Weekend Forecast: Kate Hudson and Rocky Road.

First things first-- we did not get the house, and I'm really bummed and weepy and heartbroken, so I'm going to talk about other things right now to get my mind off of it...



Chris, Ezra, and I went to the Summer Starbright Concert Series last night in Nichols Hills Plaza to see Judson Lane play. It's this great little outdoor venu right next door to Starbucks, and it was so much fun! (for all you OKCers, I'm playing there on July 13th with Shannon Horn- come on down!) Last night, there was this guy there who is an amazing street performer, and he happened to have his bag of goodies with him- so he was juggling and doing cool magic tricks and Ezra was OBSESSED with him and played with him pretty much the whole time we were there. Cute. Chris did Ezra's hair all fancy while Ezra chomped on ice and threw our keys around. By the end of the evening, I had received 1,267 mosquito bites and discovered that my purse had been resting on a wasp's nest for a good portion of the evening...and yet despite all of that, fun was had by all.

Earlier, I was crying, and Ezra came into the room where I was with a very concerned look on his face. I got down to his level, and he ran up to me and hugged me HUGE and laid his little head down on my shoulder. My heart melted in my chest. He started to mimic the noises I was making (*sniffle sniflle, whimper whimper*), and within seconds I was laughing my face off. This kid is kindof fantastic.

We just got back from playgroup, and it was really great to be around such amazing women who can sympathize with my disappointment while still reminding me that this all was for the best and that God really does know what He's doing. (that, and Ezra got to run off some of that excess energy, so now he's sleeping like a brick. yesssss.)

So for now, I'm trying to resist the fudge cookies in the kitchen cupboard that are screaming my name, and I may have accidentally slipped "How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days" into the DVD player, but I swear I'm barely watching it and I haven't even eaten a SINGLE bite of ice-cream...

...because there wasn't any in the freezer.

(see, debra? our fail-proof plan has gone down in flames!! No house AND no ice-cream. Woe is me!)

Totally Nervous.

We put another offer in on a different house.

*crossing fingers*

This house is way cooler than the last one because it's not being held together by tree roots. We should hear if they accepted the offer by late this afternoon... I really want this house, but I'm trying not to stress out about it too much.
I know that if we don't get the house it just means there's something better for us out there, but right now I feel as anxious as a one-eyed cat watching two mouse holes.

If we get it, I'll post pictures.
If we don't, I'll be over there-- sitting on the couch eating chocolate ice-cream and watching romantic comedy's all weekend...

mwah!

Bad News... no, wait... I mean GOOD NEWS.

"What do I look like to you, an amateur?"

Praise Jesus for Home Inspectors.

The evening before we were meant to close on our new home, our fabulous Home Inspector (whom we almost didn't hire at all because our Realtor said, "You could pay the money for the inspection, but it would just be for your 'peace of mind'....") was gracious enough to tell us that the foundation of the house looked really screwy and we needed to get it checked out by a licensed Structural Engineer.

BackTrack: We had already had the home appraised and nothing was said about any structural funkiness. The Insurance Company said nothing about it, either. We had already been assured by the seller and the real estate agent that the home was "in great shape for its age- See? There are no cracks in the walls at all!"
Omitted Information: "By the way, we just re-textured all the walls so you wouldn't even be able to see any cracks if there were any here to begin with..."

So we get a Structural Engineer guy out (Chris has done some work for him), and he graciously does a very thorough inspection of the house we were supposed to purchase in less than 24 hours. He tells Chris that the home isn't terribly damaged on the inside because it is basically BEING HELD UP BY THE ROOTS OF THE TREES AROUND IT. Three large trees next to the house had somehow managed to keep it from shifting too dramatically over the years. (The foundation underneath it, however, had moved to China.)

Because of this, the floor-joists are no longer touching the actual floors, and the South-West corner of the home is about to slip off of the foundation. The engineer put his foot on the wall underneath the bedroom window and pushed, and the whole wall moved. He said he wouldn't even attempt that fancy foot trick on the corner of the house because it would probably CAVE-IN. Total Cost to fix: starting around $15,000.

Needless to say, we called the real estate agent to tell him the Bad (good) News, and he told us he had no idea that the foundation had moved to China.

It sounds like they are still willing to negotiate something, but Chris and I aren't even going to consider buying the house unless the foundation is COMPLETELY repaired at no cost to us.

