End Of Summer

Can you believe it? This is officially the last weekend of summer! How did it go by so fast? How is school starting in 2 days?!! I am in shock. So, because I felt like we haven't done enough this summer we decided to do a few extra things this weekend to make up for it :)

This morning we had our church service on the lake because our normal building was unavailable - it couldn't have been more gorgeous! Oh my word, beautiful. We had to have all the kids with us which made for an interesting service - not as attentive as I normally would be.

A few shots from this morning:











And then this evening we took the kids to Burke Lake park to ride the merry-go-round, the train, play on the playground and have a picnic dinner in the grass. It was so much fun! I think its the first place we've taken the girls to like this - that we've tried to ride rides and just get out for a few hours - it was nice and the girls all reacted differently to everything :)

Merry-Go-Round:

How perfect is this? Three small "animals" for the girls to ride on! I couldn't believe they had three together...



Unfortunately, we didn't actually need three - Rachel HATED it and Kirk had to hold her the entire time. The other two LOVED it - Alyssa threw a temper tantrum when the ride ended. Julianna just asked to ride it again without all the hysterics - she can talk much better then the other two so usually tells me what she wants.



Then it was on to the train ride and it was just great fun. We had the same result though - Rachel hated it, Alyssa threw a tantrum when it was over and Julianna asked to ride again :) If you're wondering Alyssa doesn't ask she just walks back to whatever she wants and tries to get back on. So funny but not to her.



Before the ride:



During the ride - it went a lot faster then I expected and that made it even more great!



Kirk kept saying Julianna was loving it but... well, what do you think?



On to the playground:







We finished the day with a picnic. We had a little bit of babies stepping on our food but for the most part everyone ate well and enjoyed running around in the open grass:







And what blog post would be complete without pictures from the kids?

Kaitlyn's photography:




Caleb's photography:




At least we got a good shot of the train tracks :) I hope you all had a wonderful summer and that your fall/school year will be a wonderful one.

On a different note - Happy 27th Birthday to my baby brother :) Today is his day! And his first one married. Love ya, brother.

It's NOT Funny

Wondering why the girls are in the shower? Think they're big girls? Nope, Rachel pooped in the girls bathtub. Being covered in soap we quickly shuttled them to the master bathroom to finish their bath and you guessed, Rachel went again! So it was out of the bath and into the shower to rinse off. Such a pleasant evening...



Why are the girls crying?
A. They just realized their mother is getting really old (see below)
B. They have once again been denied access to Kaitlyn's room and thereby don't have her DS





Why is this mom sad?
A. She has just realized that even though its her birthday her girls were still cranky.
B. Its her birthday and she is now one year older



Answer to both questions: A and B

Happy Birthday to me :) Two years ago today was the beginning of my bed rest with the girls. I celebrated my 30th in bed. Today we at least go to go to dinner as a family but otherwise I was a mom! Same as every other day. But I can't complain. I'm still relatively young and very blessed to have five wonderful children, a wonderful husband and a loving extended family. God is good! I pray I have many more years to come and hopefully in that time (better yet in the next year) I'll get a novel published.

More Cool Stuff From Kirk

This is a page he did for Photoshop Creative - its a Scrapbook Layout - you'll have to click on it to make it bigger and read the poem he wrote :) Isn't he so talented?!



Want to know what I've been up to? I am about three chapters away from completing the novel I began in January. After that comes the hard work of re-writing, making it great and then submitting it places. We'll see how that goes!

But I did just get my first article published in MOST's SUPERTWINS magazine :) Yea, that's a start!

Triple The Triplets!

More like fourteen times the triplets :) Today we had the unique opportunity to get together with other triplet families in the area from Virginia, Maryland and DC. Of course this isn't a comprehensive list of all of us (a few couldn't make it) but still it was fun to see so many other moms struggling just like we have for the past almost two years to juggle three babies at one time!!

This picture says it all (we're way in the back if you look real close):



Yes, we were crazy and attempted to do a photo of everyone. Fortunately for you you don't have audio on this picture because rather then everyone smiling it was more like "can we get a shot of everybody crying at once?" I think we were quite the spectacle out there! By some sort of mistake our reserved pavilion was reserved twice so we had to share our space with a family celebrating their twins first birthday. I think they were in awe of all the triplets and for some strange reason were sneaking over to take pictures of us. A bit strange??!! The sadder part? They may have gotten more pictures of us then we did of ourselves!!

How did that many of us, who all blog so often, forget cameras? I really don't know. While I did have my camera I was so busy I wasn't able to take as many pictures as I would've liked.

Here are some that I did get:

We were there not five minutes when the girls wanted out:



Arts and crafts for the big kids - notice Alyssa is joining in :)



The Ratliff boys - yes, they're identical so don't ask me who is who! Sorry Kelli!



My friend Cherie holding Karen's daughter Abby (I got to hold Abby a lot - even fed her - I know her mommy was ready to have her walking but she sure was fun to carry and hold a squishy little baby again):



Cherie's husband, Matt holding thier identical twins Tommy and Jack:



Their fraternal brother, Christian. Aren't they all three so cute! You can't have them though we've already got the girls paired up :) Well, just Rachel - she really likes Jack!



Kirk with Rachel:



Kirk with Julianna and Alyssa:



Okay, I didn't know about the merry-go-round so I didn't have quarters. As you can see the girls were NOT very happy about this. "Can we go on PLEASE?"



More triplets:



Kirk on the cool playground with Rachel:



The Clagett triplets - sooo cute! Just three months old. And they are all identical as well. How sweet are they?



Thanks to Karen for all her hard work getting us together! It was exhausting but worth it if only to meet all these moms in person :)

Camping by Kaitlyn

While Mommy stayed home with the babies Daddy took me and Caleb camping. We went to Shenendoah River State Park. We had one of the best campsites. Our campsite had a trail to the river. We went canoeing in the river and went hiking to Blue Bell Loop but then we ran into Wild Cat Ledge and went up that. And when we came back down from Wild Cat Ledge we went back to Blue Bell Loop. It was fun. Dad made us special meals. We had breakfast in a bag, pancakes and lots of other stuff.

We went camping for two nights and three days. We threw rocks in the river after hiking. After that we had Tang and it was good. We stayed up real late and me and Caleb played flashlight tag. Then we had s'mores and went in our sleeping bags. The next morning it was cold out - that's when we had breakfast in a bag. But the bags got burnt a little so it took a while.

And dad took lots of pictures:

Typed by Mom; as told by Kaitlyn (8)

Curse Of The Nintendo DS

Those of you with older kids know what I'm talking about. Those of you with babies, well, you just wait you'll know soon enough.

This little thing is the source of tons of fighting, issues and crying. Kaitlyn and Caleb now each have one so there's a little less fighting there but if one of the babies (mostly Julianna or Rachel) gets a hold of one of them DO NOT try to take it away. MAJOR tantrums will ensue.



So sweet, the lounging with the DS - trust me she's trying to play - the game is on and she is complaining because something isn't going how she wanted...



"Help me Julia, please!"



This is Rachel. When I walked in the room she was standing quietly playing with the DS but when she saw me her immediate reaction was to jump to the floor and cover the DS with her body. "You are NOT taking this from me!"



And since once again Alyssa was not part of the quarreling/temper tantrums I thought I would share a picture of her last night walking around with her towel on her head - she is loving hats and sunglasses these days so the towel is just so fitting and so darn cute :)



"Is that a ghost?"



"No, it's me!"



And I can't resist - this is the girl's after they got up from nap. Notice the hair! Cracks me up...



More "cheesing" practice - love the big smiles :)