Little friends at the zoo.

I met up with Houston friends Betty & Noelle at the zoo yesterday morning (#willcommuteforfriends). Our little boys are all within a few weeks of each other, & someday, I bet they'll think that's really fun. Until then, we pushed them around the zoo trying really hard to make them excited about all of the different animals (think an endless stream of three moms saying, Look at that! Look! Looooook!!! Do you see it?! Do you see? LOOK!!). It turns out that they were mostly happy about the helicopters flying to & from the children's hospital nearby, although Quinn did have some smiles & giggles for the monkeys & the giraffes (next time, you'd better believe I will pay that $5 for three pieces of lettuce to feed those long-necked animals - Q would likely go into happiness hysterics). Really though, it was just nice to be outside on a really beautiful day with friends. The Houston Zoo is really great, & I'm sure that we'll love using our pass there this year (outside of the June-July-August months, anyway). Next time, we'll head to the petting zoo - with lots of hand sanitizer & maybe a fresh change of shoes. 

I should mention that Q refused to take off his sunglasses all morning, which was hilarious / unusual given that he'd never actually agreed to wear them for longer than four minutes before. I put them on, & they stayed put for the next several hours. The best part is that with the sunglasses-wearing comes a sunglasses face. Like, he's too cool to smile or something, & everything has to be all chic & serious. Kills me.

Afterwards, we met up with other-friend Danielle (+ baby Wells) at Happy Fatz in The Heights & I forced Noelle & Betty to eat hot dogs against their will (why do I have such a special place in my heart for these things?!) . Really though - so delicious! A fresh pretzel roll & lots & lots of hot dog options to choose from. Cake balls for dessert, too! It's a happy little hot dog house, reminded me of all of the small + quirky places we love(d) in New York, & I hope to go back very soon. 

(Of course, Q kept his sunglasses on all throughout lunch. Only the coolest of little boys can pull off wearing them indoors, I suppose.)

It was smaller than it looks*! I ate the whole thing. 

 *This is a lie. It was huge.

Our friends in The Heights.

We drove down to The Heights on Friday morning. Q quietly read his book while I tried my best to avoid dying while being sandwiched between two semi trucks at 80 MPH. I'm turning into an old & fearful woman & really, really hate driving on I-45 during rush hour. 

I went to Noelle's Body Combat class again. This woman is serious! Did I ever tell you about the first time I went? Her class is like a spiritual revival... but with exercise. I wanted to scream Hallelujah! but instead I found myself grinning like a total idiot in the middle of the class (while concurrently sweating buckets) & thought, Why am I smiling so big! This hurts! I won't be able to pick up my son tomorrow! She's amazing, & positive & motivating, & her class is worth the drive, especially when there are promises of Lola's afterwards (which thoroughly negates the effort of making it through said class, & then some - I am destined to never be thin, oh well!). 

Q & EZ tagged along, of course. They threw food at each other + the floor, didn't eat any veggies (Q), & were super jealous of the chocolate malt that Noelle & I appropriately shared. Happy times! I'm not sure there are many things sweeter than seeing two little friends so happy in having some like-sized & like-minded company.

The Ons make living in Houston much, much happier.

Heights Holiday Home Tour.

It's hard for it to feel like Christmas when it's 70 outside. To be fair, we're in a bit of a cold snap this week (it's currently 38, excuse me Houston?!), but there are still palm trees, & I just don't think of Christmas when I see tropical trees.

Anyway.

Noelle is a good friend & invited me to come down to Houston to go through the Houston Heights Holiday Home Tour Saturday night. I think that it would be safe to call the Heights the East Village of Houston, so I assumed it would be interesting. We like the Heights! If we lived inside the loop, we'd be living there, but since we're living in The Woodlands (which is beautiful, & lovely...), I have a frequent craving for different (different isn't exactly included in our HOA guidelines & requirements). 

The homes were all decorated really beautifully for Christmas, but they were more interesting from an interior design perspective. It was an eclectic mix of design & style, & it gave me a hundred new ideas (um, dreams) for our own space. If I actually knew anything about interior design, I would start using a lot of design-y words right now to describe all of the homes.

