Oh yeah, that just happened!!

Jackie pooped in the potty! Poo-poo in the potty, a poo-poo in the potty! (insert cha-cha music here).

Okay, maybe it was a little more like Jackie started to make "that face" and Mommy whisked him away to the toilet and then, presto!

But trust me, he knew exactly what was going on. So maybe I need to read chapter 6 in the toddler book and buy some potty seats!

"That's right, I pooped in the potty."

Coming soon...Baby Dominic!

A few days after we got back from Virginia we had Tracy's baby shower for Baby Dominic here at the house. It went really well, lots of people, good food and fun, fun, fun!

Here was our shower game, modeled after Tracy's favorite college days (and beyond) drinking game. Here is "Flip-Cups becomes Sip-Cups":

Good times. Tracy---we will have to do it again with booze as soon as you are "back"! Pencil "Sip-Cups" in for sometime in August 09.

Trek to VA

In late September we took the kids and went back east with my parents, sister, brother in-law, and brother. We went to visit my grandparents in Virginia and to celebrate my Great Grandmothers 100th Birthday!!!

The flight there was a long story in itself. Short version of this story is, we were running late and were "assisted" by one of the most useless, uninformed, purposefully slow ticketing agent ever. We were flying US Air and hopefully my last flight with them. So after this guy was done dicking us around and covering up his own mistakes (handing us a boarding pass for someone not there) we end up missing the flight. OH!... but our luggage made it on the flight which means the car seats were on their way to VA but we were stuck in the Phoenix airport for ....wait for it......six hours. SIX HOURS! Steve had to take an earlier flight so he could get the luggage and car seats and minivan set up for us.

After I had a mini-panic attack we did a reframe to consider this an excellent opportunity to get to know our local airport and for bragging rights to surviving a worst case scenario with triplets in the airport. The time actually went by pretty easily we took some videos shown here:

The kids were great, the 5 hour flight was pretty good. Then we had a 4 hour drive to Elkton! We were super tired when we got to Grandma and

Grandpa's house:

Not too tired to eat, as you can see!!

The trip was wonderful! We enjoyed some cooler weather and exploring Grandma's garden. We ate great food that adds pounds to my rear but builds up my soul so it's a draw. We spent a day at an amazing water park. Check out the place here: http://www.massresort.com/v.php?pg=4Here is some video/pictures of us there:

Grandma's Garden:

The Birthday Party! Great Grandma was surprised! She tried hard to get the skinny on what was going on but everyone in the town was in on it and kept it quiet (even her pharmacist!!). The trick was they asked her to bring rolls for the church potluck. After the big surprise she remarked to some of us "I can not believe they had me make rolls for my own surprise party!" We had a great time and it was so nice to see Grandma with her friends and family all around her. She looked beautiful as you can see.

We took a 5 generation picture with Great Grandma Nellie, Grandma Pat, Cousins Liela, Mandy, and Sarah, and the kids Lily, Faye and Jack.

Then we took a group picture.

Two more pictures of my dear grandparents who I love so very much. I love to visit and I hate to leave.

Thank you so much for having all of us for the visit, hope we can do it all again soon!

Not dead, just dead tired!

Okay! I have not dropped off the face of the earth or moved to some exotic island. I am just tired! Dog tired.

I want to tell you all about our fantastic trip back east.
I want to VENT big time about my new arch nemesis -US Air.
I want to boast about all the super cool stuff my kiddos are in to.
I want to chat about my Sis-in-law Tracy's baby shower.

But I also want to veg-out for a bit.
Will post soon....I promise.

Remember when....

Remember when they were just little peanuts!? I miss the roly poly stage.

But this is pretty cute too...

Good babies :)

Look at us!!

Check out the kids eating at the table with Mommy and Daddy (not pictured). Don't they look so happy!?

The kids are eating off of plates and bowls now. Trying to use those forks and spoons but the coordination is not exactly there yet. They get it...but they just don't get it all the way to the mouth!

