Category: Life Updates

I wanted the “This week in review” post to become an opportunity to share a lot of photos, and just call it a day. I was all set for that too, and then the last two days happened. This weekend, my babies grew up before my eyes.

Yesterday, Luka helped me out in the garden, and then acted as a host for everyone who came over. He gave hugs to folks who came. He opened and closed the door for folks. He smiled, and made folks laugh.

Amelia just did her thing. She was silly. She was cute. She chased her friends. She rekindled laughs with old ones. It was as if they were the stars of the show. She even blew out the birthday cake!

Today, Luka climbed to the top of the rope cone at the playground. All by himself. And at bedtime, he individually kissed Amelia, Micky, and myself before going to bed.

Where did my babies go?

On to the photos…

I don’t have much more to add for this week. It’s literally 11:59pm Sunday night as I type this, and so I’m just going to throw in some photos and movies, and call it a post.

Good night moon!

A long, crazy, week. The end of lots of things, and the beginning of some really great ones. This week in review…

Working on a cross Comms project means a lot of morning meetings. Holy smokes that takes coordination. Phone charged. Awake. Kids taken care of. Into the meeting. Mentally present, and not distracted. Whew… it’s just going to keep getting crazier. I can tell.

Monday was St. Patrick’s day, and that ended up being a great day. Trey was in town. We got dinner at Nopalito. I headed out to see Mike’s band play. Good, good night.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Micky’s travels were finally done. I mean finally, thank God, they were done! She’ll be home for a while now which is good for me. Definitely good for the kids too. She’s done traveling because her commercials are out! If you haven’t seen them, check it out on Trulia’s YouTube channel.

When the weekend arrived, we family bonded. It was really excellent. Sunday we celebrated Rahul’s first birthday. Here are some videos of us on the slides at the carousel playground. What a great weekend it was!

Man I needed this week to end.

Babies aren’t sleeping. Work is non-stop. Even hanging out with friends feels like this epic trade off between staying in touch, and falling further behind.

I’m just looking forward to 2 days with the babies, and getting to hit the reset button.

Now here’s to 8 hours of sleep :-/

I came home at midnight. The babysitter headed out. This post is Monday’s post, but it’s written in the future because… we had a lot of St. Patrick’s Day fun today 🙂

This morning I totally forgot it was St. Patrick’s Day. No matter. I took the kids to school without green, and I showed up without green at the office. It was particularly bad since I sent out an email imploring folks to wear green to celebrate. Oops!

Sierra ordered corn beef sandwiches and Guinness beer for lunch. Very stereotypical of us!

Mike saved me with a Celtic shirt, and so the day wasn’t too much of a disaster 🙂

Trey is in town, and he came over to see the house. I took him out to dinner at Nopalito. Holy smokes EVERYTHING was spicy. AND I saw a huge rat in their back patio area… I think :-/

I’d definitely go back though 🙂

Trey had been up all day, and so I got him back to his hotel, and headed up to Maggie McGrary’s to see Mike’s band play. I hung out with Jelena, and had a blast. I even had a Magner’s Cider! I really love that stuff. It’s just fancy apple juice after all 🙂

For this old fogey/dad who never gets out, it was an awesome night.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Not a lot of sleep. Micky being in NYC fills the whole house with weird creaks, and this strange sensation that every noise is someone out to get me (or maybe I’ve watched too much Burn Notice…).

The week ended well, and the weekend was even better. Saturday was good family bonding. Sunday was good bonding with the Green family. It’s really fun to just let the kids go wild in the backyard or in the park. It’s also really interesting to see different kids blooming and becoming people across their very short lifetimes.

The magic of today may actually have been NC State getting into the NCAA tournament. I’m picking them to go all the way baby! I love this time of year just for that. Let’s see if there’s magic to this team (feels like an ’83 kind of year).

On to the next one 🙂

I just dropped off the check to our CPA to pay for his services. I really like the guy, but the results have been a bit brutal lately. Getting smart about finances and money management has been hard for us.

We’ve nailed budgets in Mint (what an awesome tool. I really wish they’d hired me sometimes).

We’re finally saving again post house acquisition.

But man oh man I don’t understand taxes at all, and I don’t get how to optimize for them. I really wish there was a dummies guide to living in Silicon Valley, getting Silicon Valley wages, and still feeling like the tax code isn’t screwing you. I guess the title is too long to fit onto the cover of the book though :-p

Eric stepped in and gave us a low down of what to do this year… which is really nice, but we learned the lesson two years too late.

Oh man this growing up thing can suck.

Today so many good things have happened.

Micky came home last night, and we went out to breakfast as a family. The kids had their chocolate pancakes. We had our breakfast foods. And then we dropped the babies off at school. It was a really nice family breakfast (even though I spilled iced tea all over myself).

I had a fun lunch with Betsy (and even though she’s leaving, we laughed anyway).

I had a good outbound event.

I had a good bit of news.

And then I finally got to come home to Micky for the first time this week, and that was really great.

A good work week, and definitely one to remember.

The week that Doruk was here.

It’s quite fun to have family around. I think that’s true regardless of who’s side it is. It also becomes a persistent reminder of how far away we are from family. I grew up a very long airplane ride away from my family, and somehow I’d like to make that distance feel much shorter for the babies. So far I think we’ve done a good job, but as flights get more expensive, the family grows, and folks get older and it’s harder for them to travel, I’m not sure how we pull it off. I guess that’s tomorrow’s problem, and so it goes…

What did we do this week? Hmmm….

A visit to Oakland and Brown Sugar kitchen in the rain. Followed that with a trip to the Alameda flea market where I got a snazzy belt!

The week was filled with the chaos of working too much; coming home to the babies & Doruk who were laughing too much; and the joys of having my baby brother around.

Yesterday we went to the beach, and just enjoyed the weather. The moment. It was really nice. When I took the big babies to the airport, it was a perfect ending. Doruk made me laugh the way he left, and I felt like a complete cycle of being together had passed. It was really nice.

Sunday felt like a down day. Luka started his new soccer season. Amelia wanted to join in. We’re going to have to figure that one out… She’s just not that into it, and so we didn’t sign her up… but may she is into it? I played too. It was a disaster 🙁 During my game, Amelia got nailed in the face by a shot. She took it amazingly well. She’s a rock star when it comes to pain.

Then we ended the weekend with good family bonding, and Micky heading to the airport for her trip this week.