Ocean City, NJ

When Steve's Uncle Jim and Aunt Anne generously offered us the use of their Ocean City, NJ shore house during the first leg of our trip, we jumped at the chance. Their lovely 3-bedroom, 2 bath home sits just a block and half from the beach. We spent 4 days exploring the beach and taking in all the sites. Cousin Finn, Uncle Chris, and Me-Mom also stayed in the house and Aunt Kate and Uncle Wags also joined us for a day.



The buddies splashed in the surf, collected sea shells, built sand castles, made tracks in the sand with their trucks, chased sea-gulls, and ran free. On day 3, Me Mom and I took all three boys on a trolley ride (very exciting!) down to a cute little ice cream shop near the boardwalk. Inside, model trains traveled all around the shop - overhead and along the walls. The buddies and their cousin were mesmerized.

After 4 full days of fun in the sun, it was time to depart and head for our next destination: Granddad's house. Check out all of our shore pics here.

What is wrong with this picture?

That's right - someone took not one, but two bites out of the decorative watermelon cookie. And it was well before we sang "Happy Birthday" to our favorite triplet friends at their party. I'm afraid that a certain brown-eyed boy is a bit of a stinker-pants. It was an awesome party, despite the cookie thievery.

First T-Ball Game

And for our readers' enjoyment, our debuts at the plate. Sorry for the shaky video - their camera-mom had too much coffee before the 9am game.

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to all the daddies in our lives! Steve enjoyed a full round of golf this morning as my present to him and the buddies painted these lovely modern art canvases for him. Ben's creation is on the left; Ace's is on the right.

We also spent the week filling in the blanks on the following Daddy Questionnaires, which we gave to him today. Ace's answers are in blue; Ben's in red.

My dad is 1 / old years old. (actual answer: 35)
My dad has brown / brown hair. (actual answer: brown, though not much of it)
My dad has black / brown eyes. (actual answer: blue-green)
My dad loves to cook some dinner / sing.
I love it when my dad does a silly dance / plays upstairs.
My favorite thing to do with dad is make funny faces / play golf.
My favorite game to play with my dad is Silly Face / Hi Ho Cherrio.
I like it when my dad sings 5 Little Ducks / Silly ABC's.
My dad makes great Chinese food / dinner.
When I’m sad, my dad sings a song and I feel better (awww...) / makes me feel better.
I like to sing the "ya ya ya" song / lick it (honestly, I have no idea...) with my dad.
I love my dad because he sings the "I love" song / Daddy hits the ball.

We hope all the daddies out there had a great day!

Two Super Fun Parties

The buddies attended two birthday parties this weekend and had a couple of wild times. The first, their pre-school classmate Jack's party, featured the Fun Bus. And what fun it was. The Fun Bus is a gymnastics academy on wheels that teaches gymnastics to kids ages 2.5 - 7. The bus has its own rock climbing wall, monkey bars, trampoline, vault, rings, tumbling mats, a zip-line, and a slide out the back. Just about everything you'd find in a traditional gymnasium was included. The buddies loved it.


Mia's party today was just as fun. She had an inflatable water slide that kept our wild boys entertained for hours. Ace said, "This is awesome!" after sliding and racing back for more a few times. Another highlight of the party was the pinata. Ben ate his first pixie stick but ate the whole thing like a candy bar - taking big bites, paper and all. Yum!



View all of our party pics here.

T-Ball!!

The buddies attended their first t-ball practice this week. The consensus? We love it!! Two other sets of twins (all good friends from our playgroup) are on our team too. It should be a fun-filled season.

Swimming with Friends

We met our twin and triplet friends at one of our favorite neighborhood pools this morning for some summer fun. I can't believe we're in the full swing of summer and it is already going by so fast. Despite heavy applications of sunscreen, we are all quite tan after many fun days in the pools, parks, spray grounds and lakes. We just can't get enough of water fun.




And the best part about spending the morning at the pool? Both boys take nice, solid naps afterwards.

Swimming Lessons

Whew! Today we completed our two week swimming course. Here are a few high (and low) lights of the course:

Day 1: Our 3-year old class could easily be described in two categories: those that stayed with the class and those that didn’t. Sadly, one of my children fell into the latter category. Ben wandered away at least half a dozen times, but did well otherwise. Both boys put their faces in the water with ease and enjoyed the pool. I quickly made friends with the mom of another wild boy and together we spent a good portion of the 45 minute class directing our children back to the group.

Day 3: Ben and my new friend’s son were labeled “the runners” by their very nice and very patient teacher. Ace pushed Ben (just because he was excited) on our way out. Ben bled. A lot. Both boys wailed. Loudly. It took us 15 minutes to walk through the Y (leaving behind a trail of blood that I pretended not to see), out the door, through the parking lot and to our car. All whilst receiving lots of stares, tongue clucks and a few pitying looks.

