No you're not seeing things, those are the Carter Triplets!!! Our good friends/neighbors growing up from a few doors down have three baby boys keeping them all busy. Ryan Carter and his wife Kim (in the pink shirt) are the proud parents to Danny, Drew and Dylan who are almost 3 months old. Janet and I had Kim and her Mom, Pat, over for a pizza lunch date today and we had so much fun playing with the babies and enjoying the sunny day outside. The boys tried out the Pram and loved it! Heff was worried Cletus might get his or her feelings hurt that another baby got the first (and second and third!) ride in the pram, but I think Cletus was happy to share with his/her friends Danny, Drew & Dylan. :)
Dylan sleeping soundly...
Jan and Dan
Pat and the pram... and babies everywhere!
Mary and Kim feeding hungry babies
It's time to place your bets... when will the Birth Day be??
In keeping with family tradition (at least the tech-friendly version) here is a link to a Baby Pool Website to make your guesses...
Click here to vote for the Big Day!
Boy or Girl?
Birth Day?
Time?
Length?
Weight?
Hopefully we'll know in 8 weeks!
We were in San Diego Thursday-Sunday for a long weekend of relaxing and to celebrate Ronny & Michele's wedding. It was also our one year anniversary on Sunday so we had a lot to celebrate! The wedding was lots of fun, my brother James was a groomsman and my parents were invited as well so we all stayed at the US Grant downtown San Diego. We caught up with Beth and Jill and the Huck Family, Joanie, Bill and Ashley on Thursday night, then wedding festivities and hanging out the rest of the weekend.
Jan, Mare, Ashley and Joanie watching the Padre's game from an outdoor bar nearby
Mare and heff enjoying the view!
The "kids" at dinner (Top: Ashley, Jill, Em and James. Below: Beth, Mare and Heff) at Red Pearl in downtown San Diego. A yummy dinner and great to see old friends!
Late night drinks back at the hotel bar (Jan hung out with James and the crowd until 2am! We were fast asleep by then:)
John, Mare and Heff at the wedding chapel at USD
Emily and Jan
James walking down the isle...
The Bride!
AND Heff's new BFF.... MC Hammer!
John loves the late-night Sliders
Party girls
The Johnets
John and Heff
Jan and Mare
Ouch, chocolate fondue on Em's dress... not happy!
Wardrobe change for Em
Looks like fun... be careful Baby Ann!
Can you guess which one Heff picked out for his truck? Who would have guessed Britax has a "Mossy Oak" Limited Edition :) AND my brother Jerry got a great job offer from a new company and is making the move in August to Slide.com, a really cool website where you can create slideshows and add fun effects to your pictures for blogs. Congrats Jer! (I was playing around with a few too many side effects here...)
Heff and I spent most of the weekend building a new fence in our front yard. We have it almost finished, we just have to build a front and side gate and paint it all white. The fence will hopfully keep the dogs in so we can leave the front door open and eventually create more of a front yard for Baby Heff! We had fun designing and building the fence together, of course I didn't like any of the pre-cut pickets at the lumber yard so we (um, ok mostly my husband) had to cut each of the 103 pickets for the fence... in addition to digging fence posts and all the other fun parts involved in building a fence :) It was a great opportunity to catch up with ALL the nighbors who stopped by to check out the progress and visit and my parents came by too, Jan to lend her eye for design and John brought us lunch both days. We finished cleaning up tonight, Sunday, and had a fun dinner at the Johnet's with James and Em, Jer and Allison and my parents. We are both tired out but love our new improved front yard!
So Sage and Ollie have actually been getting a little better, we were trying to just live with their obnoxious habits (shedding, barking, chewing feet, smelling, etc) especially since we thought Sage had a terminal diagnosis... then we took him to the Vet to remove this gross bump on his back leg when we couldn't look at it anymore and $780 later learned he has a clean bill of health! So we have "Soggie Doggie" mobile grooming coming every other week to keep them clean and are trying to change their awful habits before the baby comes. The picture above is Sage looking not too pleased with his turquoise bandana after his grooming.
And just when we think they are being good... Sage can get into a garbage can with more agility than a bear in Yellowstone. This is what we come home to!