I've always wanted to live in a tree-house, but this isn't exactly what I'd had in mind.

House Pictures!

We did a final walk-through of the house today and are meant to close on Tuesday. I cannot believe we are buying a house. This is why I LOVE Oklahoma. You can actually afford to live here!
And for us right now, Cost of living DOWN = quality of life UP.
Here's some pictures of the inside. What do you think?

built in the 1920's

view of the living room from the dining room

living room

kitchen

bathroom

bedroom 1

bedroom 2

laundry room

Burritos, anyone?

Our friends Jamie and Heather (sitting on the porch swing in the picture above) came through Oklahoma City from California on their cross-country road trip, and it was SO great to have them here and see their faces again. They are on their way to New Jersey to drop off a car for a friend, and a journal of their travels can be found here.
We miss you guys already... we loved having you in our home. Enjoy the rest of your burrito-filled adventure!

Exponential Growth

I was looking through some old pictures of Ezzie earlier and I got all weepy... He was so small, and now he's so BIG. You'll hear it from the mouths of every mother on the face of this big planet:

It goes by so very fast.

He threw Candy at me and I melted.

The first time I ever saw Chris, he was playing in his Ska band called Martyr 2:10 at my church's coffee house/hang-out place known as 'The Fire Escape'. (Get it? Like, escaping the fires of hell?) Very Christianly clever! It was the summer before my Junior year in High School. I was 16 years old. This mysterious band of cute boys had never played at the 'Fire Escape' before, and all us regulars would later recall the evening as a night full of "skankin" (I mean the ska dance kind of skankin') and some serious teen crushing. NEW BLOOD!!

Conversations of this nature were heard at every turn: "Which boy are you totally crushing on? The saxophone player or the drummer? I like the trumpet player because I think he might have totally looked at me!! (squeal!)"
My best friend Rebecca mentioned something about how hot the drummer was, and I remember casually agreeing with her without really assessing the skinny, tall, bleached-blonde spiky haired WONDER behind that red drum set. (Mr. Chris Clark). I think I was preoccupied with someone else at that time, but I don't remember who. Probably some older boy named Andrew or Andy. (I dated like 100 Andrews or Andys in High School...)

It was an evening of coffee-drenched hormonal chaos... the first day of the rest of my life.

It was announced that the band would be leading worship at church the next morning as well, so, come sunrise, the young girls flooded into the small sanctuary with holy zeal. That's when I got my first real look at him...

Wow.

(I may or may not have repositioned myself that morning in such a way that he could see me clearly through the mobs of gawking girls.) He was so cool and foreign. Not foreign like from another country, but foreign like from another school. And he wore necklaces and earrings. Umm.. hotness.

It took awhile for my group of friends to officially mesh with his group of friends, but it eventually happened. One night we were all at my friend Sammy's house and we all decided to sit down and watch a movie. (Teen Translation: HOLDING HANDS IN THE DARK session.) Chris (whom I still didn't know at the time) sat up on the couch and I sat on the floor by the fireplace. I was engrossed in the movie because (alas!) I had no one to stealthily hold hands with under a couch cushion, when I suddnely felt something hit me on the shoulder.

I looked down and saw a sour gummi candy lying by my foot. I quickly spun around to see which one of my girlfriends had thrown it, but instead, there was Chris- with a box of sour gummi candies in his hands and a mischevious smirk on his face.

And the rest, as they say, is history...

The Weeds are in Bloom! The Weeds are in Bloom!

The weeds are finally in bloom! I would probably think that these flowers were quite beautiful if they were not painful reminders of the embarassment we suffered on their behalf.
They are like huge bright orange billboards to me... screaming "YOU ARE THE AMELIA BEDELIA OF ALL GARDENING!!" as I drive by them everyday in my car.
I even went so far as to viciously snip some of these flowers off of their branches in order to place them in a vase for my homemade 'Happy Fathers Day' bouquet, and it felt pretty darn good to decapitate them (snip snip snip) just to show them who's in control around here... I AM. Stupid weed flowers.

Ezra has had a cold the last few days and it has been SNOT CITY around these parts. Everytime I turn around there is more snot bursting from his nose. I'm trying to keep up with it all, but it's like an unstopable lava flow that is dangerously icky and gross. The other day, I saw some more boogs escaping, so I ran to get a tissue, and by the time I had gotten back, Ezra had managed to smear the whole boog in his eyebrow. And I mean SMEARED. I tried to capture the beauty of it on film:


Can you see it? I don't think his eyebrow will ever be the same.

