Frosty the Slushman!

I was so sad when I woke up this morning and learned Baton Rouge was blanketed (I mean, relatively. This is Louisiana, after all.) in snow. I had thought briefly of bringing the boys to my mom’s last night so they could see it for the first time, but I figured if I did, it wouldn’t snow. (You’re welcome, residents of Baton Rouge.)

Here it’s been cold and drizzly, but I guess cold enough for a bit of slush to accumulate on my windshield, at least.

Introducing…

Frosty the Slushman! Isn’t he adorable? I’m a natural.

PS I’m not as sad now because apparently it snowed at school and they let the kids out to see it. It didn’t accumulate or anything, but I’ll take it!

PSS It’s not really the first time they’ve seen snow. Once they trucked in snow to City Park and we brought them. And it snowed once when they were babies, but they were at daycare, so no pics.

TEN

Well, the boys’ birthday has come and gone, and I think I’ve finally recovered from their party. But not quite enough yet to host another slumber party next year. We’ll see. I am guessing I’ll capitulate once again. Words of wisdom: Hosting slumber parties is like childbirth.

The Party

We had five boys come over (so 8 total) and thank goodness my friends Teresa and Jenn (one of the boys’ moms) stayed to help for the evening. After eating pizza, we walked down the levee in the fog to see the bonfire. There were tons of people there, but fortunately, the side we were on wasn’t crowded. Between the fog and the crowds, I was a little nervous. But each adult was assigned a triplet and a friend or two, so it worked out fine.

We saw people doing weird things with fire (not sure what to call them) and then the bonfire was lit! It was cool. The kids enjoyed it. And it killed some time.

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My favorite picture of the fire:

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After we got back to the house, we had cake (that I made!) and sang three times, as usual.

I’d also bought some canvases and pastels from Michael’s and they got to make artwork, which killed about, oh, 7 minutes. They were all too excited about playing on the Switch.

I went to sleep at around midnight but the boys didn’t. Well, two of them did. But the rest informed me they were going to stay up all night long. I rolled my eyes at this, but sure enough, when I was woken by the patter of little feet at 4am, I knew the other parents were going to hate me.

(Well, I mean, surely they expected this?) (No one was mad in the end.)

I groggily got up at around 7, and there were a few passed out boys here and there. Apparently, mine napped for about an hour in the middle of the night at various points, so I think only one kid truly stayed up all night (he conked out on the sofa in the morning.)

I went to get donuts for the kids, and the parents started coming to pick them up around 9. And then the boys napped off and on throughout the afternoon. There was a trip to Target late in the day to spend the gift cards that were burning holes in their pockets.

The Big Day

Monday was their actual birthday and the poor kids had to go to school. I drove them, though, so they didn’t have to suffer through a bus ride.

But first! They got to open presents from Grandee and Larry and Kiki. Those were the big gifts. Miles got the drawing tablet he coveted, the promise of a custom sweatshirt (he wanted to use the tablet to draw a design for it), and a pogo stick. (Fun!) Linus got a drone and Mario Odyssey for the Switch. Oliver got a controller for the Switch, some fancy markers, a kite, and a book on drawing. A good haul!

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I spent the day trying to work, but mostly failing when I realized that I didn’t have a decent gift for Oliver. (I ran to the store to get something, whew.) George and I picked them up from school later that day, took them to guitar lessons, and then went and had a nice dinner.

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Afterwards, they got to open their gifts from us (Linus got a Pokemon game and Ticket to Ride, Oliver got some drawing supplies (including a drawing mannequin that Ziggy promptly ate), Miles got fancy colored pencils and the sweatshirt I accidentally already mentioned.)

All in all, a great but exhausting birthday. They loved all their gifts, which was gratifying. Now just to figure out what to get them for Christmas…

A decade of Miles

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My sweet baby boy. I sometimes call him “baby brother,” which drives him nuts. He was the tiniest at birth, so I’m pretty sure he never got mixed up with the others. (Can’t say the same about those two…) I mean, not that he was particularly tiny, but half a pound difference when you’re four pounds is significant enough.

Miles
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Miles rocking a hat

Miles at age 10:
– wants to be an actor. Or an artist.
– plays guitar, hates to practice.
– still runs laps around downstairs.
– adores his cousins.
– loves ramen.
– is extremely ticklish
– hates when I travel for work.
– hates doing homework, but even more hates not doing it.
– loves to draw.

