Pre-Easter Festivities

Our community Easter Festival was just a quick stroller ride away, and it was nice to be able to walk down there, since the place was packed with hordes of kids. While standing in line to hold a spot for the toddler portion of the Easter egg hunt for 45 minutes, along with everyone else in town, I kept wondering why we weren’t skipping the madness and having our own pre-Easter egg hunt at home… but by then, the kids weren’t going anywhere! While I waited in line, the girls met the Easter bunny and tried out all the bouncy houses and carnival games, so I guess I wasn’t missing out on much.

Ready, set, go!

Not much of a hunt when the eggs are just scattered all over the grass.

This really needs to be more challenging, guys.

Once Meredith realized there wasn’t any candy in the eggs (just small toys), she dumped her entire basket out!

A volunteer helped her put them back, but she wasn’t really interested in keeping them!

No, really, I don’t want these!

For the older kids, they did several different “hunts” which you had to get tickets for in advance, so there wasn’t a line. Why they didn’t do that for the toddler hunt, I have no idea.

Again, not much of a hunt!

Meredith LOVES garbage trucks and will run from wherever she is inside the house on trash day to see it pull up to our curb.

Waiting to get lunch from the food trucks.

Meredith the bunny.

WHAT IS ON MY FACE?!

Amelia bunny.

Samantha the butterfly.

 

Evil bunny!

Let’s frolic!

Trying to take pictures.

 

One tired little bunny.

Lots of love,

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February Randomness

Our February started out on the not-so-lovely side with a domino effect of sickness which spread like the plague through preschool and then our house. Fortunately, I remained unscathed, but from the tail end of January until the middle of February, at least one person was sick at our house!

The girls missed a week of school, with Amelia and Samantha coming down with a fever, congestion and lingering cough within a few days of each other and Meredith getting the worst of it. I was at the pediatrician’s office four times within six days and basically lived at the pharmacy. I was sure it was the dreaded flu, but it turned out to be just a really nasty cold with accompanying coughing that lasted forever.

I probably need to work on my nursing/compassion skills because I was so sick of taking care of sick people by the end of the ordeal and could not keep my crankiness under wraps! We are so lucky to have such mild weather all year long that I forget what it’s like to be stuck inside the house since we are usually outside for a good portion of each day, and the quarantining due to sickness really took a toll on my sanity. We went on short walks every day and played in our backyard a little bit, but I didn’t want to venture to the park either with friends or by ourselves so as not to infect anyone. That, combined with being out of preschool, was basically torture!

Amelia was well enough to go to school after a week, but Samantha was a few days behind her and needed a little bit of extra time to recover. This was the first time Amelia was at preschool without her sister and was understandably distraught, so Jake took her out to a special Daddy Daughter breakfast before school to help lift her spirits. Fruity Pebbles French Toast = Happiness. I don’t even want to know how much sugar was in this and had to make a conscious decision not to freak out when I saw this picture!

A few weeks later, Jake took a jealous Samantha out to breakfast all by herself.

Finally feeling back to normal!

No one at San Clemente beach on Super Bowl Sunday– the perfect time to go for a beach walk after church!

I’m sure people thought it was super cute that someone named Amelia loved her boyfriend, Sam!

Impromptu rock art in honor of mom.

The youth at church had a fundraiser one weekend where they came by anyone’s house who signed up and did all the yucky jobs no one wants to do. Free labor? Yes, please! They sprayed out/cleaned our outdoor trash cans for us, weeded, and hauled a bunch of stuff to the dump. That afternoon, they held a carnival fundraiser and the girls had a blast getting their faces painted, playing with bubbles and taking turns rolling each other around in a giant blow up ball.

Samantha and Amelia decided to join me during my pregnancy pilates workout.

We finally made time to make it down to the HOA office and got the girls IDs for our neighborhood skate park. It’s normally full of boys on scooters, skateboards and bikes doing backflips, but this afternoon was calm and the perfect time for the girls to try it out. The boys who were there were very encouraging to the twins!

Meredith on her Strider– she rotates between her bike, her plasma car, her scooter, and being pushed in her stroller. I’ve learned the hard way that she will usually give up riding whatever her vehicle of choice is halfway to the park and my huge, lumbering pregnant self will end up carrying it to the park and back. I’ve learned to ALWAYS bring the stroller so I can at least prop her abandoned vehicle on top and push it.

Amelia swings like Tarzan at our neighbor, Naomi’s, gymnastics birthday party.

One of the girls’ favorite activities at the park is collecting flowers and building nests! Parker and Samantha work on a detailed bird habitat.

Picking beautiful flowers at the park.

Since we moved last summer, I’ve gone through three different gardeners. Labor is cheap and everyone on the block has a gardener, but I just can’t understand paying for them to mow our tiny patch of lawn and blow leaves around, especially when they would do a decent job the first month or so and then completely slack off after that! I had finally had it with the noise of the leaf blower during nap time and the fact that they were blowing leaves into our pool constantly, so we’ve been doing our own work ever since. Maybe one day I will find the dream gardener I’m looking for– someone who actually knows something about plants, loves plants and takes care of them! In the mean time, Meredith and the twins have been our free gardeners!

