The life and times of a little hippie in the Bersagel-Briese clan.
This is how ‘A Starry Night’ began, right? Ezra’s artistic side continues to impress and grow, and here are two examples of that talent. The one is a person and a car, and the other (with a P and a S) is his attempt at making me a name tag for the library’s story time. I know it’s not going to land him on The Today Show, but we’re really proud of the burgeoning skill set of the not-even-three-year-old (at the time).
I know it’s cliche….but sometimes it’s really hard to believe that Ezra is already three years old! The kid has continued to become an amazing individual, that lights up our days moment by moment. He is so smart, so funny, so playful, so interested, so fun, so strong, and so darn good looking.
We had a few folks over for a small gathering of some of his friends and some of our friends. I’m not sure of the social norm, but I think that this might have been the last year that the party guest list was dictated by us. It was a really fun morning, and it was really neat to see Ezra and the other kids all playing together and playing well together (this has become one of our great joys: watching Ezra play on his own with other kids).
The party was a slightly themed Cars (the movie) event, highlighted by an amazing cake that Ahna put together (with a little help from me). We spent the better part of four hours (ending at almost 130am) cutting, carving, and decorating the cake to look like Lightning McQueen…and if I do say so myself, it turned out pretty awesome.
Thank you to everyone for the cards, gifts, and thoughts. We passed them all along to Ezra (except the ones with money stayed with me).
About a month before Ahna and I ever met, I had the opportunity to see U2 in Denver at the Pepsi Center in what was one of the greatest rock shows I have ever seen. So it didn’t take long for it to come up in our early conversations as we learned more and more about each other…and it didn’t take much longer than that for Ahna to express her wishes to see them the next time they came to town.
Fast-forward to November of 2009 when it was announced that they would be having a stop at Mile High Stadium as part of their 360 Tour. I changed schedule and re-arrange the bank accounts to make sure that I was sitting at the computer at precisely 10am on the morning that the tickets went on sale. We were rewarded with field tickets to what was sure to be a great show just a few months away. Now’s a good time to admit that we are both huge U2 fans, and each proclaim to have a song or two of theirs in our top-10 lists. So it was with much anticipation that we awaited June of last summer to roll around. As it got closer, U2 seemed to find more air time on our iPods as we certainly wanted to be as up-to-speed on the music as possible (there’s a lot of prep that goes into seeing a concert sometimes). But, our balloon was burst when we turned on the news one morning to see that Bono had hurt his back at a show in Germany and U2 was going to have to reschedule the rest of that leg of the tour. Bummer.
I can’t remember exactly when they announced the new date for the show, as insignificant details of the last six months have found their way out of my mind; but I can tell you that when we heard about it, we were excited. So, last weekend was the culmination of years of wait and nearly two years of ticket holding. This time around, the anticipation level was a lot more muted than last summer, but we made a night out of it…gave Ezra over to my parents, had dinner with some good friends from the hospital, enjoyed an amazing show, and spent the night at a hotel downtown.
There are plenty of places to hear about the stage set-up for the show (huge, cool, trippy) so we won’t go into how it takes four days to build and two days to disassemble. There are also plenty of places to hear about the set list that they debuted for the Denver show (and they played each of our favorite songs – All I Want Is You and Zooropa…both very rare) so we won’t go into how fun it was to hear music that spanned their entire existence but focused on their albums from the 90s. There are also plenty of places to hear about how loud and loud the shows have been (it was actually to the point of pain several times) so we won’t go into how we contemplated stepping out of the show just to let our ears relax for a minute only to stay inside in fear of missing a part of the show that we have waited so long to see.
But, I will bring up what was one of the highlights of the evening – because it produced one of the most striking images I have ever seen. They sang a song titled ‘Miss Saravejo’ which comes from the b-side of their greatest hits; and one that they sung under a pseudonym and with some random guy named Pavarotti. It’s a beautifully written and performed song inspired by the Serbian-Bosnian war from the 90s (Bono sung the operatic part). During the show, they had video and still images from the 1993 Miss Saravejo contest, and the still shot that you see below has turned into an image that I don’t think I’ll ever forget. There is so much depth in the photo, that there is little hope of ever trying to explain it…so I just look at it, and hope that we find a way to never let anything like that happen again.
The show was everything that we hoped it would be: we laughed, we cried, we sang out loud and danced till we couldn’t anymore. It was great to catch up with a very special set of people, and it will certainly go down as a concert to remember.
