this morning we bid a sad farewell to our best friends in sayulita. i suppose we all knew that this day was coming sooner or later but it doesn’t make it any easier. especially since we had about one week’s notice! brenda and i managed to get a surf in early in the morning so we were all mellow when dmitri and heidi rocked up to the plaza with their kids for one last play. a good thing too because it could have been an emotional disaster otherwise!

the four of them are going to be settling down in hawaii for the time being, so at least it won’t be too different from sayulita. but i know that sayulita is not going to be the same without them. they’ve only been gone for a few hours and i already miss them! that’s ok though – something tells me that our paths will be crossing in all kinds of places in the future 🙂 bon voyage!

remember a couple of posts ago i was asking you to vote for aya’s entry in this film competition? well guess what? she is one of the five finalists! she just won a trip to new zealand to go and make her idea a reality with a tidy $100,000 budget. how awesome is that?!?!?

she’s flying to new zealand on friday and will have three weeks to make her film. if you voted for her, thanks so much for your support! she will be sharing her adventures on her resurrected blog if you want to follow along. go aya!

you’ve probably guessed by the lack of updates that we’ve been chasing the swell for the last week. everyone kept on talking about this mysterious swell that was going to be so awesome it would make the rapture look like a picnic in the park. the waves definitely picked up, but we never got those epic days we were hoping for. still, we’ve been having a great time spending all day at the beach! we capped off our run with a full day at our favourite surf spot and have rejoined the 21st century again. nayou has been a bit cranky because we’ve been napping him in the car, so the poor guy is a bit sleep deprived. but don’t worry little man, we’re back on track now!

there isn’t much to report from sayulita. the lease on our house expires at the end of february so we have started to talk about what our next move is going to be. we’re not ready to leave mexico just yet, so the current plan is to stay another three months until the end of may. we may have to move house, but that’s all part of the adventure! nayou’s going to be very sad if he has to say goodbye to his bff saul. their friendship is still going strong and they play together every day.

we’re also having a blast with rocky, who still likes to chew on things but is otherwise a model citizen. he has mellowed out considerably since we first got him and sticks close to us when we take him to the beach. i think he has tuned into our pace of life and really understands that he is part of our pack. our friends kris and joe in san francisco fell in love with him when they came down to visit. they are keen to adopt him so i think he will make the move stateside once we decide to leave.

beyond may everything is still a little vague, although all signs are pointing to a trip to geneva, with stops in l.a. (to see aya) and maryland (to see epito and epita). we are researching the possibility of sneaking off to france, spain or portugal for a summer surf trip, but its looking pretty darn expensive. but hey, we’ve got time to hunt around. if you know anyone who has a surf shack they want to rent in europe, get in touch!

a permanent move to sayulita is still on the table, but we decided that we needed to put some distance between us and the town in order to get some perspective. i’m sure we’re going to miss it terribly. the big question is whether we miss it enough to want to take the big plunge!

speaking of leaving, our best friends heidi and dmitri are leaving on thursday. dmitri got a job offer in hawaii (tough luck, i know) so they are packing their stuff up and taking off. their depature marks the end of an era – we arrived in sayulita within days of each other and have become very close. their kids are like our kids and vice versa. sniff sniff.

we’ve still be woefully lazy about taking photos. now that the waves are dying down perhaps we’ll start snapping shots again.

oh, and congratulations to kara-leah & luke, and dennis & miae for becoming proud parents! welcome to the club!

poor nayou has been dealing with the arrival of his two year old molars. we noticed he was quite cranky over the last week and when i finally stuck my fingers in his mouth i found some hard lumps making their way up through his gums. at least he is doing much better with the whole teething thing this time around. its so much better to be able to communicate with him and explain what’s going on. i don’t think he fully understands what we’re saying to him, but he gets the idea.

we have been woefully lazy about taking pictures lately, so i really don’t have anything to share with you this time around. for that i am deeply sorry, but to make up for the lack of visuals, here are some of nayou’s favourite phrases. he is speaking more and more each day, busting out some new word or sentence and making us smile.

• “[insert name here] sucio. necessita bano”. this is his current favourite. he loves to see things like trains and animals get dirty and tell them they need a bath. we have a thomas the tank engine dvd where thomas gets mud all over him and nayou is all over it. a variation of this one is “[insert name or body part here] boo boo. necessita medicina”.
• “i see you!”. a surprisingly useful phrase if you happen to be a two year old.
• “uno, dos, cinco, seis”. nayou has an aversion to the number three, the number four and any number larger than six. not that is stops him from sharing his passion for counting with everyone. he likes to get all of his pacifiers in his hand and count them out.
• “come [insert name here]”. this one is accompanied by frantic waving of the hands.

i’m sure i’ve missed some other classic ones, but after surfing for a long time and teaching a yoga class today i am exhausted!

