Howdy everyone! While I realize that in my last post I promised another post by the holidays and technically it is after the holidays now, I would argue that since I am still on my holiday break, this constitutes meeting my deadline.
Yesterday I spent a couple of hours writing up a great summary of all that we have done since the close of summer but somehow the post did not get saved and it is now lost to the great depths of the interwebs. Hopefully you guys can and will understand my frustration and lack of desire to rewrite everything that I wrote yesterday. Therefore here is a much abbreviated version of the past couple of months followed by a bunch of pictures. My video issue hasn't been resolved yet but once I figure it out I will hopefully post a few of those in a separate post.
We concluded our summer of 2015 with our annual trip to Ocean City, MD with Julie's sister and family. Given that we were going to have 4 adults (one pregnant), 5 children age 4 or under, and 2 pug dogs in a 2 bedroom condo we actually considered renting a separate condo in the same complex to give everyone a little space. After talking it over with everyone we decided that the chaos was part of the fun and nixed the second condo. While it was a bit crazy I would say that overall it was a great experience.
The biggest improvement this year over the past couple of years was that
the kids actually spent about 2 hours a day on the beach. As we have
in past years we set up an inflatable pool and had plenty of shade
producing canopies. The hardest part was keeping the kids out of the
ocean because they basically just wanted to run in as soon as we hit the
beach. I did take turns taking them out into the waves on the days
that the ocean was fairly calm and they all loved it (ok Ryan was kind
of freaked out but Andrew and Nadia thought it was awesome). We also had a couple days with Julie's entire sibling clan as her brother, his wife, and their newborn son stayed at a nearby hotel during the week and Julie's younger sister also came up from NC.
We concluded the trip by heading to my mom's for our last hurrah of summer which the kids of course enjoyed as they have grown very fond of her pool and all the treats that they get at Grandma's house.
As previewed in the last post, all 3 kids started Bright Beginnings Preschool at the local elementary school this year. We have already seen a big change in Ryan's communication abilities and some minor improvement in the social skills of both boys. While we had hoped for faster development of the boys' social skills we are hoping that another semester of school will move them farther along the path of socializing with kids that they are not related to. Nadia of course got right back into the groove and has continued to amaze us with her knowledge and rapidly developing language skills. Julie has enjoyed the extra time that she now has each week but somehow managed to cram even more things into her schedule and remains as busy as ever.
For Halloween we went with a Wizard of Oz theme with Nadia sporting an awesome Dorothy costume made by Julie's mom and Ryan rocking a super freakin' awesome Tin Man costume that Daddy made courtesy of Julie's Pinterest addiction. Andrew got the shaft however and only had a generic zip up lion costume for his portrayal of the Cowardly Lion. The kids really got into trick or treating this year and unfortunately it was probably the last year that we will be able to steal candy from them because they now recognize different brand names of candy and remember how many of each they had in their bucket.
Unbelievably the triplets turned 4 this year and we celebrated with a low key party at our house. We had a couple of neighborhood and church friends over and we allowed the kids to each invite one friend from their preschool classes. Homemade games and decorate your own cupcakes were a big hit with the kids and I made a number 4 cake for the adults to eat. All in all it was great time. My parents also came down for the party which was nice because we weren't going to be seeing them at Thanksgiving.
Well that sums up the last quarter of 2015 minus the holidays. In order to get a post out to meet the ever increasing demand for more Waskey blog coverage I will be putting the holidays into a separate post that will be out by June 1st (just kidding....May 15th). Enjoy the pictures and sorry for the short write up!
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| To think that those chairs used to be occupied by adults playing games all day.... |
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| Who wants to watch Paw Patrol? |
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| "I think I'll take a selfie" |
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| A rare moment with all 3 together at the water park in Ocean City |
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| This was the best shot out of about 7 that we took...at some point they will actually all smile and look at the camera at the same time right? |
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| Who needs the pool at Grandma's house when we can drag this one to the beach, inflate it, carry 15 buckets of water up from the ocean to fill it, and then do it all again the next day? |
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| Ryan throws some gang signs |
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| "Kids, come gather 'round the electronic babysi...ehh...laptop so that we can catch a quick nap" |
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| Andrew is scared to death of vents in the pool but could care less about waves... |
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| Julie is smiling because she didn't have to carry the water up to fill the pool |
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| So apparently 3 1/2 is the age at which kids actually want to play on the beach for more than 10 minutes |
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| "Surely those numbers don't correspond to my birthday since I just graduated from high school a few weeks ago..." |
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| There's nothing better to occupy 5 preschoolers than a big pile of sand |
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| Somehow we got a picture of all 6 cousins with their eyes open so we'll call it a success |
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| "Just stick with me boys, this school thing is old news" |
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| Stylin' for the first day of school |
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| "OOOhhhh...I get to have my own backpack!" |
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| "Pre-school's got nothing on me!" |
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| GG couldn't believe that her little boys were all grown up so she had to come see for herself... |
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| That looks like the smile of a mom who now has an extra 20 hours a week to herself... |
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| ...yet somehow still needs a daily nap |
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| Daddy voted for the Avengers...clearly he lost |
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| "WE WANT CANDY!!" |
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| "Thank you Gma Smith for making my adorable Dorothy outfit!" |
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| Our annual trip to pick out our Christmas tree on the day after Halloween |
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| Alert the press!!! The Rapture has occurred!! |
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| As with all messy activities, you can guess which parent thought it up |
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| "Mommy, give me a hug!" |
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| "So the idea is to paint my body right?" |
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| Andrew tries out some of his best begging faces while the cake is being made |
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| "Seriously? The triplets are 4? We will feel like parents at some point right? Like, before they turn 18?" |
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| "Wow Daddy did a super awesome job on that #4 cake" |
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| The whole "decorate your own cupcake" thing went surprisingly well and was not nearly as messy as anticipated |
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| Sam won the prize for most beautifully decorated cupcake that was subsequently not eaten |
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| The boys basically just ate spoonfuls of chocolate sprinkles.. |
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| Nadia's first fishing lesson with Grandpa Waskey and in keeping with Gpa's fishing luck, she only caught blue fish even though it was red fish season |
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| Three generations of Waskey boys in one shot...I guess we don't need to take any more pictures |
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| Ryan "helps" Julie make cupcakes for the party |
