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Fruits

May 27, 2012 By 9 Comments

It’s a blog post that I have been both extremely excited and very nervous to write. It’s a blog post that comes with a tremendous amount of mixed emotion. And it’s a blog post that simultaneously brings tears of sadness with tears of happiness.

we are pregnant. WE are pregnant. WE ARE pregnant! WE ARE PREGNANT!

Yup, Ezra and Liam become older brothers! It is news that we have sat on for a while as we sorted through our own emotions before sharing with you; but we are finally at a place that we want to bring to you the thrill of what is next. Before I go any further, know that everything is just fine with the baby.

It would seem that every turn of life brings with it a new experience with grieving, and this one is certainly no different. The wrestling of loss and gain has been a scary battle at times, but a necessary process. Each turn of excitement is tempered with memory, but don’t worry, it’s not dampened…just put into perspective.

This new addition to our family will arrive in October, and we are really looking forward to celebrating the story with you all.

Did I mention…WE ARE PREGNANT!

Filed Under: Life in General

An Incredible, Insightful Poem

April 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

This is a poem written by a beautiful young person that we knew, who recently committed suicide. I understand that there are lots of reasons and influences for someone to take such a drastic measure, but the words in here speak volumes. Please take a minute to read them, hear them, and apply their meaning to your job as a friend/parent/spouse/child. The name of the author has been intentionally left non-complete as to allow for the most amount of privacy possible. Do not copy, publish, or otherwise use this anywhere without getting consent from the family.

Young Taylor, we will apply your insight and advice as best we can to our everyday life, in every role possible. Thank you for sharing.

written by Taylor

Buried alive, captured and suffocated in the folds.
The dark is so loud and practically blinding.
It gets harder everyday knowing the challenges of the day ahead.
The labels that teens stick on to your back.
It’s hard being yourself as it is.
Engulfed in a life of manufactured personalities.
By everyone turning into what they think they should be.
Music blasting to tune out sound.
Absolutely silent when no one’s around.
Even when your head is throbbing.
Working through a long, endless day.
It seems to be your own hand turning up the volume.
This age of 14 can make your head spin.
Even though it’s the age where life really begins.
Heartbreaks, crying, laughing,
maybe like me, go into depression.
Already, I’ve had one too many therapy sessions.
Just listen now, this is a confession.
Drama is unnecessary, it make me livid.
Talking stuff about others.
Don’t even know them, at least not enough.
See, like I said, 14 is tough.

Filed Under: Life in General

Florida, Spring Break Style

April 14, 2012 By 2 Comments

Yea, if you came this far and were expecting something from the clubs of Panama City, Miami, or Key West – that’s a different time in a different life. This spring break story is about a trip to north Florida (aka southern Georgia), a hot and humid place that just happens to have my Grandparent’s living there, the first Firehouse Subs location, and just about nothing else that would make someone want to go there. But, like I mentioned, it does have family and family history – and that far, far outweighs the downsides of the area.

We were fortunate this year to have the time over Ahna’s spring break to head down to Florida to visit with my Grandparents, and to help them celebrate some pretty dang big milestones. My Grandfather (PopPop) turned 90 back in February, and the two of them are celebrating their 65th wedding anniversary this month. They continue to amaze us by living, working, and operating on their own – in their own house, with their own car, and their own woodshop/workshop. I mean, PopPop (with the help of two good friends) installed a backyard fence recently….seriously. The two of them serve as the foundation for our amazing family, and they are a space-sized pillar of both physical and mental strength, as well as great role models for what a successful relationship should look like. Needless to say, we were very happy to be able to celebrate with them.

While there, we tripped to the Museum of Science and History, and to the beach; but we mostly enjoyed each others company and watching the two of them interact with Ezra. Ezra took to them as soon as we walked into their house for the first time – which is always a concern for someone that young after not seeing them for about two years (thank goodness for lots of pictures to reference on the home computer). We had the occasion to host a party at their house with some close friends and family to celebrate their milestones, and seeing everyone together was such a treat for all of us. Dad and I also took a day to head down to the Palatka area and go bass fishing (12 caught).