We need to hire Maliyah’s dad, Jared, for our next birthday party. He kept all the kids entertained with a superhero obstacle course and games during Maliyah’s birthday party. The kids all made superhero capes that were super cute– what a fun theme!

Practicing third position at ballet class.

Meredith takes some time to chill out and eat her favorite foods– fruit and cake– at Kennedy’s beach birthday party.

This is what happened while the twins were supposedly “napping.” While they usually take a short nap at preschool, they only nap about 25% of the time on the days they are home.  To retain my sanity, I am very strict about a mandatory daily quiet time, and when they don’t fall asleep, they are usually pretty good at coloring, reading books, listening to books on CD or quietly playing with toys in their room. I am usually resting/napping and Meredith naps for 2 to 2.5 hours, so the hour and a half of twins’ quiet time is non-negotiable! This particular afternoon, they were a little too quiet!

A morning at the park and a chance to get some energy out at the expense of local wildlife. Poor duck!

Lots of love,

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San Diego Wild Animal Park and January Activities

While Aunt Sarah was in town for Auntie Lynn’s 60th birthday, we took a girls’ trip to the San Diego Wild Animal Park, a.k.a. the twins’ and Meredith’s true home. Someone in my Mothers of Multiples club was giving away free tickets that were going to expire and she couldn’t use, so on a whim, we took a day trip down there! Being a Tuesday in January, we had the place to ourselves, which was perfect for these three wild animal sisters.

I hatched!

Thank you for always feeding me snacks, Aunt Sarah.

Gorilla skull!

Keeping this crew in line while waiting for food is torture.

We love the Wild Animal Park, not just for the open space and roaming animals, but for all of the playgrounds throughout the zoo. I strolled Meredith through the shady tiger trails until she fell asleep while the girls played at one of the playgrounds.

The lorikeets seemed hungry that day! Meredith was still asleep and didn’t feed the birds, but I doubt she would have wanted to… she’s still traumatized from getting bit at the Living Desert zoo in Palm Springs and will randomly hold up her finger and say, “Birdie bite me!” when she sees birds.

Aunt Sarah had a photo shoot at a cute bookstore for some clients in Newport Beach and brought the girls back some fun new books for storytime.

While Aunt Sarah was in town, we also hiked to Ortega Falls, which we had been wanting to check out. There was only a trickle of water, but the girls had fun rock climbing and were entertained watching a family with legit rock climbing equipment scale the rock walls.

What it’s supposed to look like when there’s water:

I want snack!

In other January news, Noah stayed at our house overnight while the grown-ups were at Auntie Lynn’s 60th birthday party, and the girls all loved having a guest over!

Meredith has spent her whole life sitting and watching the twins do their activities, and finally got to do a gymnastics class of her own. The class for her age group requires the parents to be in class as well, but she wanted nothing to do with parental supervision and acted like she didn’t know me! Even though she’s not old enough, the coach said she could move up to the next level in which parents don’t need to be in class and she absolutely loves it.

Looks like we need some more practice on those cartwheels…

Skating lessons!

The best part of winter? Watching it on TV on an unusually hot January day at home.

Orange picking!

 

We had what seemed like an entire month, but was really a 10-day period at the end of January, where all of the girls were SO sick and fell like dominoes, one after the other. I thought for sure it was the flu, but it turned out to be some kind of bad respiratory virus. The twins missed a combined week and a half of school, and were not happy about going alone when the other twin was home sick. To help make her feel better on her first day back at school, with Samantha still sick at home, Jake took Amelia on a morning Daddy Daughter Date before school. This special fruity pebbles french toast was enough to coax her into being at preschool by herself that day! Where is my french toast reward for taking care of sick kids for an eternity?

Lots of love,

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Newport Marina and Knott’s Berry Farm

While we were in San Francisco, Grammy and Grandpa kept the girls busy at the zoo, We Play Loud and at all the parks around town. When we returned, Jake took a few extra days off work to work on putting in the new floors upstairs, so we took the kids on a few long excursions to get them out of the house.

Not missing Mommy and Daddy at all…

Our favorite beach park: Marina Park in Newport Beach.

Cheese! Grandpa remarked that the fact that the girls love eating seaweed so much goes again the natural rules of kid food!

Stylish beach baby.

Concentration.

The girls had never been to Knott’s Berry Farm, so to give Jake another full day to work on the floor, we took off on our adventure for the day. We mostly stayed in the Snoopy/Peanuts characters area, which was perfect for small kids, and ventured off to some of the bigger rides later in the day. It definitely was not Disneyland, but the girls had fun, especially mining for gold in the old western town and scarfing down the famous Knott’s chicken and boysenberry pie at the end of our long day.

Being pregnant, I couldn’t go on most of the rides, which was very convenient! Grammy and Grandpa win “Best Grandparents Award” for accompanying the girls on all the rides!

Grammy is a trooper!

Poor Grandpa!

Just watching the spinning Mexican Hat Dance ride made me nauseous!

Jake completed a good amount of flooring during our all-day excursion, and now that we’ve experience Knott’s, we don’t have to go back! Mission accomplished.

Lots of love,

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