Its nice having them at the table and the messes aren't any more than they were with the trays...actually it's easier to clean up one table vs three trays.

Ice cream, ice cream, we all love ice cream!

I think we have been watching too much of the Republican Convention around here...notice Lily is getting really good at denying the obvious. (snicker snicker :))

Here is the finale:

Fun times come with big messes.... totally worth every drip and drop!

Medicated Maddie, it's a good thing.

Maddie is on meds, antianxiety medications to be specific. This is her third week.

Maddie has always been a nervous doggie. She is scared of everything and the trips have sent her trippin'. She doesn't like baby gates, baby toys, baby cries, baby screeches, baby laughter, baby bikes, baby highchairs....see a pattern here?

Her symptoms moved beyond shaking, roaming and panting to restlessness and loss of hair. :( Poor Maddie is patchy on her legs and chest.

SO off to the vets we went for some chillax pills. So far so good. It's supposed to take about a month to build up in her system and make a difference. Today we had a monsoon and her symptoms were pretty minimal....I'll call it progress, good progress.

Goodbye to a Great Grandma

This last weekend I went up to Idaho for my Grandma Cluer's funeral. Her death was unexpected and very upsetting to all. My Grandma Cluer was a unbelievably loving and caring woman.

She had a way about her that always made me feel loved and cared for. When we were little she would steal little moments with me and my sister and tell us sweet nothings that made us feel like she loved us more than anything else.

She was funny and took a ribbing with the best of us. I am going to miss her so much and I feel robbed of more time with her but am so thankful for the memories that I have.

The thing I can do to honor her best is to make sure my kids know how much she loved them and how proud she was of them. She loved the babies and everyone I talked to at the funeral told me so. All of her friends and family were kept abreast of the trips progress and development from conception on.

She was an exceptional Grandma and Great-Grandma. I love her dearly.

Thanksgiving November 2007

Carson City---Great Success!

Our trip to Carson City was a super fun success. The kids had all kinds of milestones. Quitting bottles, first time in the woods, first hike, first time swimming in a lake, so many!

Here's us doing a trial run around the neighborhood in the hiking backpacks.

We spent some time at Tahoe hanging out on the beach playing in the sand and swimming.

We went for a hike to Angora Lakes and resort (cabins) which was so quaint and beautiful that I wanted to book a vacation right then and there. A family next to us on the beach at Angora Lakes let me know that they waited for 8 years to get a cabin and that was 20 years ago!!

Ever searching for fun and cute ways to get a picture of all three together I thought this big pot on Grandma's porch would be fun... Let's just say a barrel full of monkeys sounds more fun than it actually is. "Oooout" "Ooout" "All-done" "All-done"....

We had fun the kids played and played outside every day. Mommy and Daddy went to see the new batman movie and donate to starving children in ....oh hell, we gave the casinos our money. When in Rome....

"What if we....

...just quit bottles today??" I said out loud to Steve just to hear exactly how crazy it sounded. Steve responded with his patented "noooo". It's not a refusal necessarily it's just his knee jerk reaction that really means "Oh, wow really?...let's talk about this". Or so I hope anyway.

We had arrived in Carson City, NV to visit "tiny Grandma" and "Papparazi" (the former named for communicating with the kids over the tiny Skype camera on our computer and the latter for taking millions and millions of beautiful pictures of the kids). We landed at noon, ate some lunch and put the kids down for a nap. In the middle of the nap I realized with a jolt that the kids had not had a bottle since 7am!! Surely they were starving!! But they were napping and after the nap they were happy and no one asked for a bottle. So I said to Steve "What if we just quit bottles today?". He was game, the babies were game and so we did.

We are on day four now and so far so good. These babies are amazing :)

Doctor visit!