we’ve had three days of great surf after a long drought that stretched back to christmas. brenda and i are far enough into our surf addiction that any drought longer than a week starts to affect our mood. there’s something so… magical about being on a wave, just riding along with this big mass of water. i understand why people compare surfing to meditation – when you’re on that wave, you are truly present in the moment. you become a part of the ocean and that feeling is so special!

oh, and we finally saw avatar! in 3d! brenda and i went on separate days with dmitri and heidi and all of us loved it. the whole film, from the story to art direction to the special effects were amazing. sure it was a hollywood script and maybe it could have been a bit shorter, but i found myself glued to my seat for the whole time. this was the first movie i’ve worked on where the end product was really really satisfying. which is good because i spent two whole years of my life on it! and since everyone is curious about what my part was here it is: i worked for a year on the facial motion capture system, which records movement of the actors’ faces and applies it to a digital model. the rest of the time i was involved in sorting, tracking and massaging the huge amounts of data pertaining to the jungle. there were a lot of plants to keep track of and although the system we came up with was hardly adequate, i was happy to see such a gorgeous jungle on the screen. apparently a lot of other people thought so too.

my sister aya has entered a new zealand film competition called your big break. basically the brief is to create a pitch for a short film about new zealand. five winners will be chosen and given $100,000 to make their film into a reality. the theme of the film is “100% pure new zealand”. without being too biased, i can honestly say that aya’s entry is one of the best out there, so please show your support and vote for her!

you can vote for her entry here. you have one vote per email address, so if you happen to have many, then feel free to vote multiple times!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

may 2010 be full of happiness and love!

after two weeks of visitors its finally time for us to settle back into our normal routine. kris, joe, francisco and aimee left yesterday afternoon for san francisco, and now we are officially back to being a nuclear family after almost two weeks of glorious mayhem. sniff sniff. having the four of them in sayulita was an absolute blast. their zest for life is contagious, and seeing sayulita through their eyes reminded me of how awesome this place is. i was getting a bit complacent without some outside perspective to bring things back into focus! there was some great symbiotic sort of energy with everyone – i think the four of them thought we were awesome for showing them around town, and we thought they were awesome for their amazing generosity (fancy dinners, tequila, pedicures, tequila). our combined awesomeness was very much greater than the sum of its parts, and this made for a very special holiday.

we were having too much fun to take photos. which was fine – some things are better experienced without the aid of a camera, especially when incriminating situations are involved 😉 the only good photos i have are from the day we spent cruising around on a trimaran, which ranks as one of my best in mexico!

i hope everyone is enjoying a good start to the new year!

my goodness what a fun week we just had! yesterday we dropped off epito and epita in the morning, aya and hana in the afternoon, and then moved back into what i call our “real” house. it was an amazing seven days, and we are all suffering from a little bit of empty nest syndrome and melancholy. luckily we still have francisco, joe, kris and aimee for another couple of days to soften the blow. a “soft landing” as my dad put it so eloquently. now i know how my parents must have felt after every christmas when my sisters and i all went back to our respective lives. luckily, the swell picked up and we had a beautiful morning on the beach surfing and hanging out. nothing like a good surf to make everything right again. but that’s enough sadness for this post. let me recap all the wonderful things that happened!

our christmas holiday began in earnest on the 20th when brenda’s sister christie and both of my sisters arrived. this was also the day we moved into our swanky big house for the week. it didn’t take long to get settled into a groove. the house was very comfortable, with lots of space for everyone to spread out. as usual most of the time was spent in the kitchen, but there was also a nice terrace on the third floor which was cool. it even had a hammock! christie has some amazing photos of the house up on her equally amazing blog, so check them out!

the pool wasn’t heated, but hana bravely led the charge and christie and i followed. that was the one and only time we used the pool though. hehe.

nayou took to everyone very quickly which was great. he did have a grudge against epita for a while because one day she took care of him while brenda and i went to yoga and then for a surf, but by the end he was friends with her again! nayou is at the age where he isn’t as friendly with strangers anymore, so it was interesting to see him be friendly with the family right off the bat. we show him photos of everyone frequently, and he gets skype time with lots of them so i suppose that helped.

everyone was so generous and bought tons and tons of stuff for us. we now have a large stock of unobtainable essentials like coconut oil, organic apple cider vinegar, quinoa and grade b maple syrup. and of course chocolate! i got enough japanese books to last me a couple of lifetimes, and also a new charger for my nikon d60 (thanks hana!). its so nice to be able to take good photos again. my sisters also introduced me to two hilarious australian television series – summer heights high and we can be heroes. they are both by this guy chris lilley, who hana is apparently going to stalk and then marry. if you’re looking for something good to watch, then check the shows out – highly recommended.

