someone had a birthday…

…and we celebrated all week long! i’m a celebrator. and what better to celebrate than the birth of the boy i love?

he got a little something special each day for the week leading up to his birthday, and then an ice cream cake and gathering of friends on august 20.

the boy is pretty laid back about stuff like birthdays. his only request was that we have a pudding-and-gummy-bear-eating contest. truly. the boy, his brother (who happened to be in town for a work training!) and two friends competed to see who could get ten gummy bears out of a bowl of vanilla pudding fastest – without using their hands. random, but true. and actually very fun to witness!

i could get all mushy and tell a million reasons why i am incredibly, incredibly, so very very glad this boy was born, but i’ll just leave you with that image of faces in bowls of pudding…

it was a happy birthday week.

sometimes i just want to quit at life

it has been a rough week. 

i’ve been feeling awfully sick – sinus congestion that i just can’t get to go away. it’s the first week of school so things have been wild at work. an unexpected staffing change left the after-school program short on adults, so i stepped in and have been working (with middle-schoolers, mind you) from 6am to after 6pm, blowing my nose about 100 times an hour. uncertainty about a future i’m pouring my heart into has been adding significantly to what feels like such a heavy load. and, to top it all off, my car got stolen. 

seriously. from the parking lot at school on a sunny, bright morning. completely gone, just like that. 

the stress and wearyingness of all of that piled and piled until last night i just felt like quitting at life. the kids i worked with after school were terrors, my head felt like it was going to explode mucus, i’d cried and whimpered myself to sleep the night before feeling incredibly overwhelmed, i’d been running around campus all day putting out fires here and there, and then the san jose police called and told me they found my car and if i didn’t come get it in twenty minutes, they’d have it towed and i’d have to pay to get it back (i was forty five minutes away). i had just settled into the idea of claiming insurance money and being done with that crappy car, and now i was going to have to pay to get it back, probably trashed and empty. 

i just wanted to quit at life. 

i seethed and sighed for a while, feeling like nothing in my life was working, nothing at all. i processed a lot of frustration and anxiety and sadness and exhaustion (and snot) and then did my best to let it go. the boy brought me my favorite meal for a late dinner (only after i was locked out of my house for 40 minutes, of course…) and told me repeatedly that things will get better. my battered heart didn’t want to believe it, but i came around to choose to believe it. 

and as i knelt that night by the site of my bed, i thanked god for millions and trillions of blessings and beauties in my life and decided not to quit, but to keep going. 

and things are getting better. 

have a great weekend!

i am headed down the coast to los angeles for the weekend! i sure love california. i’m hoping to relax and rejuvenate. i hope your weekend is awesome, too!

here’s a beautiful thought for friday afternoon:

"but life is not all eloquence and adulation: life is wiping the baby's bum; it is a bad case of croup; it is quarrels with one's spouse; it is disappointment, distraction, indignities by the dozen; it is the death of friends, wife, son, and brothers, carried off like fluff in the wind; it is alien evenings, cold stairwells, frosty sheets, lack of love; for what does the great spirit need that touches the body but the touch of the body as the oratory needs silence, and revolution peace? we are nourished by our absences and opposites; contraries quench our thirsts…
…to be--don't we know by now?--is to burst with energy and enterprise like a hive of bees. it is to draw from just that daily drudgery, which you contend has betrayed your genius, all its sap and substance--siphon it dry--and seed new sentences with life. begin again. oblivion is miles away and only moments off. begin."
-william gass

whale watching and big sur-ing

on saturday, the boy and i went whale watching in monterey bay! we had planned this adventure together way back in march. our tour got cancelled due to weather and we decided to reschedule for august when we could see humpbacks. and we certainly did!

we also saw lots of sea lions in the harbor…

…and a half a dozen dolphins playing around in the surf before we got very far out at sea. once we’d cruised out a bit, we all had our eyes peeled for blowhole sprays.

i thought we’d see one or two whales if we were lucky, but we son tons! it was pretty amazing. i think i said wow, that is incredible! a hundred times, and the boy said that is a massive animal! nearly as many.

  

we also saw some jellies close to the surface!

 

after a couple of hours we laid on the soft bench on the bow of the boat and we could just prop our heads up to see the whale action. the sun started peeking through the morning fog and it was really relaxing!

after the boat docked back in the harbor, we went to point lobos and had a picnic on gorgeous gibson beach. then we kept driving south on highway one so i could show the boy some of big sur – he’d never been and i’m obsessed!

it was so so so windy at pfieffer beach! the sand was swirling and whipping and racing and i felt so alive.

we experimented a little with the sweet gorillapod tripod the boy got me for my birthday. caught a lot of sunspots!

california is cool.

6,094 miles away and face to face

whenever i skype/google hangout/facetime with someone i just feel like i am living in the future!!! i mean, common, talking face to face when in reality a great distance separates you? it’s just mind-blowing.

a couple weeks ago i got to video chat with my dearest friends sara and dani. i was in my bedroom in east palo alto and they were in sara’s den on the japanese island of okinawa. i was so sad that i wasn’t there, but since we live in the future, i got to be with them at least in part.

sara and dani and i studied abroad in jerusalem together, lived together in provo, and traveled around india together. we’ve shared countless roadtrips, late nights, deep discussions, laughing-until-we’re-crying-moments, successes and defeats, tearful goodbyes and joyous reunions. these girls are the cream of my crop.

during our video chat, we caught up on dani’s round-the-world travels, sara’s adventures on the air force base on okinawa with her husband matt, and the last wild month of my life. sara and dani also performed for me a little, showing off their rendition of “the cup song” and singing me a song they wrote for me when we were in israel!

things got a little crazy when we started playing around with the google+ hangout features…

i love these girls with all of my heart and miss them both like crazy. i’m so glad we live in the future so that even 6,094 miles can’t come between us and true-deep-dear-bosom-friend laughing-and-crying talks.

being miss eyre

a lunchroom full of new sixth graders

i am rapidly falling in love with the middle school students i work with. they for sure can be little dorks from time to time, but there is such a light in every single one of them. i am so grateful for the opportunity to learn from them and to be a part of their lives.

i quite like being miss eyre.

bear lake videos

a couple film glimpses into our 45th annual bear lake eyrealm reunion...enjoy!


bear lake. from elle pothier. on Vimeo.

Eyrealm 2013 video final from Noah Eyre on Vimeo.

worries to give to the sea

{more posts about bear lake coming…i can’t get my siblings to send me the pictures! it was the best.}

getting back into real life and new job after two and half weeks in utah was wearying, and things combined to leave me feeling pretty downhearted for a while. come last friday, i needed a some significant rejuvenation. and there’s nothing like the sea to succor and buoy up.

kelsey, steph and i met at point montara lighthouse for an ocean picnic. we sat perched on the rocks overlooking the craggy coastline and waves. it was foggy and gray but the sun peeked out between the clouds and the horizon all orange and firey for a few seconds. the ebb and flow of the water was so soothing, as was the company and the food!

 

after the sun went down, we headed to the ritz carlton at half moon bay and sat by the big firepits overlooking the ocean. we talked and make s’mores and laughed. it was so great to catch up and relax.

it is truly amazing how giving worries to the sea – and to good friends - can be such a salve.

driving west

on the 13 hour drive back to palo alto, we stopped at the tree of life on the salt flats,
mono lake in the eastern sierras,

and spectacular olmstead point in yosemite.

we drove through nevada on a road i’d never been on – incredibly desolate and wide. we could see the road ahead of us stretching for miles and miles and miles with nothing but desert shrubbery on either side. it felt good to be back in the golden state.