Outside of the party, perhaps the highlight of the trip was watching Ezra and PopPop build something together in his shop. They cut out, sanded, painted, and signed a wooden airplane that Ezra was able to bring home with us. Of course, the camera wasn’t too far away, but it will be a great memory for them to share for a lifetime. The other highlight for us was watching Ezra play at the beach. We went over to Jacksonville Beach (Atlantic side of the state), and Ezra just played and giggled in the slightly-too-chill water while we all made every attempt to stay mostly dry.

Filed Under: Ezra!, Life in General, Photos Included

10 Years Of Ahna & Oren

March 11, 2012 By 6 Comments

2002: I was fresh off of three weeks at the Olympics in Salt Lake City, 25 years old, and almost three years on the job. I had just bought a new house, was still living with a few other guys, and enjoyed going to Sancho’s for drinks and conversation. Ahna was in her first year with Denver Public Schools with a class she had picked up part of the way through the school year, and was recently completed with an amazing volunteer year with the Urban Servant Corps. She lived with a few other ladies in the Monroe House, and enjoyed going to Sancho’s for drinks and conversation.

2012: We have traveled to Europe, Africa, Mexico, and from west coast to east cost – and almost everywhere in between. We have enjoyed countless amazing live concerts, camping trips, and experiences that opened our eyes. We have witnessed friends meet, grow, get married, and have kids. We have seen the highest of the highs, and been to the lowest of the lows. We have seen life, and we have seen death. We have had two beautiful boys, and moved into an amazing house together.

Jobs have changed, housing has changed, friends have changed, families have changed, politics have changed, perspectives have changed, priorities have changed, we have changed…but ‘we’ have not changed. 10 years ago each of us walked into Sancho’s with some friends expecting a fun night of drinks, music, and happiness. Neither of us had any idea how much life was about to change – or how amazing it could be.

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Filed Under: Life in General, Photos Included

The Making Of A ShotSki

March 4, 2012 By 3 Comments

What is a ShotSki you ask? If you don’t know what one is, chances are pretty good that skiing isn’t a big part of your life….or if it is, you are about to be awakened to the new possibilities for old skis. The concept is pretty darn simple: take one old ski, and turn it into a shot drinking device for four people (usually to be used at a ski hill, but available for the occasional home use event). You will find instructions and corresponding images below (but first, a friend’s completed ski during use a few years ago):

Step 1: Procure old ski from basement, having kept it many years for this singular opportunity. Make sure it’s long enough, generally around 200 cm.
Step 2: Get medieval on it. Remove bindings. Make sure to have some variation on the following tools: many screwdrivers of each type, a chisel, a hammer, a dremel tool, and a hack saw.


Step 3: Clean, and paint (if desired).
Step 4: Use a 1.25″ hole saw and drill out places for the shot glasses to go. Realize after you start each hole that you won’t be able to complete the hole because the ski is skinnier than the drill bit. Be satisfied with just creating targets for the shot glasses to end up.


Step 5: Secure the shot glasses on the ski – I used contact cement….still waiting to see if that will be the final answer.


Step 6: Find the stickers that you have been accumulating for years and do your best to NASCAR up the ski with cool stickers from the past. Adds instant credibility to the ShotSki.


Step 7: Trail run. Enjoy the success!


Filed Under: Life in General, Photos Included

Editing Ezra

February 29, 2012 By 2 Comments

This is about words, and how our family’s realities collide with other non-suspecting people’s conversations.

We’ve spoken about it here before…about how difficult/weird/awkward it can be to talk with people about Liam. Especially people that we don’t know, or ones that we run into on a very casual basis (friendly faces at the gym, barber, etc). Ahna and I have gone from not even mentioning Liam in fear of ruining an otherwise superficial conversation to now being honest and straightforward when someone asks. Why should we hide or not include Liam’s life, even in these simple talks? The paraphrased exchange: do you have any children? yes, two. How old are they? our oldest son is almost four, and our youngest passed away when he was seven weeks old. Oh, I am so sorry. …and now we enter the awkwardness.