Day 5: I spent the entire class herding two wild boys back to their class. So, I started thinking and put together a plan. After our lesson, we made a trip to the grocery store where I let them each pick out their own ice cream. Then, I told them that they couldn’t have any until after swim lessons the following day and only IF they stay with the class the entire time. Big kids stay with the class and get ice cream. Babies run away. We looked at it in the freezer all afternoon and talked about how they could earn a scoop.

Day 6: Success (mostly)! We looked at our ice cream again in the morning. Several reminders later, we were at swim class. Ace stayed in class and listened to his instructor, regularly reminding her that he was going to have an ice cream cone. Ben did great too, but the big slide was just too tempting and mid way through class he made a break for it. Poor Benny. It nearly killed me to give Ace his ice cream in front of Ben, but I did it. Parenting is definitely not for sissies.

Day 8: We made it! I think we are all glad to have our swimming lessons behind us.

So, did we learn how to swim? Um…no.
Did we have fun? Aside from Day 3 and Day 5, sure.
Did we learn anything? Yes! All three of us!
What’s up next on our summer schedule? T-ball! Look out YMCA, we’ll be back.

Lake Days

We are home after a long, fun - filled weekend at Grandma and Grandpa's house on the lake. Aunt Carlee, Uncle Mike, and Michael made the trip too, and it was nice to catch up with them. The buddies spent their days swimming, boating, fishing off the deck, playing golf, scootching trains, eating cookies and visiting with family and neighbors. They even had a chance to try out our new ice cream ball.

Check out our pictures here.

Another Trip to Our Favorite Berry Farm

Since today was our only free day for the next two and a half weeks, we decided to trek out to our favorite berry farm for some blackberry picking, before the weather gets too hot. Those who have followed our blog for a while know that Sweetberry Farm is one of our favorite places, so I won't bore everyone with a long recap of the field trip we've taken a half dozen times before. We followed our usual routine today:

Pick berries (blackberries this time).

Feed the goats.

Eat homemade ice cream (and sample your brother's flavor).

Our Fire Station Play Date

Today was our turn to host our weekly play date, so we invited our twin and triplet friends to our local fire station. It was educational and fun too!

Two friendly fire fighters greeted our wild crew and showed us around their station. We started with a brief lesson in fire safety: calling 911 for emergencies, sleeping with our doors closed, testing smoke detectors monthly and changing their batteries twice a year. I'll have to get to work on the last few as time allows.

Next, the fire fighters showed us their gear and let the kids try to lift their heavy coats. A few lucky kiddos tried on real fire fighter boots. After that, we continued our tour of the station, seeing the kitchen, the private bedrooms (not shared bunks, since many fire fighters are female now), the gym, and then, the main event: the fire truck.

Our kids loved exploring the truck and learning how many of its parts function. And best of all, everyone got to climb in the cab for a quick tour of the inside. A very nice paramedic showed us her ambulance too. To wrap everything up, they turned on the fire truck lights to the delight of all the little ones.

It was a fun and educational outing. The most important lesson we learned is that fire fighters are our friends. Our hosts today certainly were.

Lake Austin

The buddies and I met a friend this morning at her friend's lake front house and enjoyed some time on a private beach on Lake Austin. We've been searching for a nice local beach and this was the best one so far. It had a nice sandy beach, so we parked our shovels, buckets, rakes, and sandcastle shapes and hit the water.






Everyone loved watching the boats go by and swimming in the chilly water. There were even a few water skiers out today and Ace decided he wants to try to "skate on the water". We had a nice picnic lunch and then splashed some more, before heading home to rest. It was a great morning. Thanks Allison!

One More Bird

Correction: Our baby birds are TRIPLETS, not twins, as we previously thought. This was confirmed during a very fun Sunday dinner on the porch. Steve fed his babies hamburgers from the grill while we watched Mama Bird feed her babies tasty bugs. She is a very busy Mama Bird, indeed.

And our baby birds have names!

Mommy's bird: Little Johnny
Ace's bird: Little Ace
Ben's bird: Little Benny

New Life!

Our Earth Day Caterpillars are growing wild green hair. The buddies faithfully water them every day (lately with their squirt guns).

TWINS! We have two baby Southern Emu Wrens. My grandpa determined their species for us, although he called it a WAG (wild a** guess). We'll wait until they have feathers and are a little stronger before the buddies check them out up close and name them. One is already designated "Little Johnny" in honor of a story from our bird identifying consultant.

"Woo hoo! I can talk about it!"

