Big Moves, Part 2

You know how I start a post with something like, oh it's been a while! Again! Things are busy! Etc!

Soccer field wind tunnel

Everytime I write that a part of me genuinely thinks I will soon have time to properly blog. Like there will be whole nights where I just sit with James and watch a show that doesn't require my whole concentration (currently watching Severance which does in fact require all my focus because wtf. I definitely like it, but I also definitely have no idea what's going on much of the time) and type and recount our days and smile and look forward to reading about them again in the future.

Instead, each day involves the complicated logistical maneuvers of 3 kids and 3 pets, a husband and a house.

Each day also involves a lot of laughter and love and funny text messages and pictures of Maggie.

"Conversation" with the teenager

Each day involves me doing work that makes me feel smart and happy and valued.

It works.

Each day ALSO involves 2+ hours of me driving to that work. Some days it's 90+ minutes each way.

This does not work.

And so, the Lag Liv family has some big news:

We're moving to Dallas!

As is our way, it was all decided fairly quickly. I talked with James one night and he immediately said, "If you need to move, we need to move."

And so the next night we talked to the kids over dinner. They weren't thrilled, but they weren't surprised- it was something we talked about when I took this job. They're all sad to leave Fort Worth- we've been here over 10 years (!!), but they're excited about a new city, new house (hopefully with 4 bedrooms this time!), and new opportunities.

Cora is the most sad. My extremely outgoing child dislikes change IMMENSELY and is still morning the dead bushes we cut away in front of the house five months ago.

Claire is sad but okay. She made a lot of new friends this year and is devastated to leave them, but I also think she feels confident in making new friends right now so that helps a lot.

And Landon is neutral. He's excited to be part of a bigger swim team and was initially excited to be closer to his best friend in Weatherford until we explained Dallas is an hour in the opposite direction, but they have plans for lots of sleepovers.

(That picture is actually from a shopping trip I made him go on with James. The girls and I went on our own and had a blast. His reaction to replacing his wardrobe for another size was somewhat different than Claire and Cora's.)

The cats have no comment and Maggie is just delighted we found a rental house that will allow her to come along.

Because yes! We have a house! After we took the kids to our hoped-for neighborhood ten days ago and drove them by the schools, parks, lake, and several houses, we realized home buying right now is impossible (we looked at 4 houses and all 4 sold before we were back in Fort Worth an hour later). So we're renting! Which we've never done before. It's a 6 month lease with mont-to-month extension option starting June 1 that will let us get to the neighborhood we want to be in (FOUR POINT TWO MILES from my office; so different from 42), let the kids start school (registered them today!), and then let us leisurely look for our forever home early in the new year.

I'm very excited about this, and now that they can see our next steps, the kids (even Cora!) are more excited too. This will be her first move, but I truly believe she's going to do amazing. She's a bloom where she's planted kind of girl.

We spent last weekend packing up all the extra to get the home ready to be listed. We went through every closet and drawer and even in a house with little to no storage, we found you can accumulate many things in 10 years. It was a long busy weekend, but all the kids were such troopers and we got everyone's pizza Sunday night.

A pod comes this weekend for us to load up, then the gorgeous new doors and giant double-paned windows I ordered late last year are finally arriving (sob) and will be installed, and then we'll do pictures and list! I'm devastated my gorgeous new bedroom wall just got done and I just now gave myself a (similarly gorgeous!) home office and now we're leaving, but the timing is what it is. Our house has nearly tripled in value, so it's not like we're not getting everything back and a whole lot more.

Hopefully someone will appreciate my crazy wall paper, and if not, they can take it down. I've kept the extra for a wall in our new forever house.

And so that's the news! We'll be living in our fourth Texas city and fifth city together. Only an hour away from where we are now, but far enough to require changing out just about everything about our day to day lives. We all have a lot of feelings about this, hopefully to be explored later, but the biggest thing I feel right now is a sense of rightness.

2012

This is right for our family. It will bring new opportunities for everyone and will let me be a bigger part of all their lives.

2021

It might also even let me go to yoga for the first time since mid-February, which is really a win for everyone.

