Hello Goodbye

leaving dallas was harder than anticipated. we really miss it. its hard to put in words. on one hand, we moved here b/c we felt like God called us to be at Vox and serve the people in the east austin neighborhoods, and i guess (in the youth group kinda way) we are supposed to be excited about it and gungho about it.

however, this does not feel "spiritual" at all....
monday - movers came and loaded all our stuff. we went down to austin. the movers did not, and told us they would bring the stuff on tuesday. it doesnt seem like a big deal until you realize that all of evan's stuff was on that truck. we slept at a hotel...check that...we tried to sleep at the hotel. he cried from about 6pm-1am...STRAIGHT. he has never done that before. i also realized that i didnt set up our cable/internet before we left and it wont be installed till tues....booooo!!!!!
tuesday - movers came and unloaded, but our apt was a wreck. diswasher does not work, toilet handle broke, tin found/killed a flea in the kitchen, vertical blinds did not close, and evan again had a terrible night. good thing tin's 2 sisters were there to help us out...thanks k and g :)
wednesday - k and g left, we are exhausted and basically spent all day putting stuff away...evan didnt have a great night, but it wasnt like monday.
thursday - exterminators were supposed to come but didnt, still putting stuff away, tin and i took turns holding evan for about 3 hours at a time during the night so that he would go to sleep.

none of this feels spiritual...in fact it feels the opposite of "spiritual". in addition to all this, i think i am feeling a bit homesick. part of me wants to just stay holed up here. recently i have been wanting to quell my exhausted/tired/homesick feelings with things. i want to buy a car to make myself feel better.

as we come to our senses, we know that true spirituality is in living unselfishly and loving others as we love ourselves. we tend to want to love ourselves more. if anything, this week has been a stringent exercise in being loving and kind despite not having what we are used to having in terms of sleep, living amenities, and situations going our way.

Playing it safe isn't really that safe

i was reading this article on a guy that was a civil engineer that gave up his job so he could walk across america. he's not doing it for a cause or to draw attention to the health benefits of walking.

No, for Green, there's just something about the act of walking that makes him really happy, much more content than he ever would have been in his office cubicle in Manhattan, where he used to daydream about doing something epic like this.

On the road, there's a simple purpose to each day, he says. There is camaraderie with the people he meets along the way. There is excitement in discovering what's around the next bend.

and it was the next line that really hit me..."Playing it safe isn't really that safe," he has concluded. "If you do that, you miss out on a lot of the great things life has to offer."

this really hit us yesterday as the day of our move to austin looms on the horizon. i know we dog on dallas sometimes, but over the last couple of years especially, we have grown to love and value the friends we have here. it used to be that the grass is greener in austin, but now we feel like the grass is greener here and now that we have discovered that...we are leaving.

we have family here. invariably, every friday we dont feel like cooking, so we would go over to k's parents house on fridays for dinner and hang out with the family. my dad is here also, and we wont be able to hang out with him and have bahn mi sandwiches with him at lee's anymore.

our friends here are great too. its great when you have friends that feel comfortable enough to just come over unannounced. its the people that you can just let your guard down with and not have to worry about what comes out of your mouth b/c they just understand. all this is the result of years of hanging out, talking, sharing, and giving of yourself to people.

now we feel like we are called to go to austin, but it also feels like we are giving up the civil engineering job to go walking. it is not that we arent clear on what our objective is by going there, and it is not that we are unfamiliar with austin. i guess we feel like we are starting all over again.

playtime

the whole fam had fun last night...

let the games begin...
evan: "im not so sure about this..."evan: "i knew he was a cannibal!"
evan: "this is getting weird..."

territorial

so i had evan laying on my lap while k and i ate dinner. i was eating this chicken soup. all of a sudden, feel this warm feeling on my upper leg. oh look, its just evan marking his territory...


been peed on 3x and counting...

new invention

i think the newest thing in baby technology will be kinda like a sous-vide machine. what would happen is you put a waterproof wrapping around your baby's lower body with a hole cut out for his bum and pee hole (whichever one that may be). set the temperature to about 98 degrees and let nick lachey sing to him/her. nix that last part about nick lachey. then you put your baby in the water and just let him poop and pee in the water. the water would automatically flush everytime poo or pee goes into it, and refills with warm water again.

your baby is warm b/c of the water...dry b/c of the waterproof wrapping. you dont have to change him 10+ times a day, and everyone is happy :). if someone makes this, i get first dibbs.

bath time

evan loves to have his hair washed...

random parenting thoughts

1. sidesnaps are the best

2. why is it that females give birth and have to breast feed? you would think that God would have somehow split up those duties as they are essential to the raising of a child?

3. i have never been happier to see yellow poop

4. i dont see how single moms do it...much props to single moms

5. i dont see how people can have child after child. my sisters and i are 1.5 years apart. that is a tough 5 year stretch.

lutece

i talked to my sister for a while on the phone reflecting on mother's day past. one mother's day a long, long time ago, i was in elementary school, and i wanted to get something "grown up" for mother's day. i had planned ahead and saved portions of my lunch money and some money i collected as i picked up leaves and petals for my elderly neighbor across the street.

i collected about $10 dollars, and it was time to buy something...so, what was an elementary school boy supposed to do? i did the only thing i could do. i went to albertson's to look for perfume. now, mind you, this was back in the late 80's...so $10 was a lot of money.

a friend and i rode our bikes to the store, and star

ted to look around. i dunno who came up with the idea, but we decided that perfume was going to be the gift. i gathered all the "adultness" inside me, and i asked one of the store workers to open up the glass case that held all the perfume.

my friend and i smelled about 4 different ones, and i settled on one. it was called Lutece, and it was about $7! what a steal to be able to find the perfume you like at a reasonable price!

perhaps i am over dramatizing it, but i remember when she opened the package, she had such a look of joy that her son got her something for mother's day. she loved it. she would wear it to church, on special occasions, and i was so proud when she wore it. since she wore it so sparingly, she would still wear it years and years later, and that wonderful smell would fill the room and car.

to be honest, i dont know why or how i came to the conclusion that this one was the best. years later, i smelled it, and it wasnt quite what i remembered. okay, it was pretty bad. i actually cant believe she wore it, but that was my mom. she loved whatever i gave her...b/c it was from me.

christened

i was changing evan's diaper yesterday. his umbilical cord is just a stump but not fully gone, and his circumcision is not fully healed either so i have to put a gauze pad with vaseline on him. however this being my first week of changing diapers, i didnt have his gauze ready so i could quickly change him. then i made the noobish mistake of leaving his diaper undone while getting his gauze ready.

when i came back to him, just before i put the gauze on him, he peed all over my hand and forearm. it was not like it was just a little bit either. it was like a mini gardenhose shooting pee all over me.

hence, i am christened...a father

and then there were three

it has been a crazy week. last week at this time, it was just the two of us. then, k's water broke. pretty much all of her friends told her when it happens, it would just be a trickle. yea right. it was like half a gallon of liquid gushing out of her. we were lucky that we had a waterproof mattress cover on or our most prized possession would have been ruined.

i remember saying to k right as we stepped outside our apt door, "you know...next time we walk through this door, there will be three of us."...we both kinda took a deep breath and made our way to the hospital.

so that was 11pm, and we got to the hospital around midnight...16 hours later, we have a perfect little package in the form of a 6 pound 3 ounce little boy. happy one week birthday evan.