One Whole Week Down

It has been a week since Scott left for training. I tried my best yesterday to come up with a beautiful shot of all four girls together to surprise him on this first little anniversary of sorts.

While we were playing at Mimi and Pop's yesterday morning I chased them all around the deck, garage, yard, and pool with my camera. At least I don't have to worry that missing Daddy will be the only thing about his deployment that the girls will remember.... they're also going to vividly remember how nuts Mommy was carrying around her camera everywhere we went!

I tried in vain to pose them nicely, but here was the result... sour Sarah, Kate holding a piece of sausage in hand, and Maggie all excited to get started "painting". Nobody wanted anything to do with picture making.

Thankfully Ella was more cooperative, as usual... at least where modeling is concerned.
My attempt at getting all four together was completely futile!
Instead I decided to just focus on capturing them all hard at work to show Daddy how they are spending their time. They washed and painted (with water and any kind of brush or broom they could find) the entire deck around the hot tub... and the pool furniture.... and the glass doors (sorry Mimi), and just about everything that wasn't already wet when we arrived. Sarah did lots of inspections of her sisters' work.
Kate mostly just bossed everyone else around... not that they were listening.

As is typical these days, the girls played very hard in the morning. After all that washing and scrubbing, we turned on the radio and had a little dance party in the garage. I need to get those dance moves on video very soon! It was too cute. After all that, some friends came over to swim with us. So we swam for a couple of hours.

Exhaustion around noon time is one of the key elements of my super scheduled days so that we can manage day to day during this deployment. I have lots of pictures from today to share, but another critical element to our survival this year is Mommy getting more sleep at night. So I'm off to bed now and will post those another day.

We've had many people call, and email to ask how we're doing. I'd definitely have to say we're missing Daddy, but because we're used to him being gone part of the time already, it is still pretty much business as usual around here.... except for the extra effort we're putting into our schedule every day.

And the Winner Is....

Boy am I grateful that I didn't have to judge the contest myself... even drawing randomly was nerve wracking! We had 53 entrants as of 10pm last night, and sometime around 11pm I printed them off, highlighted the names (just so I wouldn't miss anyone), and then carefully labeled them each with a number. Next I plugged in the info and viola:

Random Integer Generator
Here are your random numbers:

33
Timestamp: 2008-07-24 03:21:36 UTC


Go back and double check me, but my calculations (the first, second, and third time- yes I'm a little bit nuts) have Melissa from the Twincredible Twosome blog at lucky spot number 33.

Congratulations Melissa!! Thank you to everyone who entered. I want to say a huge thank you to the folks at Chicco who so generously offered this prize!! There were so many great, compelling entries, maybe they will offer another stroller some time!?!

Thanks again to everyone. It has been fun!! Melissa, sometime when you are not too busy chasing your fabulous twosome around please send me an email with your address so that I can pass it along to the folks at Chicco and they can get your stroller out to you.

Wordless Wednesday- Happy

For more Wordless Wednesday go to 5 Minutes for Mom.

Visitors and Little Miss Manners'

Just days after Scott got word of his pending deployment, one of his buddies at his Reserve unit also received an Iraq assignment. I'd never met anyone from Scott's reserve unit. This other fellow is a newlywed, and he and his wife live near us, so Scott and I invited them over for burgers and a getting to know you type dinner one night last week. You could say we were getting together so us wives could commiserate and swap phone numbers since our guys are going to be gone to Iraq over the same period of time.... although to different places and with different units.

We had them meet us at Mimi and Pop's so that the girls could play and swim while Scott worked his grilling magic. And they did just that...

After dinner the girls had some cupcakes that our new friends brought to share with us. You can see their great love for the cupcakes plastered all over their faces, and had I taken pictures, you could also have seen icing all over their little bodies. They had to be hosed off and dunked in the pool before they were clean enough to take home. The cupcakes were delicious, but I was most grateful to Ms. A for the white icing... imagine the mess had she used purple or blue!!


While this,

and this,
and this,

may not look like the face of Little Miss Manners to you all, I can assure you that these little ladies are definitely becoming pros at using their kind words, at least. In fact, they nearly "please, sank you, sah wee, and es m'am" -ed me to pieces last Wednesday night when we were up all. night. long with them!

I have had this post in my head and the computer for days trying to come up with some great examples of how funny the girls are about their manners, but I just can't seem to do it. Perhaps the funniest thing about it is that they can be seriously driving me crazy and still politely remember to use their manners. What can I say, they take after their big sister. Remember, "Here KayKay, could you hold this booger for me, please?"