So, needless to say, we've been lying low this week and watching a lot of Disney movies and eating a lot of blueberries. He's got a slight fever today, and he fell asleep sitting straight up on my lap around 10:00 this morning, and he' still passed out as I type this at 1:30pm. Poor Mr Bear.



Chris and I decided to go buy him a new toy because he was being such a trooper after being cooped up for days and days while feeling like poo, so we went and got him this great 'Little People Barn' toy. It came with a free DVD too, and the theme song on the DVD is sung by Aaron Neville, which is pretty awesome except that the song is like 20 minutes long and they play it every 5 seconds or so. Someone was a little overexcited about the fact that AARON NEVILLE sang the Little People Sample DVD theme song for them, and they went a little theme song crazy. (I can just picture the middle-aged woman with big curly hair and BANGS shouting, "AGAIN! AGAIN! We must put the theme song on there JUST ONE MORE TIME!")


He LOVES this thing. He sits on it, sticks his legs through the doors, shoves the horsey out the window, tears down the fences, and imitates the snoring noise that plays when you press the Farmer's bed. Watch out, garden hose. There's a new toy on the block... and its name is LITTLE RED BARN.

The Everyday Miracle

Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself that Ezra is this out-of-control fabulous, exhaustively amazing, alltogether spectacular BLESSING in my life... How can I not be jumping-out-of-my-skin thankful for every second I get to be with him? I mean, there's a freakin' miracle tip-toeing through my living room holding an empty box of Wheat Thins in one hand and a Ping Pong ball in the other.

There are lots of times I pine for the days when I could drop everything and go on random, spontaneous road trips to see my husband play somewhere, or go hang out with new and exciting people without breaking off converstaion every 45 seconds to re-direct curious fingers, or even go browse the contents of my favorite store without screamy meltdowns coming from the stroller- twisting and jerking to break free and RUN from all the girly clothes that DARE to compete for mom's attention...

In those times, I remind myself that we chose this life. We know that God quietly asked us to have Ezra, and we chose to say "YES" to Him. It was a response of obedience, and I know that God will bless us AND Ezra like crazy for it. But for now, stuff be tuff. In all honesty, the transition into mommyhood has not been an easy one for me. There are days when I question God's voice and I question God's plan because the sacrifices often seem to outweigh the rewards, and WHAT THE HECK that's totally NOT FUN, God. When is it going to get easier?

I'm no longer the center of my attention. And the "old me" has fought against this new reality- kicking and screaming while being removed from the place of honor I was never meant to hold. And this past year and a half has been a crash course of me learning to LET IT GO ALREADY and start enjoying my life. It's a good place to be, but it goes against every fiber of my being. I love it and I hate it for all the same reasons: It's making me a better person.

Yet, oh my stars, when that boy snuggles up in the crook of my arm and flares his big ol' eyes at me as I tell him that the Itsy Bitsy Spider dared to go up the spout yet again... or when he quietly tip-toes around the house looking for me as we play Hide-n-Seek on a lazy Saturday morning... It suddenly feels like I'm floating between heaven and here... much closer towards the heaven side of things.

Nineteen Eighty Eight.The Year of Davy Crocket.

I found this picture the other day that dates back to 1988. I was 5 1/2 years old.
I DISTINCTLY remember drawing those green 'moustaches' on all of the boys in this picture, because I wanted to make sure that whoever saw this picture in the future (namely: YOU) would realize that the kid with the short blonde hair (3rd from the left, in the back row) was, in all actuality, a GIRL. (namely: ME.) Because, see? Girls don't have moustaches. Only boys have moustaches. (I was very clever back then.)

My best freind growing up was Jeremy. (the boy in the Davy Crocket outfit in the middle of the back row.) He had the cool coonskin cap and everything. I wanted to be just like Jeremy, so I asked my mom for a Davy Crocket outfit as well. She lovingly pieced one together for me after much begging and pleading on my part. I'm actually wearing it in this picture... You might not have noticed, however, because for some strange reason, my Davy Crocket outfit was BLUE. I still am not sure why it was blue, but it was. And I wore it proudly almost every day.