But the thing about this is that the question/answer is between two adults. We choose to ask the question because it’s the normal thing that you do. We choose to answer the way that we do because it’s important for us to talk about Liam, and to acknowledge publicly that this is our normal. We are (generally speaking) no longer afraid of where it goes.

Enter Ezra. Since day one, we have been honest, straightforward, and upfront with him about Liam. We have included him in our conversations, in our visits to the cemetery, and in our sadness. We talk about Liam all of the time, and so does Ezra. He understands. But his understanding is constantly evolving. We worried about how Ezra was going to react to Liam’s death, and how he would continue to deal with it over time. We listened and read about how this would be an on-going, never ending dialogue between us, and that he would have different reactions at different times in his growth.

For now, he knows what he knows. Ezra talks about Liam a lot, says hi to him when we pass by the cemetery, and will say that his brother is Liam. Sometimes he makes jokes using Liam’s name, we nervously laugh them off and direct him to a better punch line, but inside we are very happy that Liam is a part of his normal – even in loss. And its this comfort that he exhibits that finds us in bizarre places.

Last week we were in the waiting room at the pediatrician’s office, and Ezra was making nice with a young lady about his age. She started talking about her brother/sister (I can’t remember), and Ezra – plain as day – said “I have a brother. His name is Liam and he died.” The girl didn’t react – it probably went right over her head. The girl’s Mom turned and started to look at Ezra out of uneasiness, and I immediately blurted out “Ezra, that’s true, but we don’t need to tell everyone that.” Then the clarification questions came from the Mom and the surrounding parents, followed by the explanation, followed by the sympathy, followed by the awkwardness.

The part that didn’t sit right with me wasn’t what Ezra did, or what the girl didn’t do, or what the other parents did….it was my reaction. This is Ezra’s life, why should we be suppressing it when he tells other people about it? He didn’t lie, exaggerate, or make anything up – he told the cold, hard truth – in a 3.5 year old, stripped down kind of way. Now, I could certainly understand being a parent and having your child exposed to a topic of life that you weren’t prepared to expose them to yet. I know how that would be concerning, but I’m on the other end of the line on this one. Ezra’s not breaking news to them about guns, violence, sex, politics, hate, love, or money….he’s breaking news about his life. The coping of a 3.5 year old dealing with a loss of his brother – and I think I’m fine with that.

We continue to realize boundaries that have been destroyed for us still stand for others, and Ezra is running head first into walls of them everywhere. We are amazed at how much we learn from him learning. Maybe some parents will be disturbed if they hear Ezra talk about Liam. Maybe some will ignore it, maybe some will open a conversation with their child, and maybe some will understand completely due to their own experience. I don’t know. But at the risk of allowing Ezra to talk about Liam in a positive and productive way, I’ll take the gamble.

Filed Under: Ezra!, Liam!, Life in General

An Ezra Update: Photos And Videos

February 24, 2012 By 2 Comments

Soon more updates on Ezra will be coming you way (potty training, school, bull-headedness, etc)….but here are some fun photos and videos from the past couple of weeks.

Necessary sentence to space out the two videos because WordPress wants to compress them together for some reason.

Filed Under: Ezra!, Life in General, Photos Included, Video Included

A Year Later…

February 20, 2012 By 6 Comments

These past couple of months have been difficult, and with that sadness and disbelief came a basic non-need to write anything down. I kind of regret that at this point, but the truth of the matter is that I would have just written post after post about how much it sucks. And I’m not sure that you need to read that, and I’m certainly unsure if I need to document that.

It’s been very strange to be a year later. To be living life without Liam, and to be thinking about each day what was happening for him a year ago. One time I flipped back into the blog and read the entry from 365 days prior, but it didn’t do me much good other than induce a good belly cry. There would be days that Ahna and I would look at each other and think about being in the hospital last year. We would think about holding Liam, spending time with him, and worrying about him. We would think about the things that the doctors told us…..and we would forget those things because it is very hard, we are finding, to remember all of the internal struggles that Liam had. He looked like such a perfect kid from the outside, and it continues to be hard to remember – on a daily basis – all that was happening inside of him.

