Naturally Optimistic

My incredibly talented & creative sister pulled off a lovely "Princess & Frog" themed birthday party for the triplets today. They will be FOUR on Tuesday. What? How can this be...anyway, I digress... Not only were there lavender frosted red velvet Princess cupcakes & bug eyed frog cupcakes, there was a platter filled with fantastic green fruits & another with green-only veggies (what a great idea!). There were cake pops (need to make these!) and "Frog's Eye" salad. Green & Lavender balloons & decorations everywhere. The goodie bags were similarly fantastically themed (little frogs, crowns, wands, princess fruit snacks, etc). It was great! Dahlia & August had a great time celebrating the birthday with their cousins! Now hopefully we can all get a good night's sleep!!

A few photos (courtesy of my Mom) from the past weekend: Dahlia in her swing: Dahlia in her new bouncy seat: The Triplets (outfits courtesy of Auntie Carrie!):

From the Triplets... ...and me....

Finished! The Triplet Baby Blankets...as of last week. These are the last two...the yellow is for Joshua and the green for George. I dragged Steve into a fabric store in Minneapolis with me yesterday. He was a good sport. I tried to make it interactive "ooh - I like this fabric, can you find one that matches in blue....etc" which worked for a while... It was so fun to be in a store with SELECTION. I was nearly freaking out. I spent a lot of money there...but I could easily spend that much every week! I have many Christmas projects to work on...you just might end up with these fabrics under your tree...... You never know.

MMMMM! I could eat these babies right up!!

Johnson Triplets

Lindsay, Gavin & Me The "Birthday Girls" at Forepaugh's Mansion in St. Paul (Lindsay, Me, Kathy) More Triplet updates to be found here .

Josh: Hannah: George: My sister taking all three for a stroll:

Yesterday I drove the sick computer (steve's Dell) to Apple Valley (160 or so miles south) to have my cousin's boyfriend take a look at it and see if he could save me $300+ and fix it. We sat from about 6:15pm til it finished up at 12:45am!!! Paul tried several things initially that just didn't work due to all the viruses & spyware that had infected that machine. Ultimately he had to remove the harddrive, install it as a slave on his computer, remove all of our files to his computer, put the harddrive back into our computer and reinstall the operating system. Now it works like a charm! We *hopefully* didn't lose any files or photos and now our system is really running a lot better & faster...and the desktop is so clean! Whohooo! Paul also installed a virus program that is *top notch* and will continually run in the background as well as some adware software to catch nasty buggers before the get us to the point of no return...again. I also got to visit my adorabl...

Eeek, my adorable niece & nephews came home this week. I'm so happy for my sister & brother-in-law that their new ones are doing so well. And are SO cute. Here they are modeling their "going home" outfits from Auntie Carrie & Uncle Steve (eeek, that still sounds so weird!). They are Josh, Hannah & George in order left to right.

I'm an auntie!! My sister had her triplets yesterday - whohooo!! They are: Hannah Jean Born at 12:30pm 4lbs 3 oz George William Born at 12:32pm 3lbs 14oz and Joshua Wayne Born at 12:31pm 4lbs 6oz Hannah & George are at the Special Care Nursery and Joshua is in the NICU to help him out with his breathing. They are all doing very well though. Kathy is doing awesomely! She is so mellow and strong and just freaking amazing. I am so excited & happy for both her & Jay. I bet they can't wait to hold these wee ones in their arms!!!! Oh and Aunt Carrie is pretty dang proud too:

Sometimes your life takes a 180. For instance, I used to sit for hours staring off into space, counting the minutes and seconds (ugh!) until I could flee my office and get home. Now I barely have time to think, breathe, eat, go to the bathroom etc etc. It's good but it's so very different. Thursday I only worked for a bit - I was mostly running around answering emails & phone calls and trying to get video to download properly and also getting packed up for the weekend. Thursday I drove to Apple Valley to visit my sister & her husband. I made them dinner, I did some chores for Kathy (she's in her 5th week of bedrest!!) and we chatted. I was glad I could be of some help to them. Friday we got up early as Kathy had a(nother) 3-hour glucose test. Before I took her to the hospital I made dinner for them and Jay's parents (crock pot - gotta love it!) and tidied up the kitchen. Then off to the hospital for the next 4 hours. Again I was glad I could be there to hang out...

