Happy New Year!

Welcome, 2015!  I feel like I can finally come up for air.  Last year was a first for our family: we were sick at both Thanksgiving and Christmas!  The stomach bug hit us in November and was quickly followed by the cough/throat/sinus thing in December.  In between miseries, though, we celebrated in as many ways as we could and still had a fun holiday.

The Christmas tree was decorated in record time with my hard-working helpers!  I didn't even get [too] uptight about three-fourths of the ornaments being placed on the same five branches.  Well, I may have moved a few around after the helpers went to bed.  I'm only human.

Thanks to a wonderful friend, we received a copy of the Jesse Tree advent devotional and a set of ornaments to go with it.  We loved reading a passage together as a family each night and then taking turns hanging up an ornament to represent what we'd read about.  

One of the best things about being a mom is sharing what I love with my own kids and watching them get excited about it too.  In our family, this includes reading and baking: two activities we did in abundance in December. While I don't always enjoy having three four-year-olds in the kitchen with me, I appreciate their enthusiasm...and I know I'll like it a lot more in the near future when it's actually helpful.  Despite the mess and the chaos, though, making Christmas treats with my daughters was a sweet delight!

I could not be more excited that my girls love books as much as I did (and still do).  Every year we add a few to our growing Christmas collection, and then keep them out only for the month of December. This year, because it was cold and rainy and we were all sick, we kicked off the season with a Christmas book hunt (think Easter eggs, but with books).  I schlepped the holiday books down from the attic, hid them all over the house for the girls to find, and then we basically curled up and read for the rest of the day.  So fun!  And as an added bonus, they kept themselves busy the next few days hiding them for each other all over again.  I think it might become an annual tradition.  

After a lazy and laid back Christmas day at home, we loaded up the dent mobile for a trip to - and then across - the great state of Virginia.  Minus the actual time in the car, which was a lot, and still makes my bones ache to think about, we had a fun and relaxing visit with family on both sides of VA.  We even took on ice skating!  Think cold, sore bottoms and you'll have a pretty good idea of how that went.

As she does with most things, Maddie insisted on going against the flow:

Happy New Year!  

The Joys of October - Part 2

Ahh, October!

Our month ended with a whirlwind of a week that included a field trip, a class party, and what felt like a whole day of trick-or-treating.

Because I've always loved school and learning (if I had the time and money to take classes just for fun, I totally would), and because things like oh, say, Halloween make me wish I were still a kid, I sometimes live vicariously through my children's preschool experiences.  I'm OK with that.  It means chaperoning field trips and helping with parties are not so much duties as reasons for me to be as excited as the girls.  Does that make me weird?  Probably.

We had a sunny (hot!) day for the kiddos' trip to a nearby farm.  They got to climb on giant tires and haybales, ride a barrel train, go on a spooky hayride, make their way through a (hot!) corn maze, and feed farm animals.  Well, actually only one of my children (Reagan) was brave enough to even get in spitting distance of the animals.  Clearly my country roots have not been passed down to these town girls.  Their teachers could not get over how reserved they were with me there - apparently they are not shy at all at school! Hmmmm....interesting.

Even scarier than the animals was the hayride....luckily one of the teachers warned me that there were some Halloween decorations along the ride that moved, so I knew to have everybody sitting close.  Otherwise I have a feeling someone may have leapt all the way out of the trailer at one point.  My girls may be getting big, but they can still all fit on my lap at the same time when the situation calls for it.  For instance, when a huge furry spider falls down out of a tree and onto our heads.  (Or, when any of them perceive that a sister is getting .009 % more attention than they are at a given moment, but that's neither here nor there.)

My last field trip with a bunch of preschoolers was in October five years ago, when I was a teacher.  At the time, I was actually finally pregnant - after so many years of trying - but didn't know it.  We were working with doctors to help matters along, so I knew I might be, but it was hard looking at all the parents there and wondering if I'd ever be on the other side of things, and be there just as a mom, having fun with my own kids.  If I had only known what lay just ahead!  How sweet and funny and amazing this journey is.

A couple of days after the field trip, I got to be a part of the girls' class again by helping out with their fall party.  Each parent is asked to assist in hosting one of the three parties throughout the school year, and I signed up for Halloween.  Halloween parties are in my blood...my mom turned them into an art form when I was little. While I don't have her natural creativity or talent, I do have her enthusiasm.  I may not possess the patience for her hand-crafted costumes or homemade giant haunted house cookies, but I have mad thrift store costume-shopping skills, and I did turn some store-bought treats into witch hats and broomsticks.  Thanks, Pinterest!  Although when I asked Kevin if he could tell what the broomsticks were supposed to be, he guessed a tree stump. (Huh??)  Men.

