Getting Settled in Our New Place

Well, we have been living here on the East side of Mesa now for 3 weeks. The only boxes we have left now to empty are videos that are waiting for a shelf to be built.

Shelley's brother-in-law, Rick spent much of the past week getting our family room floor re-done in time for our furniture to be delivered last Thursday. The floor looks great along with the furniture.



Rick also got our Microwave put in this past week:



All the other rooms are starting to look normal without stacked boxes everywhere:












Now I don't know if you have noticed, and we didn't do this on purpose, but there is something in common in each one of the above pictures, other than the room having walls or a floor. Can you figure it out. You may have to look at a more enlarge picture to see it in some of them.

If you don't want to guess, or you have given up, scroll down a little, and we'll reveal what is in common.

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Each room has at least 1 toy in it. Our little boy, Luke really likes to migrate his toys to different rooms.

It might be hard to see the ones in the family room. There are actually 2 of them. The picture below has them circled.

Ahhhhh, Elbow Room

Well, we are now in our new place. We've lived here for a week now. We've had some computer issues going on, so we haven't had a chance to update the blog. Our computers are up now, and we can now give everyone an update.

Anyway, we now feel like we have some room.




Here are some pictures inside the house. Robert took them before we got all of our stuff in.











Of course, we won't be feeling the extra elbow room for long. By the time we get settled into this new place, we be needing a place for 3 more. At least we now have a place for them.

We now live in the same ward as Shelley's sister, Ellen. Ellen has 3 girls, and are very excited for us to be this close. They love having Luke around and have promised to help us with the triplets when they arrive.

Here is a picture of Ellen's girls with Luke about a year ago:

Boy Girl Boy

Well, we are keeping to our promise. We promised that we would keep everyone in the know when we find out the sexes of our three little ones.

We went in for our ultrasound today and found out the following:

Baby A: Boy
Baby B: Girl
Baby C: Boy

Here are some pictures of the ultrasounds.




This is a profile of all three babies.




This is Baby A.




This is Baby B.




And this is Baby C.


They are all very healthy with very strong heart beats. Shelley will be seeing the Dr. again in 2 weeks.


We have other news to give to everyone. We have closed on a new house. (Well, new to us.) We will be moving farther North-East in Mesa, AZ. It is a 4-bedroom home and should accommodate our growing family quite nicely.



The previous owner are renting from us for a couple of weeks, then we will clean it and get it ready for us to move into. Our major moving in date is planned for Saturday, Sept. 18.

Still Expecting Triplets

It's been a month and a half now since we have updated our blog. We've been so busy that we never take time to do some updating, but we have some time now, so we'll catch everyone up.

Shelley is now in her 14th week of pregnancy. Our last ultrasound shows that everyone is healthy.



They told her that we should find out the sexes of all three on August 25. We'll be sure to let everyone know when we find out.

The past month and a half has been filled with many different items. We made an offer on two different houses. The first one didn't work out because we were second in line and the first in line decided to stick with it. We are still waiting to hear from the second house that we made a bid on. It is a short sale, so the bank has to approve it, but our Realtor says there should be no problem and they are just backed up in accepting offers. We don't have anyone in front of us, so we should be able to start going through the closing process whenever the bank sends their approval.

Another adventure we went through since our last post was swimming lessons for Luke. Shelley signed him up for 2 classes of the same age so that he could learn it well. Shelley took him to the first class which was in the morning and Robert took him to the second class which was in the evening. Each class had 8 sessions over 2 weeks. Luke enjoyed the evening classes better; probably because the morning class was during his nap time.






On the same day as Luke's first day going to swimming lessons with daddy, we finally found a van that fits all of our needs. It's a Kia Sadona. It has 2 rows of bucket seats and a bench seat in the back, and it has rear A/C. This car should stay with us for a while.








Today, Robert's Mother, Anita, along with Robert's sister, Pauline and her husband, Curtis and daughter, Mariah will be coming down to visit for a week. This is a really crappy time of year to be coming down, but they're coming to stay with my other sister, Stephanie's children while she and her husband take a trip to Hawaii. Hopefully we'll be able to have some time this week to visit with them.

Double the family; Double the fun.

Well, we just went to our fertility Dr. today to have an ultrasound taken. We're still in a little shock right now. They were able to count 3 separate heartbeats. So that means that we are expecting TRIPLETS!!! WOW!!!

If you think we may be joking, here is a picture that shows a count of each baby.




We made plans to look for another car today also. We knew we needed a car, but didn't know whether we could get by with another SUV or we needed a mini-van. Well, I guess the mini-van won out. We couldn't find one that fit our needs yet, so our salesman will start looking around for us. We were looking at an Uplander that they have available. The problem is that is doesn't have A/C in the rear, which is a really crazy design for Arizona. We want to make sure it stays cool for our children back there. Our salesman knows what we want, so we have confidence he will find something good for us.

Extra Saturday

A lot of people go on vacation during Memorial Day Weekend. In fact the last couple of years, we have gone up to Utah to visit Robert's family. Well, this year, since we went up to Utah in March for Spring Break, we didn't make any vacation plans for Memorial Day Weekend.

So, since we are not out of town and Robert had Memorial Day off from work, we have treated today as an extra Saturday. Robert woke up really early (1 Snooze after 5 AM to be exact) to work on the yard. If you are thinking that it is still dark at 5 AM, remember that Arizona doesn't have Daylight Saving Time, so the sun comes up earlier here. Also, since it is almost June, it gets pretty hot here, so Robert needed an early start.

When we first moved here, the previous owners had a lot of cactus plants on the East and South sides of the townhouse. We were OK with leaving the cactus here because it was low maintenance and we didn't have any children. Below is the East side of our house with the cactus:



Well now we have a child that is walking like crazy. We have been fortunate that Luke has never gotten into the cactus, but realize that he could very well eventually. So we decided to get it removed.

We had to get permission from our HOA to have it removed. It took them a month and a half to respond, but they did last week, so today happened to be a perfect time to get it complete.

As mentioned above, Robert got up at 5 AM (OK, he did hit the snooze button once) and started. Our brother-in-law, Jonathan, came over at 6 to help. We borrowed tools from Shelley's dad and brother and Jon brought over a couple of tool. They removed all the cactus on the East side, but left the cactus on the South side. They also removed all of the bark that we had put out earlier. They were done by just after 8 o'clock. They were feeling very prickly by the time they were done, but it was satisfying to see the progress. Here is how the front yard looks now:

Well, Luke must love stew

We got a picture of Luke that we just had to share. Shelley had school late today, so she didn't have time to fix dinner. She found a can of stew in the pantry that she left for Robert & Luke. Robert is just above the maturity level of keeping his face clean while he eats, but Luke hasn't made it there yet. Robert gave him some stew in a bowl with a spoon. Luke tried the spoon at first, but decided that was too slow, so he ditched the spoon. His hands were much faster, and he shoveled it in:

From Luke