The first race!

The boys had their first race yesterday, and I’m so proud of them! Naturally, I took a ton of pictures.

Before we left the house:

When we got to the race:

Lined up, ready to start:

They’re off! Miles takes an early lead.

The race was half a mile, two laps around the track. I told them it was okay if they walked some of it, since they hadn’t run a half mile straight before. But they were having none of that.

Here comes Miles, first lap almost down! Linus is still right behind him.

Here’s Ollie! (Love that he’s airborne here.)

And at the finish! Miles first!

Followed closely by Linus!

And Ollie, bringing up the rear! His brothers were there waiting to high five him. Aw!

Just the order they should have been born in, actually. Random.

I was so proud of them for giving it their all. They didn’t stop, and they finished a heck of a lot faster than I expected them to. Miles is all ready to do another race, at least. I might sign the two of us up for a two mile race coming up next month. Hope I can keep up with him!

Linked up

My-yohs

I have this video from when the boys were about 2ish, and the boys are pointing to the computer screen and saying each others’ names. I love how they said Miles’s name, and I still call him MY-YOHS sometimes.

He came with me the other day to take photos of my friend’s family in the rooftop bar of a local hotel. Love this crazy-haired kid (and his brothers too.)

107 and grainy

I did take this yesterday, but I didn’t post it because I took it on my new iPhone and while I liked the smiles, I wasn’t happy with the photo quality (it was still sorta darkish outside when I took it so it’s grainy because of low light) so I was going to try to take another picture with my big camera later, but we had a birthday party and I forgot my camera and we were late to the birthday party anyway and who wants a monthly picture outside of Laser Tag?

So, month 107, just 30 days from NINE YEARS OLD.

For funsies, a collage of the previous November 4 photos:

Brussels Sprout

This is what it looks like when you give your kids ONE sprout. ONE MEASLEY SPROUT.

On the other hand, he clearly has a future in the dramatic arts. Which we already knew.

Zoo

Today Oliver had his first day back at the zoo classroom. They did it back in first grade too, each class spends a month there, learning about animals and science and all that good stuff.

He was very patient as I insisted on a photo. Of course I did.

Halloween 2016

The boys: ninjas

Ziggy: pikachu

Me: Hermione (not Harry like so many people seemed to think. 😡)

New camera/new phone

Got a new phone. That has a really nice camera.

After a few weeks of waiting and using my shattered phone, my shiny new rose gold iPhone 7+ arrived. I debated for a while between the 7 (ideal size) and 7+ (fancy fun camera) and the fancy fun camera won out.

And I’m so pleased! Look at these photos – the left photo is “normal”, the right has the “portrait” mode on (blurry background from a shallow depth of field but it’s all computer generated.) None of these have been edited, btw. Straight off the camera.

Oh, and Hank says CHEEEEEEEEESE:

Am organizational genius

The most adorable photo of my children will get a few dozen likes on FB, maybe some comments too. But within minutes of posting my new organizational system, I had scores of likes and tons of comments. So I am blogging about it for posterity.

Uniforms and laundry are a big thing in our house. For the last six years, I’ve stored the boys’ uniforms (everything from socks, undies, shirts, and shorts/pants) in a large round bin. No, I don’t fold their clothes. Please. Life is too short. Everything they wear to school goes in the big bin. It’s a mess. As they’ve gotten bigger, so have their clothes. (Shocking!) The bin is frequently overflowing, plus they’ll dig through it and leave a ring of questionably clean clothes around the perimeter of the bin. I never know what’s clean or what’s dirty, so I end up washing it all again just in case.

About a year or so ago, I bought a mesh shoe organizer and put it on the back of the bathroom door to store all those little things like washcloths, extra razors, my stash of Breathe-Right nose strips, multiple colors of hair dye, etc. It then occurred to me that maybe I could do this with the boys’ clothes. But the shoe organizer pockets are too small.

Amazon to the rescue! Found one with 15 large pockets. How perfect is that? Three kids, five days a week of uniforms. And only $8!

Each pocket holds a pair of socks (matching, even!), undies, shirt, and shorts. The Friday pockets have spirit shirts because they can wear those on Fridays. Oliver gets pants because he prefers them. Fortunately, I have more than 15 shirts (uh, who knew?) and tons of socks and underpants so I only have to stock those once a week. Shorts and pants will have to be washed throughout the week, but now I can see at a glance what we need and how often I need to wash uniforms. And no more scrambling at the last minute for a pair of matching socks.

Granted, this will be easiest if you have triplets who are all the same size and if they wear uniforms but still, it can be modified to work for you.

The end! Yay! Woo!

Full color ink

It’s unlike me to not blog about this right away, but last month when we were at the Grand Meetup, I got tattooed again. Sorta.

You might recognize the three bunnies from my post two years ago.

Decided to gussy ’em up a bit. I had been thinking about color for a while, but couldn’t decide what to do. I didn’t want to just color each bunny in with the boys’ colors (I actually did it with sharpies once and it just looked blah and weird.)

When our company trip to Whistler was being planned, a group of us again talked about getting tattoos. I was looking at the tattoo shop’s website and was immediately drawn to one artist’s style. She did these gorgeous watercolor tattoos and I knew that’s what I wanted. Color that was messy and swirly and unique. (Like triplets? Okay, maybe trying too hard there.)

When the day came, we picked out some colors and she went to town. OH MY GOD it hurt. It hurt for weeks, actually. And the healing process was not pretty. Oh boy. But now, just over a month later, it’s finally ready for its unveiling.

The bunnies are green, blue, and red. The blue and the green are fairly close. I might go back to Auberon next year (if we end up back at Whistler) and have her touch up the colors to make them more contrasty, but I’m not that bothered. The only thing that bothers me is that not long after I did this, the boys changed their hair colors. Oh well, the tattoo is here to stay!

This and that

My poor blog. It’s been so neglected.

Last week was kind of nuts – the boys were out of school and they were home with me all day. I think we all went a little stir-crazy. Then George went out of town over the weekend (the first time he’s been out of town without one of us since we first started dating) so I got even more quality time with the boys. But not a lot of time to blog.

Here’s what we’ve been up to:

Baking.

Sat through the Yo Kai Watch movie, and paid handsomely for the privilege.

Ziggy did cute things like lie there and chew on a stick.

We had a party while George was gone. The kids finally used the climber! I put up pretty lights!

Miles has crazy hair, Linus and Oliver on the climber.

Took them to the trampoline place.

It’s been really hot here, still. But we did go for another couple of runs.

Wait, did I ever post any pics from when we went bowling with Aunt Tee?

Speaking of, today is Aunt Tee’s birthday! Happy birthday Aunt Tee! We love you!

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The elusive “family photo”

George’s cousin got married this weekend under this big old oak tree in Audubon Park. It was beautiful – the light was that perfect golden shade you only get in the late afternoon and woah I’m getting poetic here.

Anyway, since we were all gussied up (I could die at the boys’ bow ties) we posed for a family pic.