Here We Go!

Today, my baby turned 13.

We officially have a teenager living in our house. I know this will sound cliché, and everyone says it… but seriously, where has the time gone!?!? It seems like just yesterday that Scott and I were sitting in Greenwood Park dreