You should have read that to the tune of I’ve Got Friends in Low Places, in case that wasn’t obviously apparent when you read it. That’s what popped into my head at one point today when each subset of my kids was in different locations.

The day essentially started the same as any other day with me getting up to take care of Fawkes and Phoenix. Milly was already up, which was slightly surprising to me just because she got in a little later than usual.

Let me go into that first I guess. Her mom usually picks her up on Thursdays in the summer then keeps her until Sunday. This week was different because Milly had a day camp started at 9:00 every morning. Since Amanda wouldn’t be able to get her there, Milly stayed here and I took her to the camp.

However, Amanda did want to do something with Milly, so she picked her up Thursday afternoon and took her, along with her significant other and his daughter, to Carolina Beach to watch the fireworks that the town shoot off every Thursday. Milly didn’t get back until a little after 10, which I was fine with.

Anyway, Milly’s day camp this week culminated in a little performance today. All week they developed characters, worked on a song, and put together a skit. Milly’s character was named Nobody and she wanted her to be a little funky, so she was originally going to borrow a rainbow wig from a friend, but ended up convincing her mom to let her use some temporary hair dye.

All that is to say that I dyed Milly’s hair this morning. Her hair was still wet from rinsing when I dropped her off, so I couldn’t tell how much the dye (purple on one side, pink on the other) had taken hold. The theater they performed in was a bit too dark to see it too (and she decide to wear a hat as well), but you could definitely see glints of color in the light.

In all of this, Tristen had made plans with her mom and sister to go to the beach with the twins. It would have been a lot for her to take all the boys, so I took Griffin with me to Milly’s performance. We would have taken everyone, but it was at 11:30, which is right during prime nap time for Fawkes and Phoenix.

I strapped Griffin on in a carrier, and of course he was just fine right up until Milly’s group came out. I was trying to record it, but then he started fussing, so I was fiddling with taking him out of the carrier, cradling him and trying to hold a bottle at the same time with my left arm and holding the camera with my right. It didn’t go well.

Fortunately I noticed that the lady in front of me was recording the show (horizontally, I might add, so kudos to her). I asked if she’d mind sending me the videos she took and she Airdropped them to me afterwards.

Griffin got pretty fussy during the last group’s performance, so I took him to the back. There was a mom there with her own baby strapped onto her who had gone to the back for the same reason.Turns out her baby and mine were only a week or so apart, Griffin being the older one.

After the performance Milly went off with Amanda, who had taken a little time away from work to come see it, to get dropped off to play with Brynn while Amanda was working.

Griffin and I walked a few blocks to get some I Love NY pizza. There was a group of out-of-towners who fawned all over him.

Tristen had called while Griffin and I were taking our walk (during which he, of course, had fallen fast asleep) to tell me that Fawkes and Phoenix were up and they were on their way to the beach.

Hence the thought: I’ve got kids in different places. All my kids were scattered all over New Hanover County.

I tried to get some work done, but Griffin wasn’t super cool with that idea. I got some done, but he was a bit fussy (despite the smile in the picture) and wanted to stay attached to me. I eventually dozed off in the recliner with him, which was the situation when Tristen returned with the bigger boys.

They had a good time at the beach. It was Tristen, Fawkes, Phoenix, Laura, Torrie, Sebastian, and Gabriel. The kids outnumbered the adults by one, which kept the adults constantly busy.

There was a sandbar that they took all the kids out to and Tristen lost her prescription sunglasses. She went to look for them but couldn’t find them, but lucked out when she saw that a guy out there was looking at something in the water, and when he came back up to his family she saw that he had rescued her glasses.

The rest of the day was pretty rote and ended with me and Tristen watching an episode of Good Omens. We’d be done with the show by now if I could stay awake at night, but I’ve been on my “fall asleep early, wake up around 1 and do some work until 3 or so” schedule.