Visiting Is Only For The Brave

No long post tonight, just wanted to share some memories of recent visitors.  It takes a lot of courage to come in to a house full of triplets, but for the few that do, the memories are oh so rewarding, with the biggest reward being that you'll probably end up on this blog :)

Felicia (left), our friend Melissa's daughter, is heading back to school, but not before having helped us out for almost the entire summer!  Corrine, her friend, is stepping up to help.



My mom (aka "nana"), came to see us when Meg was away for the weekend.  She lives in Oregon, so every minute with the girls is special.





A few weeks earlier, my dad was in town.  He's not much of "facetimer" or "skyper," so he thoroughly enjoyed spending time with his granddaughters.



Grandpa and Sophie, deep in conversation


"Who is this guy?"


"Oh wait, it's grandpa.  Life is good."


Sophie, figuring out how to get in to the bins.  She does this regularly now, but this was a couple of months ago.










Our friend, Kristi, stopped by for a few days.  She left her husband and her own girls back in VA to come meet our little ladies.

Typically, I only show the "best" images when I post, which usually come as the result of whittling down a large amount of photos to just a few.  Every once in a while, the discards are just as good as the winners and it's worth showing how many "bad" images you have to take sometimes to get one "good" one.















Let's go way back to last summer.  When Meg wrapped up school and moved to Illinois, we took a "Marvelous Multiples" class at the hospital to help prepare for our girls.  While taking the class, we met Rachael and her husband, Gib.  A few weeks after our girls were born, we ran in to them in the NICU, as they gave birth to their two girls, Brynn and Anya.  Well, after waiting out RSV season, another surgery, and just overall busyness, Rachael brought her girls over for a playdate.

Brynn was loving the camera.  I think she would've eaten it if I would have let her.




Brynn and Sophie


Maddy, Brynn, Izzy, and Sophie


After Anya woke up from her catnap, we took all of the girls for a walk.

Anya and Brynn


That's a lot of ladies!

When The Flies Begin To Circle

This post is a little late but, that's how it goes in this family. Last weekend, Meg and I decided to get away for a Saturday night. Meg had purchased a hot air balloon ride on LivingSocial for my birthday present. I'm not going to lie, I went back and forth several times about actually going up as I couldn't shake this concern about something happening to Meg and me. I've never looked up statistics on fatal accidents due to hot air balloons (and probably never will), but I was worried about something happening to us and leaving the girls without either parent. I can, literally, see the eyes rolling in everyone's head right now.



Well, I got over it and we decided to go. After all, it was our first night away from the girls, together, since they were all in the NICU. Meg booked a room on the water in Lake Geneva, WI. She had planned it out so that Melissa and Felicia would come over on Saturday morning and watch the girls through Sunday afternoon. We wanted to make sure everything around the house was as ready to go as possible so that they could "relax" and just watch the girls...and we thought it was.

Melissa and Felicia arrived and we gave our mandatory status update to anyone that comes over to watch the girls. I was sitting on the floor and had noticed a fly circling around the girls, but didn't think too much of it, except to notice that it was in the house. We soon discovered that its intentions were more purposeful.

We were also feeling a little bit guilty because Maddy and Sophie had picked up colds over the previous week. Fortunately, it skipped right over Izzy, but we ended up needing to give Sophie neb treatments and Maddy spent the better part of the week blowing spit and snot bubbles from what was dripping down in to her mouth. We gave Melissa an opportunity to back out, but she gave us the typical, "I'm a NICU nurse line," and told us to get going.





We began making the good-bye rounds, kissing and squeezing all of the girls. Meg then moved on to Maddy, who had a magnificent surprise waiting for whichever parent got to her first. Words can't begin to describe what she had in store, so I won't even try, except to say that, at that moment, the fly being in the room made perfect sense.



After we cleaned her up, we hopped in the car. No more than 30 seconds passed by when Meg received a phone call from the balloon company, letting us know that they were canceling the ride due to a storm front in the area. That wasn't going to stop us. We had sitters for the girls, a non-refundable room on the lake, and 24 hours of freedom staring us in the face.

We spent the afternoon golfing then went out for dinner at the Baker House. This place was phenomenal. It was built in 1885 as a family home. It's a 17,000 square foot Queen Anne mansion that is now both a restaurant and a hotel. It's right on the water with a great view. There's too much history for me to describe, but they have all of these hats that everyone gets to choose from when walking through the door (they promised they cleaned them multiple times per day). At sunset, a gentlemen with a top hat stands at the top of the stairs to the yard, a bell is rung, they provide everyone with champagne, and then we all toasted to the beautiful sunset.  We missed the girls tremendously, but had an amazing time.  When will we get away again, just the two of us?  Probably next year but, it's great to have something to look forward to!

Thanks Melissa and Felicia!