House #1 - Why did I not take more photos of the interior?! It was absolute perfection. Like the perfect mix of vintage & modern, with perfect little collections everywhere & perfect frame collages. & perfectly charming everything everywhere you went. Everything was warm & cozy & just made me want to curl up with a warm drink & listen nice music while chatting with friends. That's my kind of home.

Interior features include an extensive art collection, period antiques & modern furnishings, which uniquely complement the Craftsman style of the home. The owners restored the foyer's antique clock after salvaging it from an early 20th Century Heights home that was slated for demolition. Thomas & Phil love to entertain & designed the home for that comfort with a spacious gourmet kitchen, big open living areas with vaulted ceilings & an inviting fireplace.

House #2! Beautiful. And they had a band playing Christmas carols in the backyard. AND they gave us hot apple cider.

George Henry Burnett purchased this Queen Anne-style home, now listed in the National Register of Historic Places, in March 1904. The house was precut at a mill in East Texas, shipped by rail, & transported to the site by horse-drawn wagon. Mr. Burnett moved to the Heights after tragically losing his family in the Great Storm of Galveston in 1900. Historic features of the home include original storm shutters, windows, heart-of-pine floors, mahogany doors & antique furnishings in the two front rooms. The leaded glass in the front sitting room was imported from France & features a palmetto & urn, depicting the Tree of Life. It's current owner, Mr. Burnett's grandson, Arlen Feguson, acquired & remodeled the original home in 2000 & completed a second renovation project in 2010.

I want this floor mirror.

House #3. And that is all (they had really pretty lights, & a guest cottage & a closet that was so perfectly folded that I want to spend all day perfecting my own).

House #4! Owned & decorated by crazy people. Crazy!! So much plastic, so much Americana. And really, it smelled vintage. You've seriously never seen a home with so much stuff in it. I have no idea how they live there without their brains exploding. It was a total trip to walk through & my photos do it absolutely no justice. I really just shouldn't even try.

Built in 1920, this wonderful two-bedroom cottage retains its orginal floor plan & the interor & exterior design reflects a free-spirted artistry common to the neighborhood. Kristal, owner of Jubilee - a favorite boutique in the Heights - collects vintage Americana & antiques, including coin-operated vending machines, mid-century furnishings, & Depression-era Fiesta dinnerware. A separate space recently renovated behind the home is a music studio for Kevin - a drummer in several local bands. The holidays at the home are ushered in with a large collection of vintage Christmas Americana, including a lighted angel choir & plastic Santa collection, & assorted trees - one adorned exclusively in pink ornaments.

A painting of their pets, of course. 

The bathroom had a mermaid theme, which I'm sure inspired many to go home & bedazzle their own nipples.

A functioning television!

Hi, Noe!

Noelle & I skipped out early & finished off the night with a nice little dinner at Lola. My Day After Thanksgiving sandwich makes me want to make Thanksgiving dinner all over again (almost - at least order it from somewhere, which is what we're doing next year for 1/4th the price of what we spent on groceries this year!).

It was really just a super, duper good time - doing adult things, with really nice girls, in an area of the city where we could walk from place to place (mostly)! It all made me feel a bit nostalgic (for a lot of things - being with a group of girls I know well & am comfortable with, walking everywhere, culture) - but it was really so much fun, & a happy night in Houston. Hooray!

We're moving to Texas.

Or as my sister said, "are you kidding?"

We're moving to Houston*. In August.

I don't even know what I feel like typing that sentence. Heartbroken. Excited. Devastated. Hopeful. Peaceful. Nauseous. It's kind like a strange out of body experience, & I feel like I need to keep staring at the words that I just typed so that it can continue to more fully absorb. Because I can't really believe it myself.

Houston, Texas. THE GREAT STATE OF TEXAS. Texas. 

My emotions are thisthisclose to the surface & I've cried in far too many inappropriate places over the past several days. My right eye has been twitching nonstop since Mike got his official offer while we were in St. Thomas last week, & that tight feeling has apparently made a permanent home in my chest. 