A couple of updates.... Iko had pepped up to a degree a few days after my post about him. We could get him to eat his medicine if it was mixed in a tasty soft food (!). He was more vocal, wandered around the house more and seemed to be sleeping less. He went outside, greeted Steve at the door when he came home, etc. However, last night he didn't finish his food/medicine and this morning Steve couldn't get him to eat at all (I was out of town at a wedding). I tried to get him to eat when I got home (for some reason I sometimes have better luck) but no go. I did give him some water from the shower (his preferred "drinking fountain") but he just isn't interested AT ALL in the food. I'm very scared. My sister had a doctor's appointment on Friday and the contractions haven't stopped. She is not on STRICT bedrest and can only get up to use the bathroom and to shower (in 7 minutes or less). I've talked to her a few times and so far she's not too bored...

Firstly - I heard from my folks last night that my sister and the babies had a little scare yesterday. While in for her regular check-up (25 1/2 weeks, for those of you who are counting), they put her on the contraction monitoring device to find that she was having contractions - every six minutes! They sent her to the hospital, called my brother-in-law (who got the message "Your wife's in the hospital having contractions every 6 minutes, come quickly" - no I'm sure he didn't FREAK OUT) and finally was able to stop the contractions with use of drugs. Needless to say this incident has now put my entire family on pins and needles. I can't imagine what Kathy & Jay are feeling. 32 weeks is the goal, 36 weeks would be ideal. These babies aren't done baking yet!! Hopefully they will settle down now for a little longer. They went home last night and everything was okay. Please keep them in your thoughts & prayers. Secondly - Iko. Iko has lost over a pou...

It was another busy weekend. I need to have one of those "Laying around" weekends soon - wait, what are those again? Friday afternoon I drove down to Minneapolis to attend a wine tasting/benefit with my friend Sarah O. The weather was crappy and sleety and I was incredibly paranoid & terrified that I would go careening into the ditch so took it very slow. Luckily I had plenty of time and left earlier than I planned so there were no problems. About 1/2 way there the freezing part stopped and it was just rain (I could tell by the ice that was no longer forming on my side view mirrors & the trees). That made the second part of the drive a bit quicker. The wine tasting was fun. We sampled oodles of wines from all different vineyards and countries. We munched on cheeses, grapes, crackers, breads, chocolates, etc. (note to self: eat an ACTUAL dinner before if you ever go to this again....). We made it home unscathed (and in a cab) around 9:30 or so where we then devoured a...

Well, the oodles of cuteness, limey green punch and 3 anxiety dreams later the shower has come and gone. Whew. The theme was "Three Peas in a Pod" as Kathy is having triplets. Unfortunately, other than ridiculously cute invitations, I couldn't find much "pea pod" stuff that wasn't stupid or weird lookiing (especially for trips). So my cousins & I opted to go with a springy yellow/green theme which sort of serves the pea pod theme as well as the springy-ness of this time of year. And since we don't know the sex of the babies, it works with that too. We had the shower at Kathy's house as we weren't sure if she'd be on bedrest or not and I didn't want to risk it. It was rather odd hosting something at someone else's house because I didn't know what exactly I had to work with! I came down on Friday morning to take care of the baking and finding out where a few things were. On Saturday morning Kathy & Jay left for a couple hou...

I feel good when I get a few things done... Like.....writing up a schedule & budget for our upcoming production; putting the finishing touches on the baby shower I'm hosting for my sister (triplets!) this weekend; securing locations for said production for UNDER budget (thank god) and finally puttying the holes in the quarter-round of our new molding in the living room and dining room. *sigh* It's all good....

Okay - yes, back to Triplet Talk. I'm trying to come up with nursery rhymes/stories/fairy tales, songs, etc that may have 3's referenced in them for a game that I'm creating.... Here are some of what I have so far: 3 Blind Mice Goldilocks and the 3 Bears 3 Pigs 3 Little Kittens 3 Billy Goats Gruff 3 bags of wool (from Baa Baa Black Sheep) I feel as though I'm missing some very obvious references to 3's (and other not-so-obvious ones too). Please help me! Drop me a comment about 3's! I'd greatly appreciate it.