Tag: triplets

Back! (with more mountain pics)

I can’t believe it’s been ten days since I last posted. It’s been an extremely busy ten days, so I’m going to start trying to catch up with posts about our trip to Los Angeles (which was fantastic.)

First up, pics from our hike from the Griffith Observatory to get a good view of the Hollywood Sign, which the boys were fascinated by (mostly because of the sheer size of it.)

We went about a mile out (and then back), and I was impressed by how much the boys enjoyed it (and how little they complained.) We got pretty high up, and the nervous mom in me was freaking out only slightly. (Can’t you tell by the look on my face in this pic?)

Pokémon hunting

Who knew, that hunting for Pokémon would make for such great pictures? The boys and I are spending the weekend in Baton Rouge with Emily and my mom and Larry. My sister will be here on Sunday with Andrew, so I expect I’ll corner that little one for pics when he gets here.

I’m just waiting for some photographer to come out with a “Pokémon Go Photo Session.” Maybe this is how I can make my millions.

And then I made them all stand for a sec in the golden late afternoon light for individual pics.

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Emily, her mother’s daughter for sure
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Oliver, pre-teen in training
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Milesy
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Linus

 

 

 

Month 103

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Yep, Linus is back to brown. And Oliver was supposed to be, but when I saw his lip quiver after I pulled the box of brown dye out, I just couldn’t do it. I gave him a boost of blue instead, but the understanding that in a few weeks, it’s back to brown. (And Linus’s is too light, I need to fix that too.)

Anyway, happy Fourth of July!

The week we had

Oh, I mean, it wasn’t exciting or anything, I just didn’t want more than a week to go by without blogging so I shall blog about what we did this week.

The boys started camp, which has been great for me. It’s nice and peaceful at home, and I can go to Orange Theory to work out, and of course, they’ve been having a great time too. Their friend Ethan is at camp with them, and from what they’ve told me, they’re all thick as thieves. So that’s fun. They’ve been swimming every day and went to Laser Tag yesterday and blah blah blah mainly they’re not doing anything electronic for 6-7 hours a day and that’s the best part.

Of course, I’m the worst mother ever and forgot to put sunscreen on them for the first three days of the week, so by Wednesday they all had rather pink shoulders. I definitely felt like shit.

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I went and had dinner with my triplet/quad mamas, that was always lovely. Here I am with the mamas from here.

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Saved up some Amazon gift cards and got some amazing (and eye-wateringly expensive) noise cancelling earbuds. I feel quite confident that I’m going to snooze like a baby on the airplane next week because of these as well as this travel pillow I bought. YES I DID.

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I don’t care in the least how goofy this looks if it means I can get a few hours of sleep on the plane. Erica and I arrive early Friday morning, and that night we have a presentation to give. So if I don’t sleep on the plane, it could get really ugly.

In non-travel-related news, we made pizza bombs! I love Tasty. I am addicted to watching the videos, even though half of the recipes look less than appetizing. These were a big hit with the boys.

Okay, I should have sealed up the dough better. Whatever.

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And now I shall end this post with this ridiculously adorable picture the boys found online.

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Summertime!

It’s been an eventful start to the summer already. Gareth‘s sister and family are in town, which has been really fun for the boys. Rachel has two boys who are nine and twelve, and all of the boys have become fast friends.

There was hanging out at the pub, coloring all of the bricks…

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Swimming on Memorial Day…

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Taking over the levee last night…

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and generally just being goofy. I’ll be sad when they leave at the end of the week! Hopefully we’ll see them again soon, either over on their home turf (the UK) or back here.

I also took Miles to see Angry Birds (terrible, but look, triplets!)

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and Linus and I went shopping, where I bought him his very own plant to take care of. (It’s spearmint.) (He liked the smell.)

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And some movie nights on the sofa with popcorn.

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Fun times! Next week will be camp for the boys, and the week after, I leave for Europe! Eep!

Last day of second grade!

This year just flew by, didn’t it? I can’t believe the boys have been at their school for five years now. Seems crazy.

First day:

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Last day:

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Have they grown? Not noticeably. Have they changed? Uh yeah.  I love seeing the pristine shoes and backpacks from the first day. And look how tan their legs are from the summer. Oh, and we have a dog now, too.

Third grade, here we come!

 

 

Weekend and things

Had a lovely weekend. Went to Orange Theory Saturday morning, then took Oliver to Target to get a pair of pajamas (in theory they all have pajama day this week, but I haven’t actually heard anything about it from their teachers, but it’s not like he’s not going to wear his new pajamas that have the design of some YouTube dude he admires. [WTF, btw. A guy who makes YouTube videos has licensed stuff like pajamas. Also he has blue hair. That is not a coincidence.])

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After the pajama trek, I went and drank wine in Heather’s backyard, and was in theory going to only be there for an hour or two but that turned into coming home at midnight. Ooops. So didn’t go to OTF on Sunday as planned. Instead, made these delicious chocolate chip cookies to bring to my cousin Lisa’s house.

Going to Lisa’s house is always fun. The boys love her boys (who are not really boys anymore, but legit grownups) and there’s always delicious food (some insane corn dip yesterday is something I need to eat every day except not really because it has mayo in it) and Lisa and her husband are super laid back, so it’s just nice.

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They are very comfortable at Lisa’s. Maybe too comfortable.
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Eli and the boys. Awww!

But the best part is they have a deck along the back of the house, which makes the perfect stage, so now you have to watch this play the boys put on. JK you only have to watch it if you’re related to us.

After the play, snowballs!

