If we ran the zoo....

The girls and I went to the Nashville Zoo for the first time yesterday. We met a couple other POTATO (Parents of Twins and Triplets) Moms there and had a great time. I wasn't able to take many pictures of the girls as it is hard to take pictures while chasing them down (they weren't too thrilled with the idea of being rolled around in the stroller), but I did get a couple. The first one is of the girls looking at the elephants. The elephants and the monkeys were the hit of the day for them. Ashlyn is looking at the camera and Anna is looking at the elephants. I still can't believe it was cool enough for them to wear jackets. It was a high of 68 degrees yesterday.



This picture below is after we had lunch. We were sitting in front of the monkey exhibit (Gibbons to be exact) so we could get a last look at the monkeys before we left. Anna is in the green shirt and Ashlyn is in the pink.



All-in-all it was a pretty good day. Amazing since all three of us had been up since 3:30am. No reason to be up at that hour - they just wanted to play - crazy! They took a quick power nap before we got to the zoo which helped, but I was dragging pretty hard by the time we left. We all took a good nap when we got home.

Sometimes you gotta laugh....

There are many things that the girls have done to make me shake my head and I can't think of them all right now, but one happened just about an hour ago that I had to share. We have been battling over naps lately. The girls are at that age when they really still need a nap, but don't want to take one. This causes the turmoil. Most of the time we put them in their room and they play - which is fine until the fighting starts which leads to crying which leads to more chaos at naptime. They'll actually stay in their room for over an hour at naptime without setting foot in the beds unless I come in to break them up. That's pretty funny too because the minute I open the door they bolt for the beds. They do the same thing at night.

Anyway - they were in their room for about 30 minutes this afternoon and I heard lots of laughing (very normal during this time and - hey - anything but crying is good at this point). We have a video monitor given to us when the girls were born that is wonderful, so I turned it on and saw what they were doing. Then I went in to take pictures.....Anna is in the green shirt and Ashlyn is in the pink one....


Yes - my lovely darlings had taken all their clothes out of the hamper and out of their drawers and were rolling around in them laughing their heads off. The photos don't actually do the room justice as there were stacks of clothes in the corners as well. This is one of those moments as a parent that you REALLY shouldn't laugh and try to have that stoic look on your face that shows disapproval, but I just smiled and told them they needed to help Mommy put everything away. They were good girls and helped me, but weren't too happy about it. Not too long after they finally went to sleep and I now have the opportunity to post this story and the pictures.

Sending out our Blog Site to everyone we know

Today we have sent out our blog site address to almost everyone in our address book. I'm excited to see what you all think. This site is SO much easier to update than the other site I had for the girls which makes me hope that I can keep it current better than I did before ( Let's face it - I was bad at updating that site). Anyway, we don't have a ton of pictures on here yet, but for now I thought I would attach a couple of the girls in July. These were before church so they weren't too dirty yet - ha. Anna is the picture on top in the lighter blue and Ashlyn is the picture on the bottom in the darker blue. I still can't believe how big they are getting!

The Resiliance of Children

Most of you know that Ashlyn had to have surgery last May. She had a megaureter which basically means the tube connecting the right kidney to the bladder was WAY too big. This caused a back-up of urine which resulted in REALLY bad urinary tract infections. So we decided on the surgery to fix this so she wouldn't continue to have these problems. Ashlyn had to have a few invasive procedures before the surgery and - due to complications with a stint - she had to endure multiple ER visits with even more invasive procedures. Our hearts literally ache for her, but now all is good. Today we had to take her in for what we hoped would be her last procedure involving catheterization. It was to make sure the new and improved ureter was working as it should. It was awful. She was petrified and all I could do was hold her hands, put my face against hers, repeat the Brown Bear, Brown Bear book and pray. I prayed it wouldn't be so scary for her. I prayed that it would be over quickly. I prayed that this whole experience wouldn't scar her for life. I prayed that her ureter was working as it should. I prayed for the strength to hold her hands and tell her it was going to be okay. She cried - I cried - and it was over within 20 minutes. The longest 20 minutes I've experienced for a while.

But all is good - very good. The results were positive - her new and improved ureter was working perfectly and she will soon be off the daily dose of antibiotics she's been taking. YEAH!

What's even more amazing is the fact that as soon as the procedure was over she was ready to go back into the waiting room and go play with her sister. She ran and jumped and sang and danced and caused havoc with her sister just like she had never had to undergo the procedure she just went through.

Amazing! God definitely works wonders. The picture is of Ashlyn this afternoon - the procedure was at 9:30am.

Our first photo addition to this site.

As we are testing new stuff out on this website (and I haven't even told anyone we have it up and running yet - oops), here's our first photo attempt.

This was taken by my parents when they were here a couple weekends ago. They just recently came through here again on their way down to the gulf coast to help with Disaster Relief. We've been keeping tabs on them and they are doing well. They are tired but are glad they are there. Not sure how long they'll be staying there, but they look forward to coming back through here to see "the girls".

This photo was taken in our back yard under one of our magnolia trees. The girls like to pretend they are monkeys. Very funny. Ashlyn is on the left in the pink and Anna is on the right in the blue and green.

Can we say - SLOW!

Geez - it is taking me forever to get this site going - as you can easily see since my first post was in April! Pitiful! Anyway, I plan on working on this site this weekend so that should help. Plus, I hope to release it to friends and family so they can enjoy it as well. I also hope I learn how to add pictures sometime soon as the girls' website is a bit hard to keep up as you have to reformat ALL the pictures to meet the site's requirements. I'm hoping I won't have that problem here. Well - here's to hoping I get on the ball.

Our first post

A HUGE "Thank You" to my cousin-in-law (is that right?) Jennie Beschman for turning me onto this site. I didn't even see her first email about it until this morning until it just showed up in my inbox from January 13 (thanks to my slow Yahoo account). Anyway, this is a wonderful way for me to share some stories about our family and I am truly excited about it. Now Jennie has raised the bar in posting as I see she is SO good at it, so I won't aim that high just yet. I'll just tell you I'll do my best to keep you updated on the chaos that we call our lives.

As I am just learning about this website I will have to play around before getting everything up and going as it should so just bear with me and enjoy the ride.