A decade of Oliver

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Oliver, born second. A bit competitive, I guess that started when he was born second, even though he was supposed to be the last out. He is a perfectionist, and hates doing something if he can’t do it right. He always make the most worried faces (that furrowed brow is his look) but he’s probably the most chill of the trio.

He was the first to dye his hair way back when. Because he wanted to stand out from his brothers? Or because he was obsessed with a YouTube star with blue hair? Either way, he doesn’t worry a heck of a whole lot what other people think.

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Ann Frances loving on Ollie.

Oliver at age 10:

  • still won’t eat vegetables.
  • hates ramen.
  • loves to draw.
  • wants to be an artist when he grows up.
  • makes silly faces.
  • favorite colors are purple and teal
  • is no longer scared of dogs.

A decade of Linus

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In fact, it’s become increasingly clear over the course of the years that Linus is a tiny George. He would rather be alone, and he definitely marches to the beat of his own drummer. While his brothers currently spend their free time drawing, he is mostly uninterested. Even when they were little, that was the dynamic of the three. Linus and Oliver & Miles.

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Linus happy to be at an old place.
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Linus

Linus at age 10:

  • wants to be an animator. Or maybe a coder.
  • great at math (and all other school subjects, actually)
  • has the cheesiest cheeseball grin ever.
  • loves ramen.
  • hates having his photo taken.
  • loves spending time alone.
  • hates when I travel for work.
  • is obsessed with Naruto (graphic novels.)
  • loves his dog.

A whole buncha random stuff

I have lots of things to say today.

First, a few things we did over the break.

We saw Coco. It was so good. We all were teary at the end. Highly recommend.

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Diego came over afterwards to play.

 

I introduced Miles to The Princess Bride. He may have been slightly annoyed that I kind of recited every line, but I couldn’t help it. The other two were reluctant to watch it, but Miles loved it. Next up: It’s a Wonderful Life.

Speaking of, I decorated the mantle, and I gotta say, it looks so good. But that’s gonna be another blog post altogether, so be patient. There was a lot of crafting involved. (You’ll see how that relates to It’s a Wonderful Life when I post about it.)

The boys are going to be ten in less than a week. I am now at the point in the year when I reminisce about everything leading up to their birth. It generally starts on November 25, the day I was admitted to the hospital. Let’s see, at this point ten years ago, I was…bored. But still somewhat entertained by the novelty of being in the hospital and getting woken at 4am for blood pressure checks. I got to ride downstairs in a wheelchair! Wheeeee! Read More

Race report: 2017 Turkey Day Race

For years I’ve wanted to do a Thanksgiving Day race, but we’re usually traveling or having company or something, (or I was extremely pregnant with triplets) so I’ve never been able to. But this year, I had no excuses, so I signed up.

The race here is five miles around City Park, which was not a point in its favor. A 5k is more what I had in mind, but you take what you can get. I figured I’d just run/walk it. Whatever it takes to burn off the calories I’d be eating later that day.

The weather was ideal for a race – in the high 40s/low 50s and sunny. (Okay, I mean, for a run, I could have done without the sun, but it was a gorgeous day, so I won’t complain.) I didn’t know anyone else doing it, so I just kind of stretched and hung out while waiting for the race to start.

Finally, it was time to line up. I took a single picture here.

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And…we were off! I figured I’d just start out running and would see how I felt and run/walk when I got too tired. Whatever.

The last time I did a five mile race was in March 2015, when I ran the entire Shamrockin’ Run, which is technically 8K, or 4.97 miles. I developed Achilles tendinitis after that and never ran long distances again. And then in April 2016 I joined Orangetheory and have been focusing more on strength training than running any distances. Orangetheory is a high-intensity interval workout that lasts an hour, and it’s not like I’ve run more than 12 minutes straight since joining OTF.

But I guess there’s something to this interval training malarkey, because I RAN THE WHOLE THING WITHOUT STOPPING.

It wasn’t a goal of mine because I never thought I’d be able to do it. I just started running at my usual 12 minute/mile pace (YES THAT IS RUNNING DON’T CALL IT JOGGING) and after the first mile, felt fine. After the second mile, still good. As I approached the halfway point, it started to get a little more difficult, but nothing major. I knew I had to get over the mental hurdle of halfway, and then I’d be okay.

It didn’t get easier, not by any means, but once I’d gone that far, I wasn’t going to stop now! Geez. So I just kept going. Oh, did I mention there were hills? I mean, okay, only someone in New Orleans would call them hills, but there were a few slight inclines here and there and I didn’t even walk through those.