We had our 15 month check up last week and the kids are doing great! Current weights and heights are:

• Lily 20 pounds, 30 1/4 inches
• Faye 18.8 pounds, 29 1/2 inches
• Jack 23.7 pounds, 31 3/4 inches

The doc gave them a clean bill of health and said they are doing wonderfully. Everyone got their shots (gasp!) followed by a yummy smoothie which mommy brought as a soothing treat. Soothie Smoothie :) (copyright!!) lol.

Speaking of smoothies...since Jack-a-roo is not a big fan of the veggies I am always looking at ways to sneak veggies into him. My newest and most popular method right now is in the smoothies!! I buy (or make) pureed carrots, squash, sweet potatoes and add about a 1/2 cup into the smoothies for the kids. They love it, its good for them...and I love telling Jackie: "mmmmm Jack, do you love your all fruit smoothie? Its goooood right?" [snicker, snicker]

1 Point, Mommy.

Anyway, they are on his tray everyday....and somedays he shocks me by eating a pea or a stalk of broccoli. But mostly he just looks at it like "There is NO way I am eating THAT!"

How do you feed all three at once?

A question I used to be asked all the time when the peanuts were infants. Not the same challenge it used to be but here is how we do it lately!

Trips take trips!

We will be embarking on two big trips in the next couple months! This week we head out to Carson City, Nevada to visit Grandma and Paparazzi for a week. We plan to hike around Tahoe enjoy the Tahoe beaches and embrace the "not hot as hell" temperatures in comparison to the current weather here in AZ.

The plan is to have the kids sleep in their pea-pods again. Here's hoping that it works now that they are so mobile! We did a trial run over at Grandad and Abuelita's house a couple weeks ago and they took their afternoon naps in the pods...so fingers crossed!

Grandma bought backpack carriers for the kids so now not only do I have to go hiking, I also have to pack around a toddler! Dibs on Faye!! Kidding! Well, not about the Faye part but about having to go hiking, it will be fun getting the kids out in the forest. Just so long as it doesn't end up like the time my sister and I convinced my parents to let us take the cat (yes, I said cat) out hiking with us one time.....but that is another story for another time.

This trip to Nevada will help us prepare for the monster trip back east. In September we will be flying back to Virginia to visit family and celebrate my Great-Grandmother's (the kids Great-Great Grandmother's) birthday....make that 100th Birthday!!! Wooo hooo!!!!

So 5 hours on the plane (please, please, please no delays!!!) and then a two hour drive, with three toddlers. Luckily there will be 5 adults to help wrangle, distract, play with the peanuts. Piece of cake, right!?

My Grandma and Grandpa Morris are hosting all of us, isn't that brave of them! I cannot wait to get there, Grandma's food....mmmm so good. It's going to be fun.

Will update on our Nevada trip soon!

I'm a mo-model, you know what I mean..

Oh boy do I ever have an arsenal of blackmail photos for when the time comes. We can thank the technology that is digital photos for that one. It's so funny to think: what did we do before snapfish and emailing JPEGs? Oh, I remember! We developed rolls of film and then found a place to lose them in the house.

Maybe your parents did have a really good embarrassing photo that would be perfect for embarrassing the pants off you at the first dinner you bring a boyfriend/girlfriend to, but...where is that photo at anyway? By the time your parents found it you had already graduated and moved out ...probably with said boyfriend/girlfriend who was never scared off by your "first poop in the potty" picture.

Now when the time comes for me I will have files and folders full of photos, some waiting for just such an occasion. I will just google the boy/girls name find their myspace page and post said picture right on their site!

Or I can just refer them to this blog where they can see and read all about it as it happened.... :)

Summer Colds are the Worst!

What is up with getting a cold in the summer!? The poor kiddos have a stinkin' cold on top of cutting the most enormous gigantic molars ever known to mankind. I think Faye is getting her polar bear teeth.