In the middle of living the very sedentary lifestyle of the NICU, Ahna and I had an idea to help us be motivated to move more once we were no longer there all the time: to run in the Colfax Marathon…and since taking a couple of people who generally try to avoid running distances over a few feet towards running a full marathon is a feat that even NASA couldn’t accomplish in just a few weeks, we opted to sign up for the marathon relay.
This of course posed problem number 2: getting others to do it with us. We solved this problem in the only way that seemed reasonable at the time; no, not by graciously asking people that we thought would be natural fits, but by telling people that we thought would be more like our lack-of-running-selves. Interestingly enough, we were able to find a few other couples to fill out two teams, and the folks jumped right on being apart of the relay. When we had our team lunch/party, we came up with a name that we all thought suited the style of running and overall motivation: Team Lazy And Guilted.
We signed up as two teams of five people, so each person could run with their partner (there were three couples, one mother and daughter, and one set of friends that was due to one of the guys getting hurt just a few days prior to the race) and dedicated our monies towards The Children’s Hospital Foundation in memory of Liam. Whatever training could be done was, and each of us braced ourselves for our 10K or 5K leg of the race. It’s a great run because it goes right through downtown Denver and back creating a lot of things to look at…but I suppose that no matter where you go, if you go 26+ miles, you bound to have a lot of things to look at.
This past Sunday morning was the race, and Tracy and Olivia kicked it off nice and early in the cold and mist. Ahna and I followed with leg 2, a 10K run through downtown Denver and through several miles of cold and rain. We passed off to Jay and Karen who ran a mostly uphill leg out towards Edgewater, and they met up with Tallie and Melissa who came hauling back to Invesco Field. Mark and Kendra got the joy of finishing the race back into City Park, and we all met with them just before the finish line to run across together.
We did learn a few things from the race: cold and wet means cold and wet, but it’s not bad running weather. No matter your previous running experience, you can push through either a 5 or 10K when you set your mind to it. Running through a city is a lot better than running on a treadmill. You can still be super sore two plus days after the event. A long run in the early morning equals a nice nap in the afternoon. The first few sips of a free beer are awesome, the remaining amount is disgusting. The combination of lime Gatorade and banana is surprisingly awful. Finishing your leg of a larger race is extremely rewarding. Running a combined 52.4 miles in memory of Liam is stunningly emotional. And finally, running it all with some great friends is an unbelievable experience.
We’re all (except for Tracy and Olivia that are moving) are in for next year. We are going to be looking for a couple of new folks, and maybe if there is enough interest, we can do another team. A big thanks to Adam, who after tearing his quad muscle in a house fire earlier in the week, was able to come out and be our official team photographer.
Wow, it’s been a while! Thanks for the break, and for not knocking down our digital door demanding more posts while we took some time to slow the typing roll. A few weeks have passed since we last saw each other with fresh stuff, and for that we are somewhat apologetic…but truth be told, it’s been a welcome renewal. We have had lots of up days, lots of down days, and a few sideways days; but as things go, we are dealing with each day as it comes.
This is going to serve as a catch-up post, then we’ll hopefully be back to regularly spaced updates…so let’s go:
Ezra had his last day at Peggy’s house (as detailed in the last post). It was a day of a lot of fun and a lot of tears, that for us quickly led to a near immediate need to refocus on his first day at his new joint. The new place is even closer to school, and is also an in-home center that a couple of kids from Peggy’s transferred to as well. So there is a new home, new friends, and a few familiar faces. So far Ezra has been there a few days and seems to be adjusting really well and having a great time. It’s a big relief to know that he’s in a good place and is having fun.
Just a few days after the emotional last day at Peggy’s was the emotional day that was Mother’s Day. I’ve debated how much to write about this day, and eventually decided on just including a few words here. We tried really hard to focus on good/positive things, but there was simply no way possible to go more than 15 seconds without thinking about Liam. It was a really hard day for us both, although we were able to have a good time spending the day as the three of us. We went that morning to Breakfast at the Zoo, which was a lot of fun. We had a good meal, and were able walk around the place without too many other people around. Without going into everything that Ezra and I wrote in Ahna’s card, it has to be said and repeated here that Ahna is an amazing Mother of two beautiful children. Ezra, Liam, and I have been so lucky to have her in our lives.
Ezra slept a bunch as he has been fighting a cold/temp/laryngitis….