Siderodromophobia

It's 8:00AM, and I am actually awake before Ezra is today. This has only happened once before. Poor little dude didn't sleep so well last night because he's got a really runny nose, and all that extra snot kept waking him up. So, I've got my coffee and I'm already DRESSED even, and I have a feeling it's going to be a good day today.

I'm excited to move into our house (if everything goes through) because it won't be as close to the train tracks as this place we're in now. (The train tracks are like 4 inches from our house.) (OK, maybe more like 2 blocks, but it seriously SOUNDS like they are about to sideswipe my living room.) They are constantly blaring their deafening horns, and it is always waking Ezra up. Just recently Ezra has become more aware of these crazy loud locomotives playing chicken with our front door, and when he hears one, he stops whatever he's doing and strikes the 'wha is dat?' pose. Demonstrated here:


Or, if you prefer, the one-handed 'wha is dat?' pose shown here:




So, I'm CONSTANTLY explaining that the noise is just a train, CHOO CHOO! and Ezra has started running over to his book with a picture of a train in it and pointing to it with a terribly worried look on his face. I think the loud horns might scare him a little bit. Maybe I'll go get one of those "Baby on Board" signs that people put in their cars and just STICK IT TO MY FRONT DOOR.

Breaking Up is Hard to Do...

It's been a rough few days again. I feel so tired and so OVER this somedays. Like I could really use a long vacation where I could just switch off from 'diaper duty' and 'don't put that in your mouth duty' and 'NO we're NOT going outside again right now because it's 104 DEGREES outside duty'....

I'm trying to be a good mommy but I feel like I have no energy at the moment. I don't feel creative at all. So, Ezra watches "Toy Story" and "Sword in the Stone" while he eats his lunch (he's suddenly refusing to eat anything but hotdogs and blueberries), and I feel this constant dialouge running in my head that's telling me I'm not doing enough... That Ezra needs more from me. So, motivated by guilt, we head to the park that's a few blocks away and he runs around for about 30 seconds before he turns beet red and starts dripping with sweat. note to self: Too hot. Plan B: Barnes & Noble... Again.

There was this great little girl at B&N today, though, that was making Ezra laugh so hard he was snorting. She was about 4, (she only spoke French), and she would cover the bridges on the train set with her arm while Ezra pushed the trains under them, and for some reason Ezra found this more amusing than if Elmo himself had showed up with a box full of puppies and garden hoses. It was so funny. I was almost expecting a stuffy book-store employee to pop up out of nowhere and "SHOOSH" us for being far too loud in their quiet 'reading environment'... But, even if that would've happened, I wouldn't have cared, because there was NOTHING more adorable happening ANYWHERE on the face of the Earth in that moment, and I wasn't going to let anything spoil it.

Cute little French girl had to leave, though, and the look on Ezra's face as she left was just heartbreaking. He watched her go and then ran up to me while whimpering and pointing in her direction. "It's Okay little munk munk", I whispered. "This just means that you get all the trains to yourself!" He moped back over to the table and I watched him cover the bridges with his own arm while trying to push the trains through at the same time, but it just wasn't the same.

Don't be so sad, little Ezra. Someday I just know you'll find yourself a nice girl who will make you laugh until you snort and who won't ever leave your side.


Handsome little monkey throwing back some cold milk.

Random Factoids

Random Fact:

I'm not a big "ocean fan".

It smells like fish breath and rotting metal.

Plus, those horrid little sand fleas attempt to completely DEVOUR your legs as you weave between the slimy seaweed chunks that the ocean has recently barfed out. But I guess it is cool to know that you are standing on the very EDGE of America.

Ahead of you is water, and behind you is AMERICA. All the way back to the East Coast... And you can almost picture someone standing on an empty, cold, sandflealess beach in Maine thinking the exact same thing as you are. (Only in reverse.)

Then you happen to glance at the pefectly tan, trim girls prancing about in the California sand in their tiny bikinis and their cool funky sunglasses (that look ridiculous on you) and suddenly you feel lanky and white and terribly broad-shouldered.

Like I was saying... I'm not a big "ocean fan."


Another (quite embarassing) Random Fact:

I am horrible at Geography.

So horrible, in fact, that after I just wrote about the ocean, I had to google a map of the United States of America to "double check" if Maine actually bordered the water at all.