Finally, our October went out with a bang as Halloween itself did not disappoint.  Yes, it may have been overkill, but I took my children trick-or-treating three separate times.  Before anyone calls the nutrition police, it was more about the experience than the candy - at least for me, and I'm the one in charge of the candy bowl.  There was only one sugar coma, promise.  Maybe two.  In the morning, we visited a nursing home where some of the sweet residents were sitting outside their rooms handing out candy.  Then that afternoon, we joined some friends for our tradition of trick-or-treating at the shops and businesses downtown.  It's one of my favorite annual events in our little town, and I've taken the girls every year since they were a year old.  Finally, after daddy got home and we all pretended to eat dinner, the five of us headed out into our neighborhood for the main event.

(Ignore me awkwardly hovering in the background.  See?  Way too excited for a grown-up.)

I started the day with two witches and a "pirate fairy" (if you have a little girl and Netflix, then you know who this is).  Unfortunately at some point in the afternoon our pirate fairy suffered a fall that led to a busted candy bucket, followed by a bit of a wardrobe malfunction that landed her dress in the dirty laundry.  So, by the time it was dark, I had two witches and Cinderella, who opted for carrying her lunch box.  All's well that ends well, right?

And that was our October.  Whew!

The Joys of October - Part 1

Is there any better month than October?  If it's not my absolute fave, it's in my top three, at least.  There's something about fall that energizes me and brings me to life, even though the year itself is winding down.

This particular October was jam-packed with family fun.  It's been that wonderful kind of exhausting around here.   Earlier in the month, I was able to go to my first women's retreat with our church, while the girls and daddy headed up to Grandma and Poppy's for a long weekend.  I even got back a day earlier than they did, and I spent my first night completely alone in the house since....?....well, I don't even remember!  It was restful, but weird!  I helped myself to some Chinese takeout and a Gilmore Girls marathon, but once the sun went down, I barricaded myself in my room and slept with the closet light on.  I guess I'll take the craziness over the eerie silence, after all.

As a family, we were able to enjoy a local pumpkin patch/farm, where the highlight of the day (for the girls) was the "pumpkin bounce."  It was like a huge trampoline built into the ground:

But my personal favorite October activity was a Saturday night on the farm belonging to a sweet family in our church.  They invited the whole church out to their beautiful farm for hot dogs, hayrides, games, and a cakewalk...and the girls and I won a cake!  I suppose we stacked the deck a little by letting all three of the girls participate in multiple rounds, but who's counting, right?

The girls are still loving school, and October has been especially exciting and festive for them there.  They've been practicing letter sounds, learning about fire safety, observing bugs, checking out books in their little library, bringing in items for show and tell, and having fun in Bible, music, and "active kids" class.  I wish school could always be like this for them - fun and simple.  Their school sold pumpkins throughout the month for a fundraiser, so I volunteered to help out for a couple of hours on a day that they were in class.  It was a slow morning in the pumpkin patch, but I'll be honest, I didn't mind!  It was nice, quiet, and relaxing.  This was my view:

Not a bad way to spend a morning at all!  Of course, of the three or four people who visited while I was there, only the last ones pointed out that I hadn't turned the sign over from "Closed" to "Open."  Oops.  Maybe that's why business was so slow.

I think I will have to dedicate a whole other post to the adventures of Halloween, so this will have to be Part 1 of our crazy busy October!  Part 2 coming soon.

A New Stage

My track record with keeping a blog current is not the greatest.  Luckily I've always been able to play the triplet card on that one....."just not enough time"!  But now we are in a new stage of life, and I actually do have some time.  The girls go to preschool now, two mornings a week!  

I cannot say enough good things about their little school, or their whole preschool experience, at least so far.  They are all in the same class....so with only twelve kids total, we are a quarter of the class!  They have loved it since day one.  Who are these big, brave girls?  Just a year ago they'd cling to my legs everywhere we went.  Now they march off to their classroom with their backpacks on and don't look back.  In fact, only one of us cried on the first day of school....and it wasn't any of the four-year-olds.   

At first it was pretty strange, even a little unnerving, to come home to an empty house every time I dropped them off.  But no worries...I've adjusted pretty quickly!  Now preschool mornings seem to go by way too fast.  