Today was a day of sporting adventures. We awoke (at 6:15am, unfortunately) to thunder and lightning. Since the rain continued, we decided to check out the basketball courts at the YMCA. I have not been on an indoor court since my love affair with basketball ended 14 years ago and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Perhaps it was because I was seeing it fresh, through the eyes of my children. The buddies loved the big wide open space that we had all to ourselves. And I loved showing them the basics and setting up cones for them to dribble around. We played basketball and soccer and football and could have stayed all day. We were eventually kicked out for league play, so the boys headed to the kid's gym while I grabbed a quick 30 minutes on the elliptical machine. The Y may be our new favorite place to play.

When we left the Y, the sun came out, so we headed to our neighborhood park for two hours of fun. We played the "catch game" with our tennis balls and then headed to the playground. The slides were wet from the morning's rain, which meant my two wild boys went down very fast. Ace kept saying, "Woo hoo! I can talk about it!". It took me a while to figure out that he was mimicking his dad, who often says, "That's what I'm talking about!" when he is excited. That's right, Ace. You can talk about it.

A Visit from Aunt Katie and Uncle Mike

Oh what a fun weekend we just had! The buddies were excited to find Aunt Katie and Uncle Mike (aka Uncle Wags or "that guy") at our house when they awoke on Saturday morning. They were greeted with hugs and presents and things just kept getting better after that.

The theme for our weekend seemed to be outdoor fun. Yesterday, we took our relatives paddle boating on Lady Bird Lake, near downtown, and then to eat on the patio at one of our favorite restaurants, Shady Grove. Steve even sang karaoke in a Southwest Airlines promotional vehicle while we waited for our table. His rendition of "Baby Got Back" was certainly memorable, but probably didn't make us look like the best parents in the world. Afterwards, we made our 2008 premiere at our neighborhood pool, before heading home to grill burgers in our backyard.

Today, we checked out the beach at Emma Long Metropolitan Park. The park spans a full mile of the Lake Austin shoreline. Since the sandy beach was underwater, we grabbed a great spot on the shore, next to the volleyball pit, so that our sand toys could still get some use. The buddies had a great time searching for shells with their dad and digging in the sand with Aunt Kate and Uncle Wags. They splashed in the water some, but the lake was still a bit cool.

It was a quick visit, but definitely a fun one! The buddies and their Aunt Kate and Uncle Wags are clearly part of a mutual admiration club. The boys had such a great time with them. Tomorrow, we'll all return to normal life with refreshed spirits, slight sun-burns, and lots of great memories.

Check out the rest of this weekend's photos here.

Silly Mama Bird

What was she thinking building her nest at eye level of two wild boys??? Over the past few weeks we've enjoyed an up-close nature lesson that I fear will have a tragic end.

Luckily, Mama Bird doesn't seem too bothered by us. Her nest has been hit by a baseball twice and peered at countless times by two noisy boys shouting, "LOOK, A NEST!!!". When we first discovered her nest and five speckled eggs, I felt sure that she'd abandon them soon enough. But, each day, she endures our curiosity and returns to her post. Steve has even taken to feeding her, calling her "a part of our family". Soon enough, we'll have a few more "family members" to peer at.

So, what kind of bird is she? She's a little brown bird and her eggs are white with red speckles. Gramps, please consult your bird books and let us know.

Our 3 Year Stats and a Few Songs

The buddies visited with their nice pediatrician this morning for their 3 year well check. Their stats are:

Ace
height: 40"
weight: 36 lbs 8 oz

Ben
height: 38.5"
weight: 32 lbs 6 oz

Then, for a fun activity this afternoon, I shot video of each boy singing the ABC song. They LOVED watching themselves and each other on the computer screen. I bet we watched the videos a dozen times each. They were particularly entertained by Ace's dramatic ending. These two love slapstick comedy.

Cinco de Mayo

In celebration of Cinco de Mayo yesterday, the buddies and I invited our neighbors over for a "Sangria and Scooters" party. The kids brought their favorite modes of transportation while the moms (and a few dads) enjoyed a few glasses of my famous sangria.

Our motorcycles were a huge hit amongst the 3 year old crowd. The older kids decorated the street with chalk. Until the next rain, the road in front of our house will say, "No Sisters Alood" in more than one place. We hope it washes away before Steve's sister arrives for her much anticipated visit in just 3 days!

First Crawfish Boil

This evening, we attended a crawfish boil and scholarship benefit, thrown by our neighbors. It was a great way to introduce the buddies to a great tradition from our neighboring state. When we arrived, Ace and Ben were thrilled to see a giant bounce house at our neighborhood park. But, the highlight for Ben was the chance to play with live crawfish. He had a blast scooping them from their large bucket next to the boiler and transferring them to a nearby "crawfish racetrack". He played and played until it was time for the last few crawfish to make their way to the boiler.

When it was time to eat, he happily sat at our picnic table and munched on tails, saying, "I like crawfish!" Ace wasn't as big of a fan. He got pinched by one during playtime and then later declared them "too spicy" to eat. Our neighbors thought Ben made a great Cajun.

Scooping...

Admiring...

Munching...