And poor Heff can't even watch his favorite hunting shows with out Ollie whining and barking at the TV... does he really think he can get those deer?! (No pictures of Ollie, he is afraid of the camera for some odd reason).
Heff and I had another baby preparation class tonight... he is a very good sport to get dragged to all these childbirth and baby prep classes with me! But we will only do this once in our life and we're having fun with it. Tonight's class was at Day One in Palo Alto, a place for "new and expectant parents," and showed us how to hold, swaddle, diaper, dress, clean, bathe, soothe and generally care for a newborn baby. We got to practice with creepy looking baby dolls like this one...
but Heff being the good big brother that he is was an expert at all of it and kept reminding me I wasn't holding the babies head well enough. (I promise I'll be better with the REAL THING Heff!) When we had to practice with the diapers, most dads were trying to figure out which end was up and Heff announced to the class that "you just put the Pooh in front" which stopped most people in their tracks until they realized the practice diapers had Winnie-the-Pooh characters on them.
One of the best parts of the class is observing the other pregnant couples, there are some very "different" people in this world! We always get in the car after these classes just busting at the seams with "OMG, did you see/hear that lady's..." :) It keeps us entertained.
No more classes until next week!
We had our 30 week doctor's appointment this morning and everything seems to be right on track. We heard the heartbeat loud and strong and talked with our doctor for awhile about what we should be doing to prepare for the birth of Baby Heff... now that it is in sight! We start going to the doctor every two weeks now (instead of every four weeks) and we have a Newborn Care class Wednesday night at Day One in Palo Alto. 10 weeks to go!
A few more pictures from our visit to Salt Lake City...
Heff and Kate with a "thumbs down" after the pool was cleared for an "accident"!
Ellie in her swim lesson! (which was moved to the indoor pool after the incident)
Maureen's very impressive garden
Heff reading the last book to Kate before we left for home
Heff and I have landed in Salt Lake City at the Matthew's after four days in Montana and a night camping in Yellowstone Park. Yes, I actually camped for a night, but only after we purchased an entire car load of camp gear in Montana... I survived and Heff gave me an "A+" first time camping award.
We are having so much fun here in Utah with our favorite neices, Ellie and Kate... and with their mom and dad too! We managed to catch Doug on a night home which is rare since he's a medical resident and on a trauma rotation at the moment. We all had a great BBQ dinner outside in their fun backyard and beautiful garden Thursday evening followed by some fireworks with neighbors in the front yard. Friday we spent the day at a really neat, brand new Children's museum by their house, then at Ellie's swim lessons and sat in the kiddie pool with Kate (it was 102 degrees here!)
A few pictures from the trip so far...
Brian and Doug with the girls on the front steps of their adorable house... note Ellie's new "running shoes" and socks, all she needs to show us how fast she can run!
Ellie with a smoke bomb on the back of her fancy bike!
Kate trying to outride the blue smoke!
Mary and the girls at Liberty Park a few blocks from their house
Look at the Utah Sunset over Kate and Heff!
Kate in the chicken coup... with the chickens Henrietta, Madame LuLu, Shelly, Harriet etc :)
Ellie collecting the eggs for the morning
The girls in their new outfits
Maureen, Heff and the girls after a trip to the Utah Discovery Children's Museum and lunch at CPK
Just got some pictures back from our friends wedding in the Bahamas on 5-6-7 (above, Heff and I at their ceremony)... My belly has sure grown in two months time!! Today, I am sporting the new "Tank-ini" my sister bought me for the pool, we're almost at 7 months and I think I just hit the point where a bikini in public is a little too painful :)
Heff and I are in Bozeman, Montana for most of the week with some friends. We flew into Salt Lake City on Saturday and rented a car to make the drive up to Montana (since we're hanging out with Brian's sister Maureen, Doug and our nieces Ellie and Kate at the end of the week in Salt Lake!) So we are enjoying the great weather and open air up here in Montana. Heff is fishing today with the guys, Brendon and Mike... they went out on the river with a fishing guide so hopefully it will be a great day of fly fishing for them. I'll be at the pool with the girls and the kids :) Pictures later!
Life with our Four Marys! Raising Free Range Kids in Northern CA.
