In recent news

Well, it’s getting close to the end of the road. Tonight was our last Brooks College community dinner, and it was sad to say goodbye to the students. I really will miss this job; I’ve loved being able to integrate life, work, and school so that it’s hard to tell when I’m working and when I’m not. Meanwhile, even though we are tying up plenty of loose ends, we are preparing in earnest for our move to Ardmore. We’ve slowly been selling most of our furniture and several more pieces disappeared this week, including our long beloved dining room table. I could go on for a while about all the things that we are having to get rid of, but this picture sums it up pretty well.


This is basically what it’s like at our house these days. One of us picks up something, like, oh, I don’t know, a simple, non-descript, spaghetti strainer. Then we stare at one another, knowing that it’s time to get rid of our precious strainer. One of us says, "Do we have to get rid of this?" Yes, it’s time. But we’ve been through so much together; this strainer has served us at so many gatherings where love and friendship mingled richly over bountiful helpings of luscious spaghetti… mmmmm… I’m starting to get hungry. Yep, that’s pretty much what it’s been like. And after holding onto the strainer for a few minutes, I finally say goodbye, and let it go. After a while, this process gets exhausting. I mean, when you find yourself stopping to emotionally part with almost everything you own, it takes it out of you. I suppose there is a lesson somewhere in this… something like—our lives do not consist in the accumulation of things, but in the precious web of relationships that those things represent. Nonetheless, that was one damn good spaghetti strainer. We’ll have to part with the things, but we’ll hold on to the memories. Perhaps we could all stand to find a little less of our identity in the things we possess.

In other news, our niece’s first birthday party was today, and it was awesome! The guitar pictured below is a potent expression of the awesomeness that is my one-year-old niece: it’s frilly, musical, sassy, totally plays by it’s own rules, and is bedazzled from head to foot.

One cool thing that I learned about my niece today was that she likes avocado. How great is that? I was like, "What’s up Gracie, whatcha got there… ohhhhh, avocado, I like avocado." (She stared a “me too” right back). "What else is new?", I asked. "Not a lot," she burped, "I got a new social security card and learned how to clap my hands together like this."

Then she clapped for an unusually long time about a box of Ritz crackers that appeared. I’m pretty sure we wasted a lot of money on the gifts we bought her, because I realized in that moment that what we should’ve gotten her was a huge box of avocado flavored Ritz crackers. On a more serious note, she’s great and we love her a lot. It was good to see her today. She’s a grown a lot and is getting cuter all the time. I can’t wait til she starts talking.

And it begins

We sold our coffee table today. One thing down; 47,000 things to go. Okay, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but we do have a lot of stuff to sell between now and the third weekend in May. That’s the big weekend. My last day as a Baylor employee is officially May 14th, Collin graduates from Baylor on the 15th with all of our parents in attendance (I say all of our parents, because, well, these days we have a lot of parents!), and we will load up and move to Ardmore on the 16th. Thank you, mom and Baylee, in advance for your help. And Jeff/Jared (our ever faithful Ada movers/carpet cutter extraordinaire)—we will be wishing you lived in Waco on moving day! :) I know nobody likes moving, and neither do we, but we are going be insanely organized in hopes that the actual day will go smoothly. The organizing has begun… we went through all of our books and sorted them into categories (1. move to Ardmore/we need them this summer; 2. move to Ardmore/keep packed/we don’t need them this summer/find a place to store them; 3. move to Ardmore and then to Durham; 4. sell in garage sale or give away to students…. And each box has a label on the outside with a list of its contents). So we’ve gotten a good start, but still have a lot to do. I’m thinking of giving away a ‘free gift’ with every purchase. :) Today a girl came to our apartment to pick up the coffee table and after she left, I asked Collin if he gave her anything else. At first, he seemed puzzled, but then realized and agreed that the more stuff people carry out of our apartment, the less we have to sell/move/give away in the end. Good plan, don’t you think?

In other news, we've been missing our friends lately. Knowing that we'll see many of you soon should be a consolation, but rather, I just feel anxious for it to happen already! Spending time with people we love and who love us is really food for the soul and I think we're feeling a bit starved at the moment. Lucky the two of us are such good friends and actually like being around each other! :)