My mamas!

Had dinner with the triplet mamas last night, and one showed up who I haven’t seen in ages. Now, Alicia (on the left) and I see each other a fair bit. I used to work on the website for The Irish House, and her girls are going to be starting at the boys’ school next month (yay!) But I haven’t seen Stephanie in years. I know she came to visit me in the hospital when I had back surgery (though the memory is very woozy) but that might have been the last time.

So it was really awesome to see her.

The backstory is that these are the mamas who had their babies in the same hospital at around the same time. (Mine were born in the morning, Alicia’s quads in the evening, and Stephanie’s triplets about 36 hours after that.)

We also took this picture of the babies when they were about 5 months old, and are scheming to do another version, seven years later. Maybe THIS time Ellen will take notice. Ha!

Can’t wait to see all of the kids together again!

Thursday stuff

Oliver lost one of his top teeth, finally! Poor dude was getting a complex about it. Woke me up at 1am to show me. Glad he didn’t swallow it in his sleep! Looks like the adult tooth is already coming in.

While getting in the van to take the boys to camp this morning, I stepped in a red ant pile that was hidden under some Asian jasmine. A lot of cursing and slapping at my feet followed. I hate those assholes. (Here’s the full video if you want to see them up close.)

Today a company is coming by to give us an estimate on having the attic insulated. Hopefully we can afford to do it, because I imagine it would pay for itself in a couple of years. Upstairs gets so, so hot. Anyone have experience with this? Our a/c is just struggling to keep up with the heat.

I also am scheming to get the living room in order. Painting, first of all. And then just making it look a little nicer. Maybe it’s time to take down the baby gate at the top of the stairs? I dunno if I’m ready for that. Here’s what it looks like currently. At least I moved the lego table into the boys’ room. It’s a start.

Oh shoot. Two days til the triathlon. Better start thinking about that.

Everything else about NYC

BlogHer was the reason I went to New York, but I want to make sure I don’t forget all of the other details of my trip…

Ate at some amazing restaurants. The Spotted Pig had the most incredible corn soup. At Kesté, we ate maybe the best pizza I’ve ever had. I had Korean food for the first time ever. We had Thai. I can’t even remember what all I ate, but it was all delicious. Oh yeah, I finally had a Shake Shack burger! Totally worth the wait. Especially the bun.

I walked a ton. Finally made it all the way to the top of Central Park. Went running with a coworker in Central Park as well. Saw coordinating black and white dogs.

Speaking of black and white dogs, got to hang out with my coworker and her dog, Francis, in Hoboken.

Went to a work reception thing after BlogHer, got to hang out with more coworkers.

Had some time to kill before my flight, so I went and saw Trainwreck. (Hilarious!)

Oh, more food: had brunch with some non-work friends that I never get to see. Ate potato waffles topped with poached eggs and some green sauce. So so so good. Got loved up by this sweet baby:

On the way home, got upgraded to first class, and almost sat next to Elizabeth Moss on the plane. (Some guy took her seat accidentally but she let him keep it. Curses! Just as well, since I’d just spilled red wine in my lap.)

BlogHer ’15

You know I love my job. I sit at my desk at home and help WordPress.com users. I love doing that. I get to sit in my pajamas and not wear makeup and type out my answers over live chat or answering support tickets. It’s great.

But you know what’s even better?

FullSizeRender 10 — My lovely coworker Denise

Standing at a booth for two and a half days and helping WordPress users. I’m exhausted. My legs hurt. But it doesn’t matter because I got to see the faces of the people I helped. They literally hugged me when we got a problem solved. People walked up to the booth just to say, “I love WordPress so much!” or “I don’t need help, I just want you to know how much I love you.”

And then there were posts like these:

#BlogHer15 gets better by the minute. Pam at @WordPress just absolutely made my day. Thank you, lovely lady! pic.twitter.com/E2lzdPevht

— Amy Underwood Arndt (@theamysituation) July 17, 2015

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A post shared by ANANDA LEEKE (@anandaleeke)

I also ran into old friends, another identical triplet mom, and got to meet a blogger I’ve been reading forever (and got a little giggly and nervous.)

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A post shared by Pam Kocke (@pyjammy)

I got to spend all weekend with this magnificent group of women, just a few of my wonderful coworkers.

❤️ #WPLovesBlogHer #BlogHer15 pic.twitter.com/ZbMDAi0IMa

— Jenny Zhu (@jennyzhu) July 17, 2015

Denise and I hung out with Gwynnie. I mean, you know, we were all in the same room, at least.