In some ways this new stage of life is bittersweet, but there's definitely a lot of sweet.  One of the sweetest is how the Lord is showing me his faithfulness, even when I am not faithful.  I've lived with the illusion of control for so long, at home in our "safe" little bubble.  I've been able to hide behind the busyness and chaos.  I've tried to find my identity and purpose in how I feel like I'm doing as a mom and how my kids are making me look (possibly life's greatest exercise in futility).  I've chosen distractions over God, then run from him in guilt over doing so. 

But at a time in my life when I've really struggled with doubt, he has shown me that he is good, that he is faithful, and that he is for me.  We sing a song at church that says something like, "If he had not loved me first, I would refuse him still."  (Don't quote me on that.)  And it feels like the story of my life.  Yet he doesn't let me keep refusing him.  He draws me back to himself.  When everything is changing and nothing else is satisfying, he keeps showing me that he is enough.  Because I'm so incredibly dense and forgetful and fickle, I have trouble believing it sometimes.  (Maybe even a lot of the time.)   But the truth that he keeps bringing to my mind and heart is this: Christ is enough for me.  

(That's a definite song quote!  You should listen to it.  Christ is Enough.  Hillsong.  Go play it now!  You'll be glad you did!)

What's New?

Sometimes I get so caught up in our day to day (mis)adventures that when people ask me, "What's new with you?" I really don't have an answer.  Because, honestly, the life of a stay at home mom can look a little like the movie Groundhog Day.  It can feel mundane and monotonous.  Sometimes not a lot seems new.  And that's OK.  I'm becoming more content with that.

It's been over a month since I posted anything, I think because I've been waiting for something noteworthy to happen.  I even had to look back at recent pictures in my phone just to recall exactly what's been going on with us lately.  I didn't find anything too glamorous or exciting, but hey...maybe the sweet, simple, routine stuff doesn't have to be noteworthy to be blog-worthy.

So what did we do in the month since my last post?

The girls helped me decorate for Valentine's Day

We went to Marbles 

We went to library story time, then re-created it at home

Sampson did a lot of this

Reagan and I took a selfie

Hadley decided that the best and only place to be ever is with a sister

Everybody got taller

And smarter.  See the shapes and letters made out of pretzels??  Geniuses.

This happened.  (Your guess is as good as mine.)  

And this.  

See that guy?  Someone once told me he was "God's perfect provision for me".  At the time I was a sleep-deprived mom of three infants and to be honest I barely even thought about what she was saying, much less knew what she meant.  But I've never forgotten those words, and now I see just how true they are!  He serves without complaining, sacrifices without drawing attention to himself or patting himself on the back (an example I could stand to emulate).  He is an incredible husband and the daddy I'd wish for every little girl.  And even though nothing much has been new or exciting in our lives lately, he has continued to be a faithful servant to our family and I have become even more aware of what a blessing he is!  

Snow Day!

It doesn't snow much here, so when it does, we get excited!  I've clearly blocked out a lot of Virginia winters (and springs).  Last night we got around 3-4 inches and I think that's a perfect amount.  Enough to play in, but not enough to be trapped inside for days and days.

The girls were of course thrilled, and Maddie even declared it a "winter wonderland"!  Their favorite activity of the day seemed to be sliding down their slide and then landing with a big wet splat into the snow.

We were all a little bummed that it wasn't good snowman-building snow - they'd already planned out the whole snow family they were hoping to create - but it didn't keep us down for long.

Kevin's work was technically on a two-hour delay, but because he's a good daddy (and maybe because he wanted to play a little too) he took the whole day off to hang with us.

A bunch of older kids on our street were out sledding, so we headed out to watch them for a bit and give our girls a chance to join in if they wanted.  Although we don't have any sleds or anything of our own, our sweet neighbors were quick to offer to share.  Can I just say these are some of the kindest, most well-mannered kids of this age that I've ever been around?  I think I need to spend some more time talking with and observing their moms (if you're reading this, you know who you are)!  Maybe their good parenting will rub off.

Only Reagan ended up being brave enough to try a sled, and only once.  I think she liked it but not enough to go again.  Her sisters seemed happiest watching!  We warmed up inside with hot chocolate and then made snowman cookies.  As always, the best part of making cookies was eating dough and licking the bowl...

We ended up going outside three different times...bundling everybody up got a little monotonous at that point!  Confession: I haven't yet bought any winter coats for the girls this year.  (Grandmas, don't fuss at me!)  Last year we didn't need anything heavier than fleece hoodies.  Since that was all I had for them today, I just went with layers - LOTS of layers!  I'm surprised they could walk.  At least we had hats, mittens and scarves.  They've been wearing them inside since November, so they were pleased to actually need them outside today.

