Eyrealm: Father’s Year!

It’s hard to believe how fast Father’s Days rolls around nowadays! It’s incredible that it’s been a whole year since we were celebrating our 40th anniversary a little early at one of our Dad’s favorite places on earth…Roland Garos!

(This great dad taught all his kids to love tennis! AND he just won the Liberty Park Tennis Tournament in a three set final that ended with 9-7 in a tie breaker. Not bad for a 65 year old! I think his opponent was about 45.)

Not only that but he traipsed all over Switzerland with me last June to find my distant relatives, meet Anita’s delightful parents and meet up in London with a few of the 600 missionaries that he “fathered” thirty three years ago in England!

Of course our trip to England wouldn’t be complete without a trip to Wimbledon (tennis anyone?)

In July we was the patriarch of our huge family gathering at Bear Lake and put up with a lot of “stuff” as we enjoyed our time together at our annual family-fest which included three baptisms in the lake (Grace and Isaac in July and Aniston in August).

In September he was the Dad of the groom and loved welcoming our wonderful Anita to the family

Whilst playing tennis in the Senior games in St. George he organized a reunion for relatives of HIS dad! It was fun to meet the Minersville Eyres.

In October he hit the big one!

Since we knew everyone wouldn’t be here for this day we celebrated his birthday just before the wedding in NYC.

And again with the leaves at Charity’s house in Provo.

In November we visited the Shumways in Boston. What a Dad!

At Christmastime we visited Jonah and Aja. (Jonah is a little leery of dad’s hair).

Christmas Eve and Christmas day was spent at the Looslis (pictures in my other computer) but it was a grand time to be a great Dad and Grandfather!

January brought a wonderful opportunity for Dad to teach other Dads and Moms in the Middle East and India about being better parents.

And in February we had a fabulous opportunity for him to model fatherhood at the school for leprosy affected children in India!

And be with a woman who was forced to leave her father (and family) as a young adult and suffer alone for the rest of her life as an untouchable with leprosy.

He also had a fun chance to almost be a Dad to his little sister Sheri (who has been without her dad since the age of three) and to take her and her husband Lynn for a special dinner with a dear family friend Jan.

Dad’s wild side (which shows up about every 6 hours) was fed by the Elvis show in Las Vegas in March. We were on our way to the Tennis Tournament in Palm Springs (do you notice a recurring theme here?)

In April he was delighted to welcome the newest future Eyrealm Dad to the world…Jacobson Eyre (number 19). These three future dads and three future moms pictured below, as well as the other 13 others are going to make a difference in the world, partly because of the things that he will teach them and greatly because of what their parents will teach them…that they learned from this great Dad/Grandfather.

In May he had the terrific opportunity to teach a roomful of Dads and Moms in Dubai about how to be better parents and to encourage dads to become totally involved with their kids.

And so here we are back to June and another Father’s Day! It was so fun for him to be able to see Shawni as she came through to pick up Lucy, who he had been caring for for a week while the Pothiers went to DC and Shawni and I attended the BBS Conference for Lucy’s syndrome at Duke University (more about that later). Jonah and Aja and their family and Josh also arrived just in time to share a Father’s Day dinner on Sunday night!

What a Father!