And the ladder truck has been on a few fires…although I wasn’t on this one. I’ve gotten to attend, but this one was done while I was at training so I didn’t get to go. It gets a place here on the blog because a) it’s a good picture, and b) there is a great story about what is happening at this exact minute that will have to be shared face to face.
Oh, and here is a closing random photo.
At 2.5 (almost 3) years old, Ezra has seen a lot and been through a lot and shown great maturity through it all. But despite all of the ups and downs that life has offered to him, it’s still hard for me to imagine that he is already doing the same thing that I am doing – and he was able to start doing it some 28 years sooner….he is now driving his own ladder truck.
A few nights ago while at work, Ahna and Ezra stopped by on their way home from the airport. It was a nice visit and certainly gave me my family fix in the middle of the long shift at work; then things got interesting. In a pre-arranged surprise, a great friend and fellow firefighter – CJ – showed up and shocked us with an amazing gift for Ezra. It seems that over the past several months, CJ and a few others have been conspiring behind closed doors to create a fire truck that Ezra will be able to have and to play with; built in memory of Liam.
CJ, Tony, Brett, Ron, Carl, Ryan, Scott, Jenn, Sabrina, Stacey, Emily, John, and Amy all contributed to this amazing project. They started with a toy-pedal fire truck, and left the ‘stock’ world from there. The truck was disassembled and rebuilt using complete custom parts – all meticulously thought out and crafted. And as an amazing tribute to the fire service family, a lot of the people involved don’t even know us, they just know of us. According to CJ, once word spread about the project, people immediately offered their expertise and time to help create the truck. Wow.
For a tour of the customization (starting at the front, driver’s side): all of the paint is hand done and completely custom, including copper leaf and pin striping. The paint on the hood air vents is designed to resemble a pike pole. Then the bell was a complete custom job and added to the truck (the original came on top of the hood and was not brass). The wooden backboard was hand made and includes custom engraving (the logo-ed backboard is a Denver FD tradition that I love on this truck because it is a great reminder of who helped with the truck). On the back of the truck are two special made metal etched/cut outs that speak directly to what the truck is all about: Brotherhood and Never Forget. In the back of the truck, you will find some examples of tools on every ladder company like a salvage cover, a hall runner, and some rope. The extension ladder was completely hand made and is fully functioning, as is the pike pole directly above it. The original truck didn’t have a siren on it, so the guys made sure to fix that by finding, ordering, and adding an electronic siren that is wired to work from the dash. Also from the dash, you will find the control for the working lights. The final touch is the most striking: ghost images on the hood. You can only see these in certain lights and only from certain angles, but there are hod-rod style flames, and Liam’s name.
It is obvious from the moment that you set eyes on this truck that it is an extremely unique gift that was made with a tremendous amount of love – which is why I was speechless when we were surprised by it, and I get teary eyed when I share about it with other people.
There is one additional chapter to this amazing story…the photos that you see below. Before the truck was turned over to Ezra to play with (which is what the folks that built it asked for – because I wanted to put it in a display case), I wanted to take some good pictures of it. So I contacted a photography studio that is here in Castle Rock and they were receptive to the idea. Ezra and I went there this morning and had an amazing experience with them, and ended up with some amazing photos. The folks at Forever Yours Photography not only opened up their space to us, they walked me through a studio photo session step-by-step….all as a donation to someone in their community.
So here are the photos that despite how awesome they actually are (joke), could never show how awesome the truck actually is. This is another gift that we have no way of ever being able to say thank you enough, so we will instead smile and think of Liam every time that Ezra drives his very own custom ladder truck.
We went to one of the two annual open-to-the-community Easter egg mad dashes hunts this morning. This one is sponsored by a local community church and it’s claim to fame is that there is a helicopter that comes and drops eggs for the kids to go and get (last year the helicopter was cancelled due to weather). As Ezra is a year older this time around (last year he just took off running and didn’t bother to pick up any eggs until we prompted him) he was much more into it. We have to give him a ton of credit….once he got about 10 eggs in his basket, he calmly walked away and let others pick up their share of eggs – no Extreme Hoarding TV shows in his immediate future.
PS – there is also a playground at the park where the event took place…thus, pictures from there too.
Even though the weather isn’t entirely spring-like (it’s been a typical Colorado spring thus far: snow in the mountains, and front range weather bouncing back and forth between late winter and early summer), there are examples that spring might be just around the corner. And while this isn’t entirely good news for skiers like myself (because that means that summer isn’t too far away), it is good news for earthly things like trees. And as such, Liam’s tree is starting to bud…
The Life of a Little Hippie 