24th of July Fun!

I have the greatest family ever! We are so lucky to have such great people in our family! I know this is late but I wanted to share these so cute pics of my family. I have the greatest nieces and nephews and the best cousins and their family along with my aunts and uncles. I'm so grateful for all of them.

One of our traditions is that we go up in the canyon every 24th of July and have a yummy breakfast. I love traditions and this is definitely a favorite of mine. My sweet uncle goes up early every year to save our "special family spot" - we have gone to the same spot every year since my dad was little. It's so fun! Anyway, we had a great time and I absolutely love seeing my family. My sister's kids are so great and I just love them so much! They are so fun and so helpful. One of her daughter's and one of my cousin's daughters look SO MUCH ALIKE. You'll see the pic of them together. They look a lot alike and they act so much alike too - it's so cute. The babies had a great time too and did pretty well considering they were so tired and missed their AM nap.

Thanks to all my family for another great day and fun 24th! We love you!

What is that smell???

Okay so this isn't a post about the kids since they were all in bed (well, almost all of them) when this event happened a few weeks ago. But for those animal lovers that watch our blog - you'll love this one.
So we were putting the kids to bed and often when the kids are in bed, Spence and I and our little Lennox walk outside on our porch and just sit for a minute or we walk out our helper for the night. We don't usually have helpers during the day much anymore but I love to have 3 people at night so the babies all get cuddles and loves for awhile before bed. Anyway, so this night...

Lennox started barking at the window like he had seen something and Spence looked out and saw a little black thing walking across our front lawn (which he thought was our neighbors dog)and so he opened the door and walked out with Lennox while I was putting Jax down. Lennox raced down the steps on our side and Spence chased after him because we don't let him go down the steps without us since he'd run after anything that was nice to him :) Lennox was barking like crazy! Jax was having a rough night falling asleep so I walked out of his room and put him in the swing so I could go see what in the world Lennox was so upset about and then.. I smelt it!

I walked out on our porch and yelled, "SKUNK!" to Spence and I could see him standing way down on our side steps and yelled, "GET HIM - there's a skunk!" And yes, indeed - there was. Spence grabbed Lennox and walked back upstairs with him and said, "are you sure?" (He couldn't really smell it like I could because crazily enough, skunk smell when you are close up just smells like burnt rubber)

Long story short, our little Lennox got sprayed after he had cornered the skunk into one of our bushes. Poor boy! I raced to find an online "cure" for the smell because by now, it was all through our house - yep! that fast. So into the bath he went...

We found a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, dish soap and baking soda and it worked like a charm! The smell totally went away that night. Except, the funny thing is even now when his feet get wet, there is a faint scent of skunk to remind us of this very stressful, amusing night.

Our very own cribs!

They started like this....

and then moved into this position..... "we're starting to slide down in our tilted crib and out of our dividers."

So we took out the dividers and ended up here. Not the best - but they didn't seem to mind. They liked being munched with eachother but it probably wasn't the smartest idea on our part so... it's now official....

The third crib is up and being used! FINALLY - we know!

We finally made the change - the babies are in their own cribs at night now. During the days, we've had them nap separately (in different rooms) since they were a month old but at night, we had them all together. When we got back from Tahoe, we took down the slanted crib and had Rio in her own but still put the boys together until this weekend when we finally put up the 3rd crib. They're still in the same room though and probably will be for awhile. We're in no hurry to separate them out.

Anyway, they do great at night still - such great sleepers! In the morning when they wake up, I wonder if they wonder where eachother are but I know they can hear eachtoher talking and I'm pretty sure they know they aren't alone with the volume that comes out of their room in the morning :)

Also, we still haven't been to the doc for their 6 month - they were busy in June and July (a little tricky getting 3 appointments back to back) and then didn't have anything open for awhile so we'll go soon and get some official weights and heights - they are getting so big and doing some good milestone stuff - I'll share that soon too!

Great friends

My good friend Chandy lives out of state and so whenever she comes here, we love to see her as much as we can. So, Em, Meliss, Jamie and I got together with our kids at a park and let them play while we "attempted" to talk and catch up.

What were we thinking? It was so hot and in the middle of the day. My little 3 were happy for about 45 minutes in the shade and then it got way too hot for them. Plus, I made the mistake of not getting them their nap earlier that day (and you know my schedule) since we went and visited some wonderful family friends "(my other little 3)".


Anyway, we did manage to get a pic with all the kids although Jax was not happy about it. Thanks Eli for holding him even though he was crying. And cute little Cash and Boston weren't looking up. Sorry Em and Melissa. But Em did manage to bring her 4 week old baby with her - you're amazing Emma :) Thanks so much for getting together - maybe next time, we'll manage to stay a bit longer and make sure we've got our nap in. Love you guys so much! Your kids are absolutely adorable.

We Love Our Jumper!

For anyone that has recently held our little cuties - so sorry for the bruises on your legs and the tired arms :) We got a jumper a while ago and these 3 LOVE it!

It only took Austin about 2 times in the jumper to figure it out and once he did, he hasn't stopped jumping. He even tries to jump while he eats sometimes - he's so cute and screams happy screams while in it.

