Where's The Luke?!

So as you can see, the kids are getting around very well and are out of their minds sometimes! They have figured out that the laundry basket is a great toy, especially when you flip it over. And, maybe most importantly, they have discovered how much fun the dog dishes are (okay, maybe not that fun for us!).

All three are getting everywhere, especially Jackson and Lucas. We are figuring out pretty quickly that no place is uninteresting and no cord untouchable. And when we turn our heads for just a sec, mostly to rescue one child, another has dashed off to do who knows what!

Case in point: Chloe had a, uh-hem, accident the other day and we were taking care of her. Kristen took her upstairs and I helped with something just to the edge of the stairs. As I turned back, to see the boys (left in the middle of the living room) I see 2 sets of mini legs and feet disappear into the laundry room! I sprinted over but was a hair too late: Lucas was diving into the dogs water bowl as Jackson was rolling around with the empty food bowl! Needless to say, on a night when that was not supposed to be a bath night, there were free baths for all my friends!

The babies are doing amazing. It astounds me how much they change from day to day and week to week. We are pretty lucky to have had these three come into our lives.

9 Months!

The babies are now 9 months and doing great. We are starting to get peeks at what life is going to be like VERY shortly. The babies are starting to move around a lot. Chloe still likes to stay fairly stationary, but we are working on her with that. Knowing how quickly she has picked up everything else, we hope she picks up what we are trying to teach her here. Who knows, though, Chloe could be one to not crawl and just go to walking.

The boys, though, are crazy! You leave them one place and turn around for a second, they are in a different spot. They haven't left any rooms yet, tumbled down any stairs or anything, but we see where that is about to come into play. While it is a little crazy to think about with the three, it is also a riot to think about. I mean, three little mini human beings going around cracking up and getting into whatever?! That just makes me laugh....very hard!

Speaking of cracking up, they do a lot of that now with each other. They are playing a lot now with each other. Jackson gets all of them going by just making eye contact and laughing his great laugh. That gets the others going and then the whole house is laughing. Nothing like a house full of babies laughing.

So about 2 weeks ago, we celebrated the one year anniversary that Kristen went into the hospital for the rest of her pregnancy (not the kind of anniversary that is celebrated with a huge party!). Very crazy to think about that. I mean, she went in there at only 20 weeks along, and was in there for around 15 weeks. Unreal! I though deployment was a challenge, but I won't be complaining about that any time soon. It is crazy to think about how that could have gone. The babies had to make it to 24 weeks to even be viable. They had to make it to 28 weeks to have a 90% chance of having nothing majorly wrong with them. And they made it to 35 weeks! And the best part about it? We had NOTHING to do with it! We believe all of it was do to the power of God and prayer. We learned that not only were people praying all over the country, but all over the world. And God heard and answered the prayers!

Does that mean that our faith would have been pointless if they hadn't made it? Absolutely not. As the three dudes it the fire pit (Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego) said, "Our God can save THEM, our God will save THEM, but even if he doesn't, he's still God." So true even today.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone. I hope you all have enjoyed your holidays and rung in the new year in style last night. Us? We ate some Chinese and watched Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and, ironically, fell asleep. We were and are still exhausted from our whirlwind trip to Atlanta with the crew for Christmas and got back here on Thursday afternoon.

Overall, the trip was a huge success, including the flights. We were actually able to make it work pretty well, thanks in no small part to having Kristen's mom Linda with us to take care of one of the babies. I meant to take pictures of the whole plane ride, but as you can imagine, I had my hands full. Some of the highlights of the trip (goods and bads):

-We found out it was a good idea to actually arrive 2.5 hours early to due unexpected diaper blowouts.
-TSA......wasn't too bad. A bit slow in Seattle but overall very helpful for us (probably because the boys and I showed up in just diapers and skivvies, respectively).
-The trio are pretty good sports about everything. Be it getting up way early to staying in strange places, they do pretty well.
-Kristen was able to sit next to a guy who looked like my brother circa 2006 (shaggy hair and beard) on the plane ride out. Chloe had the guy freaked out; he didn't know what to make of her. At one point, she screamed (usual, not mad, just Chloe) and the guy, who had just dozed off, almost hit his head on the overhead due to jumping out of his skin. Needless to say, he was pretty happy to get off the plane.
-On the first plane ride, we sat down and a guy immediately dinged one of the flight attendants and wanted a new seat. "There are just so many babies around here." He then looked back at me and said, "No offense, they look like great kids." I said, "Uh, huh." He then looks at all three and says, "So you have twins, eh?" I look at all three, look at him and say, "Yep, all three are twins!" He leaves.
-The flight attendants on both flights had a blast with all three and were a huge help. They wanted to hold all of them, which was cool. I think Jackson (flight time MVP) came away with a few phone numbers.
-I got to deal with many diaper blow outs on the planes. No fun! Lucas successfully peed on a wall in the bathroom (true) and Jackson kicked his dirty diaper all over the floor (true). Don't worry, I cleaned up everything with soap and water, boxing the little human beings onto the changing table with my butt. Oh, and you can not get poop out of clothes with baby wipes and hand sanitizer. Found that out, much to Kristen's discontent!

Again, overall, it was a great trip. Saw a lot of family who hadn't met the three and also a lot of friends who hadn't. Kristen's family hosted an open house for many friends who came over. Very cool to see a lot of people who have been praying for us for a year now for these three.

Hopefully we can get some rest and get back to normal around here. Looks like an excited year is ahead for us. Hope it is for you too! And if you want to see more pictures, I'll upload a few more to my FB account.