families, and not any easy drive or short flight by any stretch of the imagination. This website then became a sort of window into our little world out here in California, and for the last 6 years, we have allowed you all to peek through that window to share our adventures.

On August 5, 2009, exactly 6 years to the day since our convoy from Illinois sped down the 15 freeway, out of Las Vegas and into the Mojave Desert of eastern California, Sue and I made yet another life-changing decision. After 6 years in Southern California, we would pack it up and make the return trip. The decision was made to dive, head first and bet all of our chips. I have no job waiting for me, no place to live other than with our parents, and only a couple of semi-promising job leads waiting for me when we get back. For some reason though, it seems like the only decision that made sense.

I am leaving a job that I love, and people with whom I thoroughly enjoy working. We are leaving behind some of the best friends we have ever had. We are leaving an area with which we have become intimately familiar, to return to an area that has become increasingly foreign to us over the past 6 years.

6 years may seem a relatively short period of time, however, when you have packed as much as we have into that span, those 6 years start to feel like an eternity. As most of you know, we moved our here so that I could attend law school. That endeavor was three (very) long years in and of itself. Then, of course, came the bar exam and the longest four months of my life waiting for the results. That period ended at 6 p.m. on November 17, 2006; a time and date that will stick with me as one of the most anticipated moments, and, thankfully, one of the happiest moments in my life.

Sue wasn't just sitting around doing nothing during this time, quite the contrary. Sue was taking classes as a visiting student at Loyola Marymount to complete her master's degree, and was student teaching in Culver City for the first year we were out here. After we moved to Orange County, Sue began working at the hospital where she would later give birth to our greatest accomplishment since moving to California.

On July 1, 2008, just about one month shy of the 5th anniversary of our arrival in California, Elizabeth Darcy Pyrz (Lizzy Bear), was born in Mission Viejo, California. For years we had been fending off pressure from the outside, parents, siblings, etc, to move back to Chicago. Little did we know that with Lizzy's birth, the seeds were sown for an inside job.

As our Little Bear has grown increasingly aware of her surroundings, I have become increasingly aware of the childhood of which I would be depriving her. Remaining in California would keep Lizzy 2,000 miles away from her grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and the rest of her family, very few of whom can be found on this side of the Mississippi. Telephone calls and webcams are nice, but they are no substitute for being there.

That was the reason I gave my bosses when I told them that I would be leaving the firm, and they could not have been more understanding and supportive of my decision. After all, both of them had left their large-firm jobs to start their own firm, so they could spend more time with their families. Now, at least for the next few months, I will be spending a previously unheard of amount of time with my family, as I voluntarily throw myself into one of the worst job markets in history. I will not dwell on that aspect though, for now, I am excited, as is Sue, about turning the page on this chapter of our lives, and beginning the next.

In exactly one month, we will be sleeping (hopefully) in our hotel in St. George, Utah, on night one of our return trip. The rest of that week will have us stopping in Colorado, Nebraska, and finally Iowa, before speeding down I-80, out of Iowa City, and into the corn fields of western Illinois. At some point along the way, we will be half-way home. At least at this time, it is anyone's guess as to where home really is. In any event, Pyrzfamily.com, as it has existed for the last six-plus years, will no longer be necessary.