End of the Year Update

Talia – She’s have a great time in 5th grade. They have gotten to go on a number of fun field trips this year with several more planned throughout the year. She continues to be a honor roll student, excelling in everything she tries. She has taught herself to play the harmonica and has gotten pretty good at it. She does choir and girl scouts and challenge (which is a Catholic girls group). She is a beautiful girl, both inside and out. She has a great group of friends, most of whom she has been friends with since kindergarten. She spends most of her free time outside playing with the other kids in the neighborhood. She also enjoys her gameboy and playing online on Neopets and Disney’s Virtual Magic Kingdom.

Kayli – She is now 8 years old an in 2nd grade. She enjoys school and also excels in everything she tries. She was recently voted class president for the month of December. She is very outgoing and has tons of friends. She has taught herself to play the recorder and knows a large number of songs on it. She does choir and girl scouts and did soccer for the first time this year. She is very good at soccer and I’ll likely continue to have her play next year. She also spends most of her free time outside playing with the other kids in the neighborhood and enjoys her gameboy and playing online on Neopets and Disney’s Virtual Magic Kingdom.

Aidan – He is now 5 year old and in a preppy-K class. Over the last month of so, reading has really started to click with him. He knows all the phonetic sounds for a while know and has recently caught on how to blend the words. I expect him to be reading quite well by the time he starts kindergarten next year. He played soccer for the first time this year and really enjoyed it. He says he wants to try baseball next year, so I will likely put him in that instead. He is all boy and his favorite thing to do is run around outside playing. He also enjoys playing on his leapster.

Jared and Riley – They are now 3 years old. I play to start them in preschool next year. They continue to be in speech therapy this year and are getting much easier to understand. I’ve also had them in swim classes and they are both making great progress. They continue to refuse to be potty trained, but we are hopeful that they will decide to start using the potty before preschool next year. They are also all boy and like nothing better than to run around outside playing.

Decorations are Down

We got all the Christmas decorations taken down today. I was getting very tired of telling the boys to leave the tree alone every few minutes. It sure is nice not having to constantly keep them away from it. It’s also nice having back the room the tree took up. They boys are happy to have it down since they get their light sabers back. After Aidan took his light saber and hit an ornament, breaking it, we took them away till after the tree was taken down. Several other ornaments also were broken this year. You would think that not having glass ornaments would prevent them from being broken, but not with my boys around! They still manage to break plastic ones.

Our Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas! It started around 5:30 am when the girls woke up and snuck downstairs to spy on their Santa gift and stockings. They then got dressed and came into bed with Dan and I until the boys finally woke up around 7:00 am. We got the boys dressed and everyone went downstairs. The boys were very excited about their Santa presents: BC Builders sets, Treasure Island Matchbox set and the Aircraft Carrier Micro-Adventure Rescue Heroes set. The girls got Heely’s and were thrilled! They opened up their stockings and the twins started munching all their candy before we could stop them! I then started breakfast – coffee cake. Which apparently is our traditional Christmas morning meal. (Talia and Kayli informed me of this a few weeks ago.) After breakfast, Dan took the girls to 9 am mass. I went with them on Christmas Eve to the 4 pm mass. Since they are in the children’s choir, they have to sing at two Christmas masses.

While the girls and Dan were gone, I opened up all the boxes of the boys Santa gifts and put them together so they could play with them. They were very anxious to open up their presents, but knew they had to wait till everyone was home. Finally, the girls and Dan were back and the present opening began. We tried to keep it orderly, with everyone opening one thing at a time, but it was hard to keep it under control. Kayli’s favorite present was her gameboy. Talia already had one and she very much wanted one too. Talia isn’t sure what her favorite present was, but has been playing her new gameboy games almost non-stop. The twins and Aidan loved all their new toys. My favorite present was the earings that Dan gave me.

After lunch, the girls went out to play with all the kids in the neigborhood. Turns out that all the other kids that didn’t already have them, also got Heely’s for Christmas. They all had a blast skating all over the neighborhood. I spent most of the afternoon opening boxes of the boy’s new toys. They managed to play with ever single one of their new toys.