Rio was the next one to figure it out but she's so funny too! She just wants to swing around in circles more than jump. Every once in a while, we'll catch her jumping like crazy but mostly she just swirls around and smiles. Such a lady :)

And oh, our little Jax. He has been the funniest to watch with this new toy. He cried the first few times we put him in it so I knew he wasn't quite ready for it just yet. We kept trying though and he finally started to like it and wouldn't jump - but he would gallop. It was so funny! He did that for a few weeks and now he jumps like Austin does - he totally loves it! One day, uncle Funky (or Andrew or Uncle Dew-dew as Ty calls him) was over and I walked him out as he was leaving while holding Rio. Austin went down for his nap so I left Jax to keep jumping for a minute. I came back in seriously about a minute and a half later and here is what I found:

How cute is that? He jumped himself to sleep :)

First Family Trip

So sorry that it has been awhile since I posted last. (and this post is a little long - sorry) We have been having a really fun summer though. I will post some more in the next few days or so to talk about some fun things. But for now...I wanted to talk about our first family trip! We had so much fun but it took a little longer to get there than expected.

We went to Lake Tahoe for the 4th of July with Spence's family. Our bro-in-law Mike's family has a house there and we love it. We've been there a few other times and it is so much fun to be able to go somewhere all together. We did miss grandma and grandpa Morris though :( - they weren't able to come with us. Anyway, we were planning on leaving Thursday morning and then I suddenly thought that we should just leave late Wednesday night and make it to Winemucca and stay overnight and then we could drive the rest of the way the next day and get there sooner. So... we ended up packing up the entire house - literally! I wish I would have taken a pic of the back of our car. But, the babies were never bored and had lots of familiar toys to play with. (at least that is what I kept telling myself as we took trip after trip out to the car to add "just one more thing.")

Well, we went to a gas station here to check tire pressure and it was broken so we decided to drive to Wendover and just check it there. We made it there about midnight and Spence started to check the tires and then it happened...

Two valves off of our tires just snapped as he put on the gauge and LONG story short - we had to take our spare which happened to be a "real tire" not a "doughnut" (thank goodness) and jack up the car and change one tire (the other one wasn't leaking after Macgyver, I mean Spencer, used his magic skills to fix it). So here we are at a Chevron at 12:30am in Wendover with our 3 sleeping babies in the back and then the jack gave! Seriously? I couldn't believe it. Here we are watching our car roll back slowly and all I'm thinking is, "please, please stop rolling!" Fortunately, we hadn't moved the spare and so the car rolled back onto it which stopped the axle from braking. SO... we ended up calling AAA (thanks dad for giving us that gift - love you!) and then came about 1:15am to help us with their monster jack since ours was now totally broken. You know, sometimes you just gotta laugh at what life gives you otherwise, you could end up really angry!

The AAA man was great and fixed it pretty quickly but by this time, Jax had woken up and was ready to get out of his car seat so that was a fun addition to the chaos. Luckily, he was so good though. So... by now it was 1:30am and we still had at least hours to get to Winemucca for our reservation. But, we wised up and figured that we shouldn't drive that far so we drove an hour and a half to Elko and had to call and cancel our reservation and we stayed in Elko instead. We got there about 3am and had to haul in the kids pack and play and their food/diapers, etc for the next day and we got to bed around 4am. Kids woke up at 7am and the day started again.

Spence took the car that morning first thing to get looked at (which is another long story) after we had fed the kids and then the four of us just tried to be entertained in our room for a few hours until he came back with our newly fixed tires. We left Elko around 11am and off we went! Of course we had to stop every 3 1/2 hours to feed the babies so our first stop was in Lovelock and we found a nice little park to stop at and feed them. Yes, they're in their PJ's still, we didn't want to find the suitcase with their clothes that morning - it would have taken another hour to pack everything back up. But here we are. We stopped as a gas station to warm up the water and then we were good to go.

After an hour or so stop in beautiful Lovelock, we were off! The babies we so good in the car!!! I was so happy about that. We ended up having to stop in Reno to pick up Spence's brother Marc at the airport and try to stuff him into our car. I ended up having a nice, cozy seat on the center console for the next hour and a half until we made it to Tahoe. But... we made it!!! My brilliant idea of leaving early didn't do us any good - other than a fun story to tell to the kids one day.

Anyway, we had a great 5 days in Tahoe with the fam. Spence and I went running in the mornings and it is so beautiful! We love it! We went on a lot of walks (it got cold at night for the babies so that is why they are so bundled up)

Others went to the south side to go shopping and on some hikes. We also went to the beach one day - not to swim of course since the water is SO COLD! But the weather was perfectly warm and it was so fun to be there. Aunt Erin and cousin Tyler are here with us.

We spent the 4th on a walk, going to get ice-cream and having a BBQ at the house. They do fireworks out on the lake too which is so fun! What an awesome experience! Kristin and I stayed back with the sleeping babies but next year, we'll maybe attempt the loud sounds and late night. But you know us, we were sticking to that schedule no matter what on this trip :)

We left Monday around 10:30am (Cali time) and drove the whole way back with 2 feeding stops along the way and made it home around 10:30pm. It took over an hour and a half to just get to Tahoe City! (yah, we are real smart leaving the day after the holiday - oops!) The babies did awesome the whole drive except for a slight "falling apart" from Wendover to Tooele. They are such good babies - we are so lucky and blessed!

Thanks Kristin and Mike for letting us go there and Mike for cooking such great meals for us too! And of course thanks to all the aunts and uncles that helped us feed the babes while we were there - we love you guys! What a fun trip - we made it!

Our Little Noise Maker!

Our cute Jax is so fun! When it comes to being noisy - Jax is definitely the loudest! He makes 3 very distinct "Jax" sounds lately. (and many others for certain needs of course) He has completely found his voice and so since then, about a month or so ago, he loves to hear it. It's funny because even when he first came home, he was very loud and grunty and we attributed it to his reflux mostly but now I'm wondering if he really just likes to hear himself. He is so cute! We finally after MANY attempts - got him to preform on cue. Apparently, we are all a little camera shy at our house. Anyway, here you go... this is Jax performing his loudest sound and one he does the most.