Partners and Retreats

After a whirlwind few weeks, I'm back at home, in my nearly complete home office, finishing up my prep for a CLE I'm speaking on tomorrow regarding the SEC's proposed climate disclosures. We're hosting the event in conjunction with PwC and have nearly 2,000 people signed up, so obviously I had my outfit picked out before my presentation slides were complete.

(And apparently that was all I had time to write Sunday night, so now it's Tuesday and the presentation is over and it went great and here I am being beamed to audience members near and far.)

But let's go back to where we left off. We'd just gotten back from Colorado Friday evening and on Sunday I flew to Orlando for the big SiFMA securities conference. It was great to continue connecting with former SEC colleagues and defense counsel I've worked with over the years on my investigations. I conducted over 60 witness interviews and testimonies from my bedroom corner over the last two years so it was kind of surreal to see people walk by whose face had been on my computer screen for hours but I'd never seen in 3-D.

We had some crazy storms in Texas while I was gone. I was at an outdoor cocktail reception at the Ritz on a gorgeous blue day while getting texts on Fort Worth weather updates and the canceling of all the kids' activities.

I flew back on Tuesday, unpacked and repacked, greeted my parents who also drove in that night, and then flew out (with James this time!) the next morning for the firm partner retreat in Miami! It was at The Biltmore, a very historic hotel in Coral Gables, and James made us stop and read every old picture plaque on every hallway we walked down.

We were greeted with a gifting suite, where James got to pick out a shirt and I picked out a hat and bag. Having just come from the government where I had to provide my own water, I kept waiting to be presented with the bill for my selections.

My hat got embroidered and I really do love it.

I've never been a hat person, despite my skin really needing me to get on board, but I am determined to wear this one to the occasional backyard pool party this summer.

After hearing from our guest speaker Professor Arthur Brooks of Harvard on Happiness (his podcast for The Atlantic: How to Build a Happy Life), which was very interesting, we got ready for the first night's dinner honoring the firm's retiring partners.

I dug deep into my closet for the packing- the resort chic dress code was not my usual attire for the last 2-7 years. James had an even tougher time - the last suit he bought was for our wedding in 2005, so the girls took him shopping for ALL the things he needed, from shoes to belt to socks to tie to shirt and beautiful navy suit. They were very proud of their choices and he looked smashing.

The dinner was held at the Frost Science Museum and it was beautiful.

The tributes to the retiring partners were so touching, it really made me think about the long arc of a career and all the people you work with along the way.

Thursday morning began with breakfast and meetings while James swam laps in the 70 meter pool. The afternoon was for activities- boat ride, cooking class, golf, tennis, museum tour, etc. After the nonstop craziness of our March, we went with the poolside lunch and it was lovely. I had a couple client calls in the afternoon and got about an hour of work in poolside, but it was still a very relaxing day.

Night 2 was the New Partner dinner! James wore the shirt he was gifted (as the men were encouraged to do) and I got to wear my "butterfly dress" my mom picked out for me while shopping for my birthday in February 2020. I love it so much.

My friend, mentor and rockstar statesman of Texas litigation, Harry Reasoner was there with his lovely wife and it was so nice to catch up, as it was to catch up with all the partners I knew from my first tour with the firm (many of whom were associates then too) and meet all the new ones.

The firm hasn't had a retreat in 3 years due to Covid, so the number of new partners meant that only the internally promoted partners gave speeches. They were lovely, though by the end I wished I could give one to thank my mentors and husband who have helped me so much along the way.

So I wrote up a speech online and will now toast with my tea to whatever you're drinking:

My path to partnership was different than many. I started my time with the firm as a VERY pregnant summer associate in 2007 (my son was born exactly 10 days after my internship ended), which made me both very memorable and totally unrecognizable when I actually joined a year later. I began as an associate in corporate/transactional group in September 2008. By October 2008 I was convinced I’d made a terrible mistake and was calling medical schools to see if I could still apply with my undergraduate science credits. Then the market crashed. All deals stopped and all corporate associates got staffed on litigation matters and I learned that I didn’t hate being a lawyer- I was just a litigator fish out of water in the transactional world. Once in my proper environment, I flourished, blessed with amazing mentors (Jessica Mederson, Chris Popov, Hilary Preston, David Woodcock, Tracey Davies, and Jennifer Poppe to name a few) and great work.