We cried a lot over the past week. There were many times that life just didn’t seem to make much sense. Times that it was a lot easier, and perhaps necessary, to slip into a place of depressing sadness. It didn’t just come on the anniversary day; indeed it came most intensely throughout the week. Liam died on February 18, but it was the Thursday night into Friday morning when we last spent time with him…and all of those time periods rose sharply with emotion. Several times each of us were sick to our stomachs.

We also thought a lot about the Doctors and Nurses at Children’s that cared for Liam. They spent two months of their lives with us, just as we did with them, and because of that we remember what amazing things they did for Liam and for Ahna and I. We also recognize that as their time with us ended, their time with someone else began – and they do that over and over and over. How they are such strong, caring, amazing people…I will never understand.

Last year at this time, we couldn’t have predicted how hard this would be. There are many mornings that I wake up and I don’t feel good about what has happened. I wish I could tell you that an overwhelming peace has settled in, but it hasn’t. Sometime last spring I wrote about how despite your intents, life just props you up. Still true.

A year later we have some things to celebrate, including good things at my work, good things at Ahna’s work, and a most amazing Ezra.

But it would be so much better with Liam to share it with.

Filed Under: Liam!, Life in General

Ssshhhh…..

February 13, 2012 By 1 Comment

Turn down the volume of your music/tv/computer and listen for a minute. Hear that? Yup, that’s the noise of the Little Hippie blog crickets chirping away. It’s been quiet around here for a while, but that’s about to change with a restart of the postings. Stay with us…

Filed Under: Life in General

Occupy 2011: The Best Of Playlist

January 11, 2012 By 1 Comment

A fashionably late arrival so as not to be mixed in, confused with, or otherwise overshadowed by the run-of-the-mill Best Of 2011 lists that populated the interwaves two weeks ago. Yea, I just made up the word interwaves…I’m that cool.

Competition to land on this year’s list was fierce, although three simple rules had to be obeyed. Rule #0 (because it applies every year): fit on a traditional CD. Rule #1 (becoming widely applied to all aspects of life): Don’t suck. Rule #2 (and most important): Sound great at a really high volume level. These rules combined to create an interesting array of music from all across the genre universe. Some of the music is a little more poppy and popular than in previous lists, and some of the music surprised me at it’s inclusion. Narrowing down the field was a treat filled with happily disturbing both the world around me and my ear drums while doing errands. The result of what I am calling a ‘confused listening style’ is music that sounds great outside of the perfect speaker set-up, and leaves you anxiously running through the store singing out load while rushing to get back to the car. Also, because why not go overboard with this, an award list is below the songs.

Some folks will be fortunate enough to get this from me on CD….as for everyone else….got your illegal music download service ready? 497 pared down to 20:

1. When You Were Mine (Prince cover) by John Heart Jackie
2. L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N. by Noah & The Whale
3. Exhaustible by DeVotchKa
4. Always Gold by Radical Face
5. Dog Days Are Over by Florence + The Machine
6. Sophia by Laura Marling
7. The Loneliness And The Scream by Frightened Rabbit
8. Sail by AWOLNATION
9. Uprising by Muse
10. Truth by Alexander
11. A Brief Introduction On Dubstep Production by Dubba Jonny
12. Around Us by Jonsi
13. Slow by Rumer
14. Someone Like You by Adele
15. From Finner by Of Monsters And Men
16. There There by Evaline
17. Your Surrender by Neon Trees
18. My Body by Young The Giant
19. Hit ‘Em Up Style by Carolina Chocolate Drops
20. Old Mythologies by The Barr Brothers

My Favorite: The Loneliness And The Scream
The One Despite All Efforts I Couldn’t Keep Off: Someone Like You
Biggest Surprise: Dubstep
Stolen From A Kid’s Movie: Around Us
Really Crank This One…No, Louder Than That: Uprising
Band Not Making The List For The First Time In A Few Years: Mumford and Sons
Bands Continuing Their Run: Laura Marling
This Year’s Local Act (although not someone that I know personally): DeVotchKa
Last Song Dropped From The Playlist: Holdin’ On To Black Metal by My Morning Jacket

Previous Year’s Best Of Lists:

Best of 2010

Best of 2009

Best of 2008

Filed Under: Life in General
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