So its not happy-happy time here at the baby ranch. I am not going to lie... there is a lot of snot 'round these parts. There is just nothing like hearing your little munchkin sneeze and turn to her to say "Oh, bless you--eeeww blech!" Lily looked at me with crystal blue eyes, sweet wet blond eyelashes and two shiny ropes of snot hanging from her face to her belly button.... no lie. Ewww.

Faye was the first to get sick so she gets to be the first to feel better. She was feeling pretty good today and since Jack and Lily were either running from me and the Kleenex, rubbing their face (thereby wiping their nose) on my shirt/leg/arm/cheek, or just trying to get close close close to mommy on the couch, Faye got to play with whatever she wanted and no one was trying to take it away from her.

Poor Jackie, he is just like his Daddy. For sure he has a waaaaayyyy worse cold than the girls have. Obviously he has some exotic strain that pretty much means your dying, or at least 10x more miserable than anyone else. He sat on my lap and half-heartedly moaned for almost 20min straight. When Lily came by for some sympathy he ratcheted it up a few notches and gave her the look of death for even trying.

Poor babes, tomorrow is another (hopefully less snotty) day.

Begin channeling Barney..now!

Yea out-of-house yet still indoor activities!

Yea freedom to climb and monkey around till you collapse in a heap!

Boo infectious sing-song for every freaking move you make.

Yep we joined a toddler gym and we are loving it! Well, most of it. The first day my sister, Steve and I took the kids together. The kids had a blast. We had fun too, but it is a little disconcerting how quickly you find yourself selling out to the chipper singing that really isn't a song, more of a narrative of what you are doing, or should be doing.

When we first walked in the instructor started ringing her bells and parents eyes began to dilate and voices rose in octave and the singing began. I looked at my sister. My eyes said eeek! This is weird. I said under my breath to her "I am not going to sing". Declaring to her that just because I am a parent now doesn't mean I also drink the Kool-aid. I looked over to Steve who was trying to settle himself on the floor into the circle. He seemed pretty cool with it smiling like he knew it would be this way. I settled into the circle and a incredibly short 10 minutes later I caught myself trying to sing along, even making my own verses to the same sing-song. Somewhere along the line I must have had some Kool-aid! I took a glance at Auntie Liela and yep....she had a red mustache too.

...its time to type another post, another post, another post. Its time to type another post for this special bloooooogggggg.

Should they be doing that?!?!

"Honey!" "Did you see that?"
"No, what?"
"Jack just spun around... he did it again!" "He is spinning!"
"Should he be doing that?"

Convinced that our babies are budding geniuses we consult the internet searching "infant development, learning to spin". We didn't find conclusive evidence but by the end of the day Lily, Faye and Jackie were all spinning and laughing as they fell. Mommy and Daddy watched in amazement at the only babies on earth to figure out how to spin. :)

More evidence just in today: Faye has figured out how to do a forward roll on her own! No need for Mommy's gentle push on the tush, she can go over on her own now. Holy Smokes!

Just BLOG already!

I have stage fright, or blog-fright I guess. I started this blog then I made the mistake of checking out other loving mommy blogs and noticed that they are much better than I will ever be at blogging. For one, you can totally tell that I am using a blog-template, how embarassing!

Secondly, I had to decide what to blog about anyway. So all day long the kids would be living their lives and there I am evaluating their every move. Is that cute enough... that was funny should I write that...and so on.

So I will just jump in and start blogging and see where it goes. It can't hurt to get started. I may not even tell anyone about this site anyway.

What a difference a YEAR makes!

One year ago our heads and hearts were swimming with pride and love and ...astonishment as we welcomed our three peanuts to the world!

Lily!
4 pounds

Faye!
3.5 pounds

Jack!
5 pounds

The year truly flew by. Steve and I sit back and look at our three peanuts who were so tiny and marvel at how much they have changed in such a short period of time.

Faye, Jack, Lily

So welcome to our new blog site where we hope to share some of the fun, funny and adorable moments that make up life with the AZTrips!