I went to the SEC during my 4th year at the firm and spent ten years running investigations and bringing enforcement actions, and now I am lucky enough to be back at the firm as a partner with many of my favorite people not only still here, but also now in positions of leadership.

I want to thank everyone who mentored me along the way, every litigation partner who took a chance on a confused corporate associate, and this firm that welcomed me back so warmly. But most importantly I want to thank my greatest partner, my husband James. He’s the guy who has handled every bit of our three kids, three pets, and crazy life every time I travel. When I had a tight briefing deadline many years ago and basically didn’t come home for three days, rather than complain like I *absolutely* would have while he also worked full time with a much longer commute and took care of our then-3-year-old and baby, he sent me flowers with a card that said, “Keep up the good work, we love you.” And that says pretty much everything about him as a husband and partner.

I am so blessed, with my partner at home and my partners at work, and I can’t wait for the rest of this journey. Cheers!

[I plan to be home for the entire month of April, so we'll get back to our regularly scheduled bulldog, cat, and child-based programming as soon a I catch up on about 600 emails, but everyone is doing GREAT and Maggie misses you.]

Colorado Spring Break: A Classic Vacation Blog Post

We are on our way home from Colorado!

Currently driving along the northern edge of Texas after staying the night in Trinidad, Colorado, which was overrun with people because the highway out was shutdown for ice and way too many flipped cars and trucks. Our ETA is 6 p.m. and as much as I've enjoyed being away, I can't wait to get back to the house to dump our clothes in the washer, check all the mail and packages we've missed, pet our fluffiest cat who is going to have A LOT to tell us about being gone, pick up Maggie from my friend's house where she has been enjoying doggie camp (this time without the goats, though I'm sure she misses them), and see the results of our renovations! Our contractor sent a sneak peak of the accent wall in our bedroom yesterday and I'm so in love!

Things won't be entirely done when we arrive, but they'll be close and we can definitely sleep in our own room once again. I'll also try to fit in a yoga class because I fly out to Orlando for a conference on Sunday afternoon, come back Tuesday evening, and fly back out Wednesday to Miami for the firm partner retreat with James, and my body misses exercise. So life is full as usual, making our week away all the more lovely.

We first drove to my sister's house in Boulder on Saturday, arriving just in time for dinner and a bit of cousin playtime. My kids (14,11,8) are a good bit older than my sister's (5,3,1), but they ADORE their cousins and play so happily and completely with them. It's just the best.

On Sunday we celebrated my niece Rio's 3rd birthday party. She was helping me get ready and thought her hair needed some vagina curler treatment. Whose doesn't?

The party was great- crafts (which my kids enthusiastically participated in) and a visit from Queen Elsa (which mine did not, though the birthday girl was delighted), delicious food, visits to the resident goats and chickens, and gorgeous weather.

On Monday I woke up early for a video call with a potential client and another call with a colleague, hung out with my sister and her girls, and then off we headed for the mountains!

We drove along Highway 6, even though roadwork meant it would take longer, but it's such a beautiful drive and we have a traditional rock we try to find and stop at for a picture. After missing it the last trip or two (well, last time we drove in a blizzard and the whole highway was shut down), we found it this time and scrambled up top. I never think my kids are changing that much until I look at a montage like that- chunky toddlers to lanky big kids, how time truly flies.

We also made our traditional lunch stop in Idaho Springs, James's fave Colorado mountain town, and got to my parent's beautiful home in Winter Park in the mid-afternoon. We picked up our rental skis and snowboard, Cora made friends with the shop dog, and then we headed out for some tubing.

We hadn't been in a couple years, so it was fun to fly down the tubing hill again.

The kids and I joined together for one and our combined weight took us nearly to the end of the offramp.

James did the jump, of course, and Landon followed, while the girls and I found flying down a smooth path to be just fine for us.

We got home to lasagna soup with my parents, watched part of The Alpinist (which I highly recommend), and went to bed early in preparation for a big ski day in the morning.