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Want to talk a tiny bit more about OTF – I’ve been going a bit over a month now and it’s exciting because I can see muscles that were not there before! Today I was doing this arm exercise thingy, and I couldn’t take my eyes off some muscle, while sweat dripped down my nose. Tomorrow I have an appointment for an assessment with one of the trainers, and I really wish I’d done that before I started. But it’ll be interesting to see my progress from here on out.

Random cute picture of Miles and Ziggy:

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It’s the last week of second grade! I can’t believe it. I’ll be glad not to have to do the drive to school every afternoon, but I don’t think I’m ready for third graders.

That 366 project

No, I’m not giving up on it like I did last year. But I am definitely being lazy about it. Here are a bunch of pics in gallery format to make catching up easier.

The 9th through 15th are covered in my Austin recap post. I mean, I’m pretty positive I posted at least one picture from each day I was there. Let’s just say I did, mmkay?

So now for the 16th – 25th:

Okay, yes, I missed a day in there. Whatever. I’m being nice to myself and not obsessing over it.

We had a nice weekend in Baton Rouge. My mom and Larry hadn’t seen all three of them in a while. (Miles and I had seen them after his second day of filming.) There was hula-hooping and playing on a playground and going out to dinner for pizza. Sunday I was able to sneak off for a bit to buy some new workout clothes which was nice. We also made some more homemade cupcakes – lemon cupcakes with strawberry buttercream this time, but I don’t know if we should be making a habit of Sunday cupcakes. Well, we still have to make chocolate, so this isn’t the right time to be making a decision.

Speaking of my new workout, I’m really liking it. I am sore, but not like so much that I’m debilitated. It’s more like the “oh right, I have muscles there!” kind of sore. I’ll admit a big part of my motivation is the trip to Europe I have in June where I’ll be up on stage with my beautiful colleague Erica. There will be video of our talk. Need I say more?

Okay, on with the week!

 

Accountability and public speaking and green hair and other things

It’s been way too long since I’ve posted a real post. The kind with words and stuff. I feel pretty bad about just posting a bunch of pics about Austin, when I have lots of great memories that I really should be writing down. Let’s just hope the pictures help me remember them later. Or maybe I’ll end up editing that post with more details. We’ll see.

I think the best way for me to organize my thoughts is with bullets, since this’ll be all over the place.

I’ve been thinking for a long time about doing some kind of bootcamp fitness program, but I’ve been unable to find one that was at the appropriate times, etc. I was talking to someone a few weeks ago and she mentioned she was going to Orange Theory Fitness so I looked into it and ended up going to a class yesterday.

It was tough, I gotta say. It’s funny, you think “I can run a few miles at a time, and I can do half marathons without dying, so I must be in some kind of shape” and then you do a class like this and

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It’s high intensity interval training, and there are treadmills and rowing machines and weights and floor exercises and wow, when I got off the rowing machines after a few minutes my legs were like jelly.

So I signed up to go as much as humanly possible and try to get really fit over the next two months (and beyond) because in two months, this is happening…
Say hello to our next group of #WCEU speakers!

Yes, my coworker Erica and I are giving a talk at WordCamp Europe in front of, oh, I don’t know, more than the 20 people I spoke to at WordCamp Dayton. At least I can hide behind Erica, except she is tiny.

Anyway, my only point is that I want to feel good about myself before getting on a stage in front of more than 20 people.

In non-me related things, I continued to allow my children to really express themselves through their hair. I mean, it’s not hurting anyone. It’s temporary (ish, I mean, I did have to bleach their hair to get it this vibrant, but hair does grow) and if you could have seen how happy Linus was after we made his green, well, any doubts would have been wiped away.

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Miles wanted to be in the picture too. He of course also now wants to dye his hair, but I pointed out that his acting career might suffer if he does. So we’re leaving it as is for now. Anyway, if I have to end up dying Linus and Oliver’s back, I’ll need a reference for the original color. Ha!

I had a really fun weekend with the boys, not just dying their hair. We saw Jungle Book (really good) and watched a bunch of baking shows on Netflix. MilesCupcake Wars in particular inspired us to whip up a batch of homemade vanilla cupcakes and vanilla buttercream frosting. I even scraped seeds out of vanilla bean pods, that’s how serious we were. They were deeeelish, in spite of the fact that I apparently left a box of powdered sugar at the grocery store after paying for it, so our frosting was more butter than anything. Nothin’ wrong with that

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Miles approves of my frosting recipe.

100 monthly pics…the stats

Some silly stats about the monthly pics so far…

  • 8 taken on the wrong day (gasp!) (usually because I was out of town and couldn’t take it myself)
  • 23 taken on the loveseat
  • 29 taken on the side of the house
  • 1 taken underwater
  • 4 special guests (Ziggy, Ellie, Millie, Daddy)
  • 1 taken by someone else (I decided it was better to be taken on the right day than by me. Larry took one when George and I were in England last summer.)
  • 6 taken out of town
  • unknowable number of bribes

I’m editing this post to add, at my friend Liz’s request, some stats about the order.

LOM: 38 times
LMO: 10 times
MOL: 22 times
MLO: 11 times
OLM: 11 times
OML: 8 times

Oliver clearly likes to be in the middle, when possible. (60%)
Linus is first 48% of the time. Miles is, 33% of the time, and Oliver just 19%Miles is rarely in the middle, just 18% of the time.

What does this all mean? Heck if I know.

April 4, 2016 {number 100!}

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When I started taking monthly pics of the boys, I didn’t know when I was going to stop. I still don’t.

It’s possible I went a little overboard this month. But I had fun, and even got the boys actually looking forward to the monthly picture, which has never happened.

Props to my friend Teresa who helped out this morning.

Onto the next hundred or two…