I set my Runkeeper app to announce the time every minute, which helped me keep pace. And the GPS seemed fine most of the way through the race. I’d cross the mile marker just as the app would announce that I’d crossed it, but somehow it got a bit wonky around mile 4. So I wasn’t really sure if I’d make my secondary goal of under an hour. The app announced I’d run 5 miles just as I rounded the corner into the stadium where the finish line was, but I stopped the timer just after I crossed, and saw this:

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An hour an one second? You have got to be kidding me.

Fortunately, the chip time was more in my favor:

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Woo hoo! 12 seconds under an hour! Not only did I break an hour, I beat the Shamrockin Run time and it was three-hundredths of a mile longer! Woo!

So yeah, I spent yesterday bragging to everyone that I ran the whole five miles without stopping and even wore my race t-shirt to Thanksgiving dinner at our friend’s house. I’m shameless.

Four years at Automattic!

Well, you know I love an anniversary. But this is a big one! No, for real this time. After you’ve been at Automattic for four years, you get a new custom laptop with a lit up W (or Jetpack logo, or Automattic logo. I went with the W.) It’ll be a while before I actually get it, since it’s custom made and all that, but it’ll be worth the wait.

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And next year is even better – a three month paid sabbatical after five years! I have already started planning how I’m going to use my time (organizing every inch of the house, rocking NICU babies, cooking a lot, you know, the usual.)

I was thinking about how Automattic has changed since I started. We have stats for everything, and I found this one:

You started on 2013-11-18. Of the 632 other Automatticians, 166 (26.3%) started before you, 2 (0.3%) started on the same day, and 464 (73.4%) started after you.

Wow! Yeah, we’ve grown quite a bit in the last four years. (And I hired 38 of those!)

I think there were about 45 Happiness Engineers when I started, and now there are over 200. We hadn’t yet acquired WooCommerce, Calypso wasn’t a thing, heck, we were barely offering live chat to our customers! Now users with the Business plan can upload themes and plugins! (Trust me, this is huge.)

I have traveled to at least 18 cities in the last four years for work – from Dayton to Auckland. I’ve been up mountains and dipped my toes in the sea. I’ve seen the sun rise in Utah and in Spain. Okay, I’ll stop being poetic now.

I’ve met amazing people, made amazing friends, learned so much. I can’t wait to see what the next four years holds.

(Can you find me?)

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Oh yeah, and as usual, we’re hiring!

Lemons and questions

My lemon tree is out of control. Giant and growing all over the dang place with deadly spikes. I’m serious. What the heck is up with the spikes? Who knew lemon trees were so evil? That said, the lemons that result are giant and juicy and delish, so I guess I don’t blame the tree for wanting to protect them. And if they prevent people from stealing lemons off my tree, I’m all for them.

The lemons at the top of the tree have been ripe for a week or so, so I got the ladder out and started hacking at branches to a) prune it and b) get the lemons off. Worked like a charm. I only spilled a little blood and even though my pruning job was…not pretty, it got the job done. I mean, I guess. We’ll see next year I guess.

My hack job:

Before
After

Lemon tree injuries and the booty (so far):

Lemonade and pretty lemon cake!

So now on to the questions portion of today’s post.

  • Why does my van lock by itself right when I walk up to it? It only happens if one of the sliding doors is open. I assume it has something to do with the fob? I don’t think it does it if I don’t have the fob in my hand. It’s annoying as shit. (I have a 2004 Toyota Sienna.)
  • Also about my van – what is the weird low hum (loud) that happens when I start the van? (Also sometimes randomly when driving.) AKA “the frog”. (Very sick frog.) You can hear it in this video here.
  • Where did I put the letters I have from Jimmy Stewart? I can’t find them anywhere. It’s making me kind of sick. I know they’re not gone, but I want to have them in my hand so I know they’re okay.
  • While you’re helping me find things, where are my sunglasses?
  • And that stripey top with the sequin collar? I haven’t seen that thing in years. Meh, probably doesn’t fit anymore anyway. Jerk.
  • Is it worth paying to get 20+ year old film developed? I found this in a box yesterday.

 

One hundred nineteen

C’mon Mama, hurry up and take it so we can go inside for Diego’s party this is so embarrassing I hope no one is watching ugh HURRY UP!

aka My babies are going to be ten in a month! 😭