I got a bunch of tattoos.

Man. I love my job.

(Did you know we’re hiring?)

Psych!

Turns out Millie and Linus played a trick on me and hid my camera in his bag. Whew!

I didn’t get many good pics on Sunday anyway, but this video of Linus doing a flip underwater is fun. Nice, eh?

Well.

I was going to be posting some fun underwater pictures and videos from Sunday in this spot, but it appears that I am no longer in possession of my underwater camera. I at least know I had it at 2:17pm on Sunday, because I took a picture of it with my phone to show a friend who is looking for an underwater camera.

As it turns out, I was taking the photo to warn her NOT to get this crappy camera, so I guess in the end it’s not the loss of the camera that upsets me, but the SD card that’s in it. It was a nice SD card and I knew I should have used a different one, because now I’m going to have to go buy another one. I think I have enough underwater photos to last a lifetime, so we’re good there.

(Except I got a video of Miles doing a flip underwater, one of their new tricks, and that was pretty cool.)

Sigh.

Speaking of, though, it’s pretty awesome how much the boys have progressed with swimming this summer. Being taller helps, of course, but a week ago, they wouldn’t jump off the little diving platforms without me being RIGHTTHERE to catch them, but now they’ll jump off and swim to the side without me even being in the pool.

And the flips – Linus can do three in a row without coming up for air!

I think next summer, it might be time for them to do their first triathlon. Gotta work on the bicycle part, though.

Summer afternoon

Happy birthday, Dad!

Today would have been my dad’s 77th birthday. I was looking for this awesome picture to post – it was the first day of fifth or sixth grade, I’m not sure. I had picked out an epic outfit. It was great. Red long-sleeved button down shirt (in Baton Rouge in August. Fashion trumps all!), long denim skirt. Bolo tie. Silver concha belt (is that what they’re called?) Earrings that looked like tiny versions of the belt links. (Just remembering those earrings evokes the smell of Claire’s.) Freshly permed helmet of hair. My shoes were…probably western themed. And my dad, standing proudly next to me.

Well, this was a man who wore black socks with shorts. I must have inherited his fashion sense.

Anyway, while digging around for that picture, I found this flier from a surprise birthday party we threw for him.

He didn’t like being the center of attention, so the surprise party maybe wasn’t his favorite ever. We joked that he died right before his 60th birthday to avoid another surprise party. Way to get out of it, Dad.

Those are some stellar graphic design skillz I whipped out for this, eh? Nice.

Anyway, happy birthday, Dad! Hope you get lots of holes in one in that great big golf course in the sky!

Freckles

Only took a few goldfish.

Nature stuff

To top off our weekend o’ fun, we drove across the lake to visit Ren, since it had been a while. Her girls were going to be with their dad, so it was just the four of us. We went to Abita and Ren took us on a little trail near a creek. The boys had fun splashing around. Next time, we’re bringing bathing suits!

Not great camouflage, Ollie.

Splashing! (as you can see, it was very shallow.)

After the splashing, we went to the brew pub for lunch, and then had snowballs for dessert.

Can’t wait to do it again!

Super fun weekend!

This weekend was jam-packed full o’ fun. I will try to keep this relatively short, but it’s not gonna be easy.

Friday night: Prom

I went to a party at the pub for our friends Heather and Neil (their birthdays are close to each other so they share a party.) The theme was “A Night at the Proms,” which most people took to mean “high school prom” but the upshot was, everyone was dressed fancy.

I mean everyone.

I was able to tailor my thrift store dress with mostly safety pins, and between that and every piece of sparkly costume jewelry I owned, I think I acquitted myself nicely.

Tee and me and a metric ton of rhinestones.

And thanks to the slit, I was able to ride my bike to the pub and back home.

Saturday: The Fourth of July

The boys had been looking forward to the fourth for a while. I’m not entirely sure why. The fireworks, I guess.

We went to a friend’s house. Teresa and I made the watermelon jello shots, which were a huge hit. The kids were all sad they couldn’t have any, so we told them we’d make them a non-alcoholic version for the next party.

I bought sparklers for the kids (as you saw in the monthly pic) so they had fun with those. Mostly. Until Ethan touched the hot part of his after it had gone out and burned his finger. Later, I burned my thumb badly lighting them. So now I think sparklers are evil.