For dinner, we went over to Dan’s parents house. Dan’s parents, Dan sister Pam and her two children, Dan’s sister Barbara and her “significant other” visiting from the Netherlands, Dan’s sister Samantha, and Dan’s grandma were there. Aidan brought his new Bionicle with him and and his cousin Lawrence help him put it together. Lawrence also got Heely’s for Christmas and the girls tried to help him figure out how to use them.

After dinner, we had another round of present opening. We all got so much stuff, that I don’t know what we will do with all of it! Definitely will be time to get rid of some old stuff. We then had desert and sat around talking. Dan’s dad built a fire in the chiminaria and the kids all went ouside. Samantha and I went outside with them. Around this time, Dan’s mom was trying to get his grandma to go to bed. Apparently, they had forgotten to add grandma’s medicine to her food at dinner and she totally flipped out. (She won’t take the medicine on her own, so they have to hide it in food.) She started yelling at everyone and refusing to go to bed. We left a while later at around 10:30 pm. From what I hear, grandma continue to rant and rave for several more hours.

You can see our Christmas pictures here.

I don’t recommend doing this

I took the boys to the mall today in a quest for the last few remaining Christmas presents. Things were going well, till I took them into Bath & Body Works. I had the double stroller, which the boys were all holding onto. With the threat of being placed into the stroller if they didn’t stay with it. The layout of that store was not created with strollers in mind, or two three year olds for that matter! It was a struggle to get around the store to find what I wanted without the twins destroying every display in the store. I did manage to make it out of there with the present and without the boys breaking anything. I do strongly recommend you not every try this with three young boys!

The highlight of the mall trip for the boys was playing with the Reactrix. It’s this interactive mat on the ground that has different scenes displayed on it that you can interact with. Their favorites are the fish, the soccer game and the racecar track. They would stay there all day if I let them. It was very hard getting them to leave. It is suppose to be an adverstisement tool, but the ads are totally lost on my boys. They think it is a toy and want to know why I can’t buy them one for home.

Recognized at Costco

I took the boys to Costco today to pick up some prints I had made and look for a few more Christmas presents. We go to check out and the checker says, “Hey, It’s the triplets! Oh wait, one is older, right?” Aidan quickly says that he’s 5 and they are 3. I guess I’ve been spending too much time at Costco lately!

28 Week Appointment

I had my 28 week appointment on Friday. I was suppose to go on Thursday, but Dan totally forgot about it and didn’t show up to watch the kids. They put me in a room with an u/s machine, so the dr did a quick u/s and I got to see the baby again. She is still a she! Everything looked great. She is breach, which I pretty much knew already since the kicks are all mostly low. It doesn’t really matter since I’m having a scheduled c-section anyway, but the dr said they do like to know that before surgery.

He also said that my one hour GTT came back “a bit high”. Turns out it was 137, which is exactly what it always is. They changed the cut off from 140 three years ago to 135 two years ago to 133 now. He wants me to do the three hour test, but I very likely will “forget” to go have it done. I have no sympomts at all of GD, and do tend to by hypoglycemic anyway. Fasting all night, going three hours with no food and just that glucose will very likely cause me to black out.

My iron also was a bit low, which I expected. So, he wants me to take more iron. He also suggested taking Omega-3 since one study showed that it helps brain development.

My next appointment is Jan. 6 when I will be almost 33 weeks. That means it will be only 6 weeks from then that the baby will be born!

Kayli Was Elected President!

Kayli was elected president of her class today. Each month they elect a new president and vice-president. She is really excited about being elected. She said it is hard work being president and listed all the jobs she will have to do. The best job, she said, is being the person that gets to calling on people to nominate the next president and vice-president and getting to see how people vote.

Lining Up for Swimsuit Sale in Dec?

Only in California would you see a parking lot full of people lined up to get into a swimsuit warehouse sale in December. On the way to taking the girls to school this morning, I saw exactly that. The TYR warehouse was having a sale and people were lined up all throughout the parking lot waiting for it to open.

I Took the Boys to See Santa This Morning

I got there right after it opened, so we didn’t have to wait in line. This is the first year that one or the other of the twins wasn’t afraid of Santa. They all had a good time talking with him.

While we were at the mall, I must have been asked over a dozen times if they were triplets. Aidan has the drill down! I always say no and he pipes in with “I’m 5 and they are 3.”