Chris likes to quiz me on Geographical locations every once in a while for a good laugh.
Example- I was CONVINCED that Philadelphia was a state and I was pretty sure its capital was PENNSYLVANIA... yikes.

Bulldozers and Dinosaurs

Ezra has learned how to play the harmonica (!)... and, consequently, I am PERMANENTLY traumatized from the never-ending scales in the key of G... up, down, up, down... *twitch twitch* (is there such a thing as noise torture?)

So, it's been a crazy few days... Basically, we found a house we liked and made an offer on it and the guy accepted it and so the last few days we've been waste-deep in piles of paperwork and fees upon fees upon fees...(upon fees). Hopefully our loan will go through OK, because we had to give sweaty landlord our 30 days notice already because we could potentially be moving into the new house in less than 3 weeks...aak!

I will take pictures of it this weekend when we go over there again...It's so great on the inside and it's less than a block from this gi-normous park. I drove by it today and the sign out front said SOLD on it, and it was so insane to know I was the one buying it. While I was staring at it in disbelief, I almost ran into a parked car.

That would have been a great frist-impression on the new neighbors.

Here's some words from a new song I'm working on:

The laundry pile is full of your clothes,
with little socks for little toes,
and bulldozers and dinosaurs
all over everything...

I never thought I'd see the day
when a little boy
would light the way
for loving to the moon and back
no matter rain or shine...

My Street.

I live on a beautiful street not far from downtown Oklahoma City in the most amazing old historic neighborhood I've ever seen. The house at the top of my block is well cared for and very nice. The house on the bottom of my block is totally run-down and leaning a little to the left. The houses inbetween seem to be lined up on this perfect progressive scale... the one to the right being a little nicer than the one on the left.

Just east across Broadway there is a Wonder Bread factory that pumps the air full of thick, warm yeast smells every few days. On these days, I like to step outside and take deep breaths, exhaling with "mmmmm"s. Instantly I crave hot gooey breadrolls- the ones that are so gushy, the middle oozes out after the first yummy bite.

The days are quiet here. The porch swing is constantly swaying in the never ending breeze, and the mailman comes at 4:00. He always compliments my stamps. I like him.

The hardwood floors become a maze once Ezra falls asleep... I step over and around the old boards that I know will creak and pop under my weight. I avoid the little hallway by his door because it creaks and pops louder than anywhere else in the house and it slopes down and to the left, which is always messing with my equilibrium.

The constant sounds are clocks ticking and birds chirping... the refigerator makes a loud popping noise followed by a buzzy hum every hour or so that I never really notice during the day but that always scares me at night. It sounds like "The Little Engine That Could"... chugging and chugging away to keep my perishables cold all day long.

The lawn outside leaves much to be desired...It's mostly that grass that hurts your feet when you walk on it... but I dream of one day looking out my window to see a thick blanket of soft green grass sloping away from my house-- the kind of grass that my son could tumble around on until he was breathless and marked with green at the knees.

Even though I am so excited to buy a house, I will miss this place when we go.

I never moved when I was a kid. The house I came home to from the hospital as an infant was the same house I saw in my rear-view mirror as I pulled away with my U-haul to head off to college.

I would love for Ezra to have a place like that- a place where all his memories are grounded- but I also know that Chris and I have chosen to live a life that refuses to let itself get stagnant or too "comfy". We want adventure and excitement and life-to-the-fullest until the very end... We want a life of QUALITY. Not material quality, but rich heart quality that goes wherever we go and will never get lost in mountains of moving boxes or 'marked down for immediate sale' at local neighborhood garage sales...

A life full of that kind of stuff is worth living.



The New Kidz on the Block

Rock n' Roll!

OK, so I have my first real show tonight and I'm so excited I can hardly stand it.

(Thanks, Joel!)

I've practiced my songs a ga-jillion times today and Chris' programming stuff sounds AMAZING. We've worked out a new song too, and it is fantabulous. My husband is one talented little monkey.

I am going to drop the little E off at the Anderson's tonight so they can watch him and I'm looking forward to the time of baby-less-ness. Good thing this show tonight is at Bridgeway, otherwise I'd probably celebrate my freedom by going hog wild and drinking too many midori-sours or delicious mojitos. have you guys tried one of these?? supposedly they are all the rage now and drinking them makes you totally awesome.