Hooray for snow days....every once in a while!

A Triple Sweet Christmas

We had a very merry Christmas 2013 and are excited to kick off a new year!  Since the girls understood the holidays a bit more and really got into the festivities, it was a good chance to figure out what new traditions we might want to start and then continue in the future.  One of my favorite activities was taking the girls to the retirement home to sing carols and give out cards and drawings they had made for the residents.  I was worried that my two shy(er) girls would shut down, be afraid (or rude), and not participate, but after a little warming up they did a great job singing, handing out cards, and saying "Merry Christmas" to the sweet people there.  I was so proud of them.  In a way it broke my heart to see these women and men who have 50 - 60 years of their lives packed into their little apartments, but that made it sweeter to do this one little thing to make them smile.  We moved pretty quickly from room to room and it was hard because so many of them just wanted to talk and to be listened to....I think some of them could have talked all day if someone would have stayed to listen.  I hope in the new year that I'll remember them and commit to taking the time to go back and visit more.  Some of us have talked about taking the kids back for Valentine's Day; I hope we can make it happen!  One of the kids commented on a lady's pretty necklace, and she told us her husband had given it to her on their wedding day.  They all had pictures, quilts, and mementos they wanted to show us and one couple had a whole Christmas village in their apartment that I'm guessing they'd been collecting for years.  They were precious and loved seeing triplets, and called the girls "angels" (ha!).  It was one of the most meaningful things we did this year and I definitely want to make it a tradition.

I love the magic feeling of Christmas Eve night.  So much anticipation!

Christmas morning was exactly what you'd imagine it would be with three three-year-olds!  At first they weren't really sure what to do, but they caught on fast.  I wanted to make sure that they took the time to see what each person received, so we all took turns opening one gift at a time (they got a little antsy, but they tried).  Before Christmas I took each girl individually to Dollar Tree and let them pick out a gift for their sisters.  They seemed to have fun with it, but the challenge was getting them to keep it a secret and not tell each other what their presents were, and also helping them understand that they weren't shopping for toys for themselves but for something to give away.  It was interesting to see what they picked out for each other (bubbles, princess crowns, and a play-dough tool).  They liked watching their sisters open what they'd chosen and they were sweet to thank each other (with some prompting, of course).  Another tradition I want to keep!

It was a sea of pink once all the presents were opened!

We tried not to go overboard but I did get a little caught up in shopping and it was hard to stop once I got started!  And I learned that even if you get three of the exact same toy, three kids will still find a way to fight over them.

I would say that their favorite gifts were dress-up clothes (princess dresses and shoes).  They've been wearing them non-stop since Christmas day.  Even if someone breaks an ankle in those shoes it still might be worth it for the hours of fun that they've created...there's a ball to attend at least once a day, with this whole scene that takes place where someone cries, "It's late!  I have to go!" and someone else responds, "Wait!  I don't even know your name!" followed by lots of running/clomping.

I really enjoyed having time with family and I know the girls made some great memories with their grandparents and great-grandmother (my Mamaw).  I'm pretty sure the grown-ups had even more fun than the littles.

Grammy is still a kid at heart, so she's always in her element here.  Christmas was no exception.

After Christmas we headed north to spend a few days at Grandma and Poppy's house.  Maddie became attached to (obsessed with?) a Rudolph storybook, even though she was terrified of the abominable snow monster.  Luckily Poppy has a better attitude than I do about reading the same story 50+ times.

Grandma made aprons for the girls so they could help her bake up some cookies and make fudge.  Doing this kind of thing with the grandparents is the way to go....mommy gets to enjoy the fruits of their labor but doesn't have to deal with the mess...

It was a great Christmas and we are thankful for the time together.  I've been feeling a little sad lately when I see old pictures from when the girls were smaller.  So much of the first couple of years were a complete blur and we were in survival mode for such a long time.  It feels like I can hardly remember them as babies and toddlers, and I worry that I didn't savor the time like I should have because I was exhausted and often frustrated and overwhelmed.  These days are pretty overwhelming themselves....so I'm trying hard to fight for joy and be thankful for the sweet moments.  I spent a lot of the past year in a state of frustration with potty training and "obedience" training (wow, sounds like I'm talking about dogs), and I'm praying for the grace to enjoy these days a bit more in the year ahead.

Happy 2014!  I'm looking forward to seeing what adventures lie ahead!