#63.

K4713. And Mr. January.

I have these two friends from high school and this is how they are in my phone. I knew Moe (Mr. January...there is a longer story, courtesy of another of my best friend's crazy dreams) from church, our families met when we were around 12 years old. Katie (K4713...how her brother once wrote her name on a cd because he thought it looked like 'katie'. I just always thought it looked cool.) and I met in 7th grade where we had homeroom together...or science class? Either way, it was the same teacher.

These two people have always made me laugh. Katie has always been the kindest, most caring friend I have ever had. And also the person that I loved shopping the most with before seeing a late night movie. Katie also has this lovely sense of humor and appreciation for all things simple and enjoyable, such as sunny days, reading a great book in a cute place, and great coffee.

Moe has the craziest expressions, laughs, and reactions. He probably doesn't know it but he has encouraged me the most to be the dreamer that I am. It kind of started out with show choir and the encouragement just kept coming from there. It wasn't anything straight-forward. It's just how he is. Oh, and he basically lived with my family our senior year of high school. Plenty of sleep-deprived, embarrassing, crazy ridiculous stories. My poor younger sister was the victim of many of the pranks that occurred that year.

Katie and Moe spontaneously came to visit tonight (those are MY FAVORITE kind of visits) and we laughed over the stupidest and most random stuff. Cereal for dinner. Discovery Health viewing. Massages at sketchy places in the mall. The Glee Project. Reality TV in general. My parents.

Basically, if you don't have a Moe or Katie in your life, you are missing out on a bundle of snorting, silent, tearful laughs and clumsy, awkward, hilarious interactions that you just have to embrace.

This was during our first year of college. The Ronald McDonald hair was a huge mistake on my part. 

#62.

I jinxed it. Ya know that last blog post? I had SUCH a great day that day!! The next day.....mmmmm, total opposite. I woke up early, had breakfast with my mother and was startin' off pretty darn good! Feelin good, feeling awake and ready to go. I checked my emails and found this from the director of the Tango School where I got the internship for back in my 54th blog post (read it here):

Hi Ellyse, 

I'm very, very sorry, but I'm not going to be able to provide you with an internship opportunity for the fall. I have too much going on, and I am going to be out of town too much, to provide a consistent experience. I've thought about it a lot and tried to think of ways to make it work. But it's not the right timing/fit for the school. 

Good luck finding something else.

Cue the instant tears. Seriously. Called my mom over and all I could get out was, "What is this? What does this mean?" But we had to leave because I had scheduled 4 doctor appointments all in one day, only being in town for a short amount of time. I washed my face, threw mascara, concealer, and bronzer in my purse and put my makeup on in the car during sporatic outbursts of tears. Classes start in a week and I suddenly don't have an internship. ON TOP OF THAT, I got 19 warts treated on my feet. To spare you the disgusting details, I have never been in pain like that in my life and I've been getting them treated the last 2 years. This treatment was the worst because they had multiplied from 6 to 19. 

 

Mom gave me Vicodin. Now, I almost considered making that the little thing that absolutely made my day. Because, lemme tell you, I was no longer writhing and yelling (literally) in pain after 10 mins of popping that little baby. But really, the thing that carried me through was my family. With special shout-outs to my mom who is just superwoman and my brother who somehow made me laugh instead of scream once or twice.

I still don't have an internship but that's being figured out and I know it's going to be ok! I'm still in pain but I've got lots of distractions to take my mind off of it (and a few more of those amazing pills)!

To all those who have days that seem like they're from hell, I betcha you can always find that one little thing that really brought you a little bit of happiness. In fact, I know it happened and will happen on every stinkin' bad day you ever have. Will you be open to recognizing it?

#61.

Family Friends.

My family vacations with 3 other families that we have remained close with for the past 17 years. We try to go to the Outer Banks every year but as we are all families of 5, scheduling and tuition payments sometimes keep us from vacationing as often as we'd like. And that's really ok. Because we all live within 20 mins of eachother.

All of us kids fight like siblings. We tease each other like siblings. We sometimes side-up with our non-siblings when a classic sibling fight is going down. It doesn't matter that our ages range from 7 to 21. I love all of the moments we have and how classic they are! I don't know how our parents decided that it was a good idea to stick 20+ people in house together for a week....but somehow, murder doesn't happen, mayhem occurs rarely, and toilet paper is replenished with little drama. CLEARLY, this is a God thing! Haha

We came home from vacation this past Sunday and went out to dinner for my brother's 19th birthday with ANOTHER family that we've been close with nearly as long. It occurred to me as I was uploading pictures of the night onto my hard drive, that we are astoundingly blessed. These families are amazing. The parents are so supportive and did such an incredible job raising all of us (that goes for their own kids and their psuedo-kids!).

I'm so thankful for these relationships and how much sheer happiness and gumption they give me. This can only be credited to the blessings God has given us!

The only group picture we managed to get wasn't on my camera so here are a some of mostly everyone mentioned!