our house was very close to the beach so we managed to get plenty of sand time. unfortunately the waves were horrible all week so there wasn’t much surfing to be had. which i guess was fine in the end because we all got more hang time.

we all got spoiled rotten, but one member of our family in particular got a LOT of loving – rocky. everyone was smothering him in insane amounts of love and he relished every minute of it! rocky even got to sleep in hana and aya’s bed all week, which is something he is never allowed to do in our house. he has made some headway though – now he gets to sleep on his own special mattress on the couch, where before he was outside on some straw mats. brenda and i were scared to let rocky be too comfortable with us because it is highly likely that we will need to find him another home when we leave. but this past week broke down all remaining barriers and now he is most definitely part of the pod!

due to some scheduling issues, we ended  up exchanging gifts on the morning of christmas eve. i hit the jackpot this year with a new ipod and another portable mp3 player for our car. my old ipod decided to finally give up after three years of daily abuse, so i have been starving for tunes for weeks now. thank you santa brenda!

santa bought another great gift in the form of four of our friends from san francisco. we met them all in wellington a few years ago haven’t seen them in ages. they are here for just over a week which is awesome. they arrived just in time for dinner on christmas eve. all of us had big lunches that day so we all said we weren’t hungry, but as soon as aya and epita’s huge dinner hit the table, it all went down in record time.

eating and drinking were two very common themes during this past week. we grazed and grazed and then kicked it up a notch over christmas. christmas dinner was the most ridiculous thing ever. aya took to the kitchen like a bat out of hell and whipped up all kinds of crazy dishes while epito handled the grill. hana and i actually managed to start a charcoal fire which was pretty impressive. high five! dmitri and heidi came over with dessert so it was a pretty full on meal. in fact, brenda and i are just polishing off the rest of the leftovers now!

things calmed down a little on boxing day. we had a leisurely breakfast at choco banana with everyone where nayou devoured his soy fluffy.

the next morning it was time to pack up and bid farewell to everyone. as is typical with these kinds of gatherings, it was over all too quickly. but i suppose it just means that we have to do it all again soon! a big huge enormous thanks to everyone’s generosity! we can’t believe the amount of stuff you hauled (or sent with the hapless mules). i’m so glad that you got a chance to come down and experience the magic of sayulita and hope that you enjoyed it as much as we do!

everyone took so many photos that its almost impossible to choose the best ones. here are some other photos to finish up 🙂

all you need are the right glasses!

♥♥♥♥♥ MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!! ♥♥♥♥♥

p.s. full christmas update coming soon!

we have had the pleasure of being blessed with the company of epito and epita, who made the long haul from maryland two days ago to spend christmas with us. they were smart enough to come a few days before everyone else to get some quality nayou time. i’ve known these two for over six years now and everytime i see them they are as energetic, healthy and vibrant as the first day we met!

nayou was very excited to see them, having developed a good rapport with them through numerous skype conversations. his mantra on our way to pick them up was “‘pito, ‘pita, avion”. he had some big smiles for them at the airport and has been loving on them ever since.

we’ve been taking things nice and easy since then. the first day went by in a blur, ending with an awesome dinner cooked for us by our neighbour cristela. this lady happens to run a restaurant in the front of her house so we have the pleasure of eating fresh handmade tortillas, tamales and other goodies almost every day.

today we went to visit the piece of land we are thinking about buying. every time i go and visit that place i am reminded of how cool it is, and how nice the energy of the land feels. its so close to the middle of town and yet it feels like a world away. we’re still not in any place to make a decision on whether we want to buy it, but if we were to buy in sayulita, that would be the place. brenda and i are in the process of figuring out whether we want to put some roots down in sayulita, but we’re not sure when we’ll be in a position to make a decision. especially such a big one!

we also took a drive out to punta de mita. the beach is so nice there, as is the drive. we had another awesome meal while ogling the waves. its always the days that you don’t bring your boards that the surf is good! brenda and i managed to get a nice surf in this afternoon which was great. the epitos took care of nayou while we went out surfing together for the first time ever! the waves were small but fun to play around in. nayou wasn’t in such a good mood but we figured out later it was because he was ravenous. oops.

this evening we received some very sad news – brenda’s sister julie sent us an email informing us that she had to cancel her flight out here due to the insane snow storm on the east coast. julie was supposed to leave tomorrow morning but all flights have been cancelled and the next one out wouldn’t put her in mexico until christmas eve. this is a big, big bummer and all of us were so excited to see her and her son paul. sigh.

we still have some good news though! brenda’s other sister christie will be flying in tomorrow afternoon, and in the evening both of my sisters will be arriving. so most of the family will be together, although the absentees will be sorely missed. tomorrow is also the day that we move into our new big house for the week. so lots of things happening! we’ll post some more updates later once we have settled in.