I met with a leader in our church today & he made the comment that when he first met Mike & me over six years ago, we were just babies. We really were! Twenty two & twenty four years old, newly married, & just complete novices about life in general. Six years later! We've built our marriage here. We've built careers, built roots & built a family - both of friends, & of our own. We've watched people come & go, all the while never feeling that tug to go somewhere else ourselves. New York has been the only home we've known together, & going away somehow feels like an act of betrayal, or maybe even like giving up (because it takes a lot of work to make it really work in the city, especially with a family). It's neither of course, but the insecurities nag at my confidence. To say that we've loved New York would be a ridiculous understatement, because it's like saying that we've also loved chocolate ice cream & cozy sweaters on chilly fall days or something. This is our home & we have felt so loved & settled here. We never intended to leave, & have always said that we'd stay as long as the opportunity continued to exist. It has & we've felt really blessed along the way. We've evolved into real New Yorkers. You know, the kind that really get the jokes in Tina Fey's book about the 6 train, the kind that have babies without ever discussing an exit strategy. What we didn't expect was that another opportunity would come up somewhere else without us looking for it. And that all of a sudden, we are those people that are leaving. 

I wish that I could write like Emma (or think like Emma - she's beautiful, & brilliant in a way that just isn't fair), because she is so good at articulating the experience of watching people go. It's one of those things that make life in the city hard, the outward & inward flow that seems to happen every summer. We have always been on the watching end, which is perhaps why the going feels so surreal. I wish that I could properly share the feeling of community that exists in the city, amongst our friends, & between the people in our church congregation. I'm convinced that the city is entirely unique. That it is special, the kind of special that you can in no way grasp if you've only lived here for a summer, or vacationed for a weekend, when you haven't poured yourself into it, & then witnessed it give back to you. The alumni of New York City are always going to share something that is almost indefinable.

Kylie took these photos a few weeks ago for us, around the same time that I told Kelsey that nothing will come of these Houston discussions, so it's not even worth talking about. Really! A few weeks later, & just two days ago, Mike resigned from his job & committed to going to another firm for a fantastic opportunity. He would likely say that resigning from a wonderful firm where he's worked with wonderful people for a half-dozen years was one of the hardest experiences he's ever had.

So now I'm here with all of these spinning thoughts at night ranging from wondering what car to buy (should I even be allowed on the road? I've barely driven since 2005), to how to go grocery shopping with a baby in the suburbs, to whether or not I will ever make friends again (replacing friends is of course not an option). I'm wondering what we're going to do with the free time that we'll have this summer (Mike has 50 days of garden leave), when & where we'll see various family & friends, & how on earth I can possibly cope knowing that my little boy isn't going to remember this city. All of our years here are replaying in my head like a movie, & I keep wondering if it really is possible to untangle who I am with New York (no), & what that means for me once I'm not here any more.  

Deep breaths, deep breaths, deep breaths. 

I am excited. I am. I've never had a washer & dryer in my living space, & I have visions of closets that are bigger than Quinn's nursery. There are perks of suburbia that I'm sure will be wonderful & happy (a garbage disposal! trunk space for groceries vs. carrying everything I purchase!). We'll be closer to my family for the first time in years, I'll get to decorate a home that has more than three rooms (new bedding is already purchased - I'm coping by shopping) & Quinn will have some room to run (once he learns how). And I'm proud of my husband! So, so very proud. Because he's smart, hard working, & is really talented - talented enough that people work really, really hard for a really long time to get him to work for them! He loves me, he loves his son & he just wants us to be a happy family. I'm grateful for him & for this new opportunity for us. I know it's right, I know it's right, I know it's right. 

But my heart really hurts, & I'm just a little bit scared.

I'm extra happy that we have these pretty photos from Kylie in our city. 

That's all I've got in me for today. 

*If you know anything great about Houston / have a friend in Houston / live in Houston / know where Houston is on a map / have something nice to say about Houston, please email me. If you have terrible things to say about Houston / used to live there & hated Houston / can only talk about the heat + humidity + hurricanes + tornadoes in Houston, please go away & stop telling me about it right after I tell you I'm moving there with my husband & child.