-----

Except that's not exactly what happened. Claire started complaining of a stomach ache when we left the tubing hill. She has a more sensitive stomach than the other two, so we assumed it was the car snacks or just being out of her routine. She picked at her dinner but seemed mostly okay. Then she came in our room crying about 9 pm and instead of getting better, things got considerably worse until 11 pm when she violently threw up everything we didn't even know was in her stomach and her stomach cramps were so bad she said it hurt to breathe. We googled the nearest open medical center and found an emergency room 10 miles away. So off we went- ski coats over pajamas, me wondering what the name of my new medical insurance was since I'd switched only the day before we left.

The medical team was great, taking her back right away, and getting her settled with a vomit bag (immediately used) and ice chips. After a blood draw and a few other tests, altitude sickness was confirmed and she got a big back of fluids and some anti-nausea meds. Two hours later she could keep down her test cracker and we were sent home about 3 a.m. with instructions to keep her hydrated and come back if any symptoms returned. After twenty-plus trips to Colorado, this was our first real brush with it, and man is it rough.

We stumbled to bed and hoped she'd be able to sleep until morning. And she did! The doctor had cleared her for skiing if she felt up to it, but she didn't quite yet, so she stayed home with my parents who planned to join us a little later in the day, while James and I packed up and headed to Winter Park with Landon and Cora.

At the top of the gondola Cora decided she had forgotten everything about skiing- had perhaps not ever skiied- and should just go home and play Gigi's piano.

The boys split off to go do the bowls while I gently coaxed Cora down a long green run. By the end she was flying through a tunnel, her excited "woooooo!" echoing behind her.

Our whole group met up for lunch, including a slightly pale Claire who still refused food but did drink a lot of water. She was beautifully controlled on her skis and loved following my mom and dad down the runs.

Cora was also doing great until we went up to Parsenn's Bowl and took her down a lovely blue she decided she hated.

She eventually agreed to do a couple greens with my parents while we took Landon and Claire on a few more blues.

Landon, who refused my offers of sunscreen, popped in and out of trees and had a fabulous time until he decided he was tired and laid down at the base of a lift.

Claire was enjoying herself and making her usual carefully controlled turns while James wished we all liked blacks more than blues.

We met up again at the base, my parents heading home, and our crew wandering the shops. I treated myself to a frozen margarita- the perfect apres spring skiing beverage and everyone else got ice cream. We finished The Alpinist that night and then everyone crashed until morning, including Claire, thank goodness.

Day 2 started out well - all 5 of us piled in the car to head back to the slopes! Claire was feeling good! The weather was gorgeous and a snow dump was expected at lunch! And at 25 degrees- it wasn't even very cold out! Except Cora decided it was actually very cold- so cold she couldn't put on her ski boots and flatly refused to exit the car in the parking garage.

Now Cora is usually the MOST agreeable and fun #thirdbaby, but if she decides she's not doing something, she IS. NOT. DOING. IT. and the combined forces of heaven and hell cannot convince her.

Luckily, the foot and hand warmers I bought for $4 in the village did and she eventually emerged from the car to her totally annoyed big brother who just wanted to go skiing. And skiing, we did!

We met my parents at lunch again and then skiied with them for a while. The snow started coming down harder which made James happy and the kids less so.

We stayed a couple more hours, until everyone was tired and only maybe wanted to do one more run, which we have learned is the best time to stop. We returned our skis, got back to Papa and Gigi's for another tasty dinner, and then all watched The Adam Project, which everyone enjoyed. On Thursday we originally planned to sled, but everyone seemed so happy indoors we just hung out and packed. James went to the local rec center to work out and I watched my parents do the yoga workout I recorded for them while thinking I should really do daily yoga too. I've been making my mom new videos each month and she has faithfully done hers every day which has done amazing things for her back. Recently my dad joined in too and I'm so proud of them both!

All packed and yoga'd up, we headed out for brunch, and then started our drive home. We had a wonderful time with Papa and Gigi and it was so great to have another set of adults on the mountain to help split up our group as needed. Hopefully next time we can all ski together all day!

And now, after a few legs of the ride without cell service, we are 2.5 hours from home and I have a work call in 4 minutes. Hooray for travel blogging- we spent our dinner last night planning our trips for the rest of the year and can't wait to do more!