Girls Night Out

So last Friday night was the annual Fathers and Sons camp out... making it Carolyn's and my annual Mother/Daughter date! Kathy Griffith watched the 3 crazies for me (I think that makes it 3 years in a row!)

Car and I had a wonderful time. We went to dinner and then did Carolyn's favorite thing, shop! And boy can she shop! She is so thoughtful when shopping and I wish I had more money for her because she is always finding this and that for others and I am always saying, "that is nice but we'll let his/her parents buy it" or "that is nice but I don't think they can really use that" or "that is nice but we don't have a lot of money and need to spend it wisely".

I did let her buy a new dress and shoes. This girl loves shoes just as much as she loves to shop! She mainly wears hand-me-downs (which I love because I don't like to shop!) so an annual splurge is fine by me! :)

Can't wait for our next GNO!

Here we go!

I've had to take the door handle off of the inside of the 3 little boys' room - to keep them in there! It was really quite easy to remove as the spring has been broken since we bought our (brand new) house 7 years ago. This was on our punch list that the builder failed to complete (amongst many others!) and it has always really bothered me. So much that i got a quote but $60 for a new spring plus labor... I'll live with it! Well, it is finally working out for me!

You see once the boys could climb out of their cribs- we were into a whole new phase! So a gate went up across the door (that made 4 gates active in our house) and they had to stay in their room for nap. Well, 30 lbs x 3 = a lot of weight on the poor gate... So if they didn't climb over it to get out, they went through it! One day after about 20 times of the gate escape... I had the great idea to take off the door handle! One of my best counter moves yet!

So now when they wake up from naps and morning, they wiggle the door and yell "mama". Sometimes I can sneak one out and let the others sleep and sometimes I am surprised to find all awake when I was only expecting one.

This morning was one of those days I was only expecting one but got all 3! I heard the "mama" and came quietly to get Conner. Caleb was lying on his bed and when I got Conner, Caleb jumped up and said, "here we go!"in his cute toddler sing-songy way! And I thought, "yep, here we go!" Colton was right behind saying, "good morning. Alright!"

Yep, here we go and alright! That is how most my days begin!

Here is a horrible picture of the 3 sleeping in their room. It is pitch black at night (any hint of light constitutes in their mind it is party time!) so the picture is tough.

Self Managers

Cam and Car earned their self manager badges at school. Throughout the year they've been earning points towards this hard earned badge. It takes 100 points and only 5 of 30 kids in their class have earned it.

It shows that they are responsible, organized, kind, etc and that the teacher can count on them.

I'm so proud of them and their hard work this year in 1st grade! They are both good students and great readers!

Building Blocks

Most people are able to give their kids blocks and then go make dinner or fold laundry. Not the case here, for 2 reasons....

1. Someone has to monitor the stealing, unwanted knocking over, and hitting that goes on with 3 boys.

2. As soon as you turn your focus from them - they use whatever they can to their advantage. For example: if you stack 2 to 3 blocks on top of each other, you've gained a 4-6 inch height/advantage! And they do it so fast!!!!

Although Conner and Colton are proving to not need "helps" anymore. Conner has been climbing on my built in desk in the kitchen for a week now. He simply just upper arm strength pulls himself up!

And yesterday Colton went into the kitchen while the rest of us were in the living room - and just as I thought, a minute has passed I had better go see what is going on... I hear a "mom", "mom", "mom". I go into the kitchen to find him on my island!!!! With no toy helps!!! YIKES! (I watched him do it today. All upper arm pulling up!)

It is NEVER dull here!

Got to go

My beautiful sister Molly gave us all a good reason to go to the Temple and I got to go! This is at the Redlands Temple.

The orange bowl is gone!

So it is official, the orange bowl that has lived in the right side of my sink for two years is gone!

This is the bowl that has washed thousands of bottles and bottle parts in the last two years! When the triplets were newborn, we went through about 36 bottles a day! I had two bottle trees and one "grass". We just got rid of the last bottle tree - wish I had a picture of all of it at its high point, but that was when we were in survival mode and I didn't have enough sleep to regenerate the brain cells to think of something like that!


The boys don't really like milk from a sippy cup and it has been a rough 5 days - but there is no going back! Colton is my big holdout and did well the first day but on the second day he stood at the fridge crying and signing "milk" - for a lot of the day poor guy! I think he didn't want to give up the bottle because he can carry it hands free! Or, if he needs two hands to take something away from someone else but not drop his bottle he can do it. Well, he'll figure this out! Conner and Caleb have been for the most part ok!

I'm just excited to get some counter space back!

Scouts

Carolyn is in Daisy Scouts and absolutely loves the social part of it. They've been selling Girl Scout Cookies the last two weekends and has enjoyed it! At first she told me she was scared to talk to people but she got the hang of it really quick!

Cameron is in Cub Scouts and will earning his Tiger Cub badge really soon! One of the requirements toward the badge was going on a hike with his den. On that hike I was able to introduce the scouts to geocaching! We found 3 and they had a wonderful time doing it!