The biggest change of late around the house is the amount of talking that is going on. At any given time throughout the day there are at least 3 out of four little girls vying for attention by talking... to me, with me, at me.... they really don't seem to care which! I'm seriously considering designating a leader of the day just so that I can know whose little voice to listen to first all day long. As it is, they just try to be the loudest so that I'll respond to them first. It is both nerve wracking and heart warming all at the same time. Perhaps I'll catch some of the chatter on video soon.

Fresh Blueberries... Yum!

Yesterday morning Mimi, Donna, the girls, and I all went over to our cousins' house and picked buckets full of yummy, fresh blueberries. I forgot to bring my camera with me, otherwise I could have taken several pictures of Maggie, Kate, and Sarah executing their blueberry picking plan.... two for me, one for the bucket, two for me, one for the bucket. They were so funny eating the berries right off the bushes. I bet they consumed 3 cups of berries or more while we were picking, and then we brought home 2 big sand pails absolutely full. I can only imagine what that would have cost if we bought them at the store! A very cool tidbit is the fact that we were picking blueberries off the bushes that my great grandmother planted when she and my great grand father lived on the property years ago.

On a completely unrelated note, we are now half way through our first ever contest, thank you Chicco, and I must say that I am loving reading all the comments from people who hope to win! A word to all my fellow bloggers, having a contest is a good way to bring the lurkers out of hiding. I am so glad that I elected to use random selection as my decision method! However, instead of the paper slip method, I'll be numbering the comments on Wednesday the 23rd and then using a random integer generator to come up with my winner. Same principle.... less mess for me. So if you haven't already, go and enter to win the Trevi Twin stroller that I'm giving away. Pass the word along to those whom you know could use it. Comments will close for the contest at 10pm EST on Wednesday the 23rd of July.

Happy Sunday everyone!

The Big Send Off.... Courtesy of the Trio

Wednesday afternoon at 5pm when Scott called the Reserve unit he is going to Iraq with to find out if he was, in fact, still going with them, he was told..."yeah, where are you, you were supposed to be here two days ago". The efficiency of the ARMY astounds me!! I wonder how long they would have waited to send him those orders if he hadn't called them?!?

So after all those days of waiting with no word or orders, we were forced into flash packing mode on Wednesday evening as he had a plane to catch on Thursday. Needless to say, there was a little bit of stressing going on over here, and the girls all certainly felt it.

I am certain that children sense the stress of their parents and the adults they are around because when Scott and I finally crashed into bed around 12:50am after finding, washing, and packing all his gear, we heard the noise of one crying baby.

Now, we were both tired, but I could tell that Scott was just then realizing how much he was going to miss out on over the coming year, so I encouraged him to go and take a peek to see who was crying. I assumed he could pick up the crying baby, snuggle her for a few minutes, and then get back to bed. Otherwise I would never have suggested he break my '5 minutes of crying before investigation at night' rule.

A few minutes later he came walking down the hall, but I noticed that the crying had not stopped.... it had gotten even louder! He was carrying one baby and then I realized that I now had to go get the other one. By the time I got in there, the one crying baby had become two, so we all five ended up in the living room at 1am. Thank goodness Ella slept through it all.

The rest of the night was a horrible blur of lots of crying and us scrambling to try and find a way to salvage it. We tried all our usual tricks to no avail, and finally around 3am I just made myself a bed on the couch, put on a Dora video, locked the girls in the living room with me, and sent Scott to bed. I was finally able to put them in their cribs around 4:15am without too much fussing, and then I crashed.

So our last night with Scott here for a while was not the best, nor was the following morning, but such is life with triplets and stressed out parents. At least we got photos of Scott and the girls before we left for the airport, and you will all now understand why we look so tired. We left the babies behind to nap because they sorely needed it, and just Ella and I dropped him off.

Ella and Daddy

Maggie and Daddy

Kate giving Daddy butterfly kisses

Sarah and Daddy

The whole crew.... boy do we look tired!

We've stayed very busy the last two days. I'm giving myself a little bit of a break until Monday, but after the weekend I'm hoping to put this little household on a great schedule that will help us get by until Scott comes back home. We miss him already, but as I've said before, now we can start the countdown until he returns. Thanks to all of you who have called, emailed, and commented to let us know you are thinking of us and praying for us. We really appreciate it!

Almost Wordless Wednesday- Beautiful Girl

We're finally getting some information... the girls and I will be taking Scott to the airport tomorrow to start his year long adventure in Iraq. We're anxious to have him gone so we can start counting down the days until he returns safely home to us. Crazy, I know, but that limbo stuff was hard!?!

On a completely unrelated note: Be sure to check out our first ever contest . We're giving away a new Chicco Trevi Twin stroller... a huge thanks to Chicco!

Happy (almost) Wordless Wednesday everyone!