Instantly Outnumbered: Good News, Bad News

Howdy folks! As always I've missed my self-imposed deadline for the next blog post but the good news is that I finally got the video converter working so there are videos this time! When we left off the last time the triplets had just celebrated their 4th birthday and now we are celebrating the end of school and start of summer. I guess "time flies" wouldn't be a cliche if it wasn't true.

The week following the trips b'day, we had the Smith clan here for Thanksgiving. I got "slightly" ambitious with the menu and we had a ton of leftovers but in the end everything turned out great. I'm not sure why I have the same issue every year with getting the turkey thawed out in time but hopefully this year I'll start earlier so as not to stress myself out with the prospect of an unthawed bird. The entire holiday season was a bit of a blur with the usual craziness around Christmas. Between shopping, decorating, wrapping, baking, church, caramel popcorn and visiting family we somehow found time to enjoy the season and the increasing awareness that the kids have of everything going on. We started a couple of new traditions this year (and reignited a few from our childhoods) which was a lot of fun. We also made the usual trip to Grandma Waskey's house to celebrate with my side of the family.

We ended up with a couple of snow storms this year which the kids really enjoyed. After one of the bigger snowfalls we took the kids sledding at the local school and they amazed us with their fearlessness on the hills. There were also a few snowmen made and Ryan learned how to make snow angels.

Easter was a lot of fun this year as it was the first time that the kids really remembered a holiday from last year so they couldn't wait for the egg hunt. We had Grandma Smith and Aunt Annie down around that time and they helped with dying eggs and some small egg hunts. We also repeated our large outdoor egg hunt at our house with some of the neighbors which was a bit hit once again. The Easter Bunny also brought baskets for the kids this year which was fun to watch.

We have also had the chance to do a little traveling since the last post. First Julie made a return trip to Florida with a couple of her girlfriends from Boston to enjoy a long weekend without kids. Thankfully this year went MUCH better than her trip a couple of years ago when Grandma Waskey and I spent four days with three sick kids while Julie chased alligators around on a golf cart and ate dinners at a country club. Shortly after that boondoggle, Julie went to Boston to visit her older sister Karin who had recently had child number three (prompting Julie to start considering another child).

In May we took the kids to Great Wolf Lodge which is a hotel with a giant indoor water park. It was the first time that we had really been to a hotel with the kids since all of our previous trips have been to see family or stay at the condo in Ocean City, MD. We realized a little too late that we set the bar kind of high because now the kids assume that every hotel has an indoor water park. The kids had a blast at the hotel and amazed us by going on some of the bigger water slides that we never thought they'd ride. For the entire week afterwards we had to endure the boys asking us how long until we could go back to the water park.

Julie and I both got to go away recently for our anniversary thanks to a lot of help from the Waskey grandparents, Aunt Amy and Uncle Mike, Mr. Alvin and others. This year we went to Chincoteague Island for a couple nights and it was awesome. Our anniversary trip was also the first trip of the summer to Grandma Waskey's house. The kids were super excited since they hadn't been since Christmas and also because of the pool. They lived up to their reputation as super swimmers and spent several hours in the pool each day.

Another fun thing that we experienced in the past couple of months was having some missionaries come stay with us for a week. We met one of them, Veronica, on our first trip to Russia many years ago. She is now married and working with Cru Moldova. We hosted her and a friend before the kids were born and we were thankful for the opportunity to host her again. This time around we had Veronica and her husband Bien and another Cru worker named Stella. It was a great experience to have people from another culture stay in our house and interact with the kids. We hope that we'll have the chance to do more things like that in the future.

The boys finished their first year of school and Nadia her second this past week. While all three still have areas that need some work, we definitely saw progress in each our the kids from the fall until now. Nadia is saying a lot more words and has many more stored in her brain that she can't quite get out yet. She has also become our singing queen and has memorized numerous songs from TV shows, CD's and church. She continues to receive speech and occupational therapy and will be attending a social skills playgroup this summer with the boys to work on her interactions with other kids. Nadia continues to amaze us with her progress and she always knows how to bring a smile to my face after a long day.

Ryan saw some progress with his speech this year (primarily answering questions and using sentences) but has regressed a little bit of late when it comes to speaking in sentences. We are really working with him on his habit of just saying one word when we wants something (i.e."drink") instead of using a full sentence (i.e. "can i have a drink please"). Of course what he lacks in sentence building he makes up for with his reading, writing and math skills. During the school year we had both boys evaluated for autism and they both tested on the spectrum. This was not entirely a surprise to us because of their fascination with numbers and poor social interaction skills. Basically all it means at this point is that they qualify for some extra services through the school and then we'll have to revisit everything after this upcoming school year when they will be getting ready to start kindergarten.

Andrew has become our chatterbox out of the three kids and he surprises us with some of the stuff that comes out of his mouth. Andrew did well in school this year but he continues to struggle with peer interactions. Hopefully the special play group that they will be attending this year will help in that area. The boys also had some minor followup surgery earlier this year which went very smoothly and basically just guaranteed that our streak of consecutive years hitting our out of pocket health insurance maximum will not be broken in 2016!

Well that pretty much sums up the major highlights of the past seven months so now on with the real reason you came here, the pictures and videos!

It only took 30 minutes to produce this sheet of cutouts with Andrew's "help"

"How much longer 'til these things are ready to eat?!"

Ryan's color schemes were a bit off but he enjoyed doing the sprinkles

NRA showcase one of our newest Christmas traditions...special pajamas on Christmas Eve

Nadia got one of her favorite videos for Christmas which meant that we heard the phrase "watch video" about a thousand times that day

Our tree that the kids helped pick out earlier in the fall...hopefully next year they will be able to participate more in the decorating part

The 2015 Lego Christmas Village - the first buildings were purchased while in the hospital after the trips were born and it has grown since then

Nadia models this winter's most fashionable outfit while at Grandma's

Our first attempt at gingerbread houses was......interesting

Nadia is our water child, Ryan is our sports child, and Andrew is definitely our snow child

Nadia once again tries to comprehend why she should want to go out into the snow when there is a warm house to play in

Aunt Amy and Andrew enjoy the new lawsuit...err trampoline that Grandma Waskey got the kids for Christmas

Although Grandpa's stories were riveting, Ryan couldn't stop himself from trying to discreetly check his text messages

What better toy could you get someone who is obsessive compulsive about patterns and counting

What's harder than getting three four year olds to smile at the same time for a picture? Trying to get three four year olds and their year old cousin to all smile in the same picture

Ryan wonders what else could be dyed in his cups besides eggs...

How come whenever Grandma Smith visits the kids always end up in some kind of costume?

Doctor: "No physical activity for 4 days." Andrew: "No deal. How about 4 hours?"

"Where am I and why do I have a popsicle?"

A cancelled camping trip turned into the first backyard camp-out for the boys

"Do the blog readers want a marshmallow?"

While Ryan enjoyed eating roasted marshmallows, his definition of "roasted" was slightly different from ours

The boys showed a lot of interest in our friend Bien's game once counting became involved

Showing off their strawberry picking efforts seemed like the best opportunity to actually get the triplets to sit in the chairs that Mommy and Daddy spent many hours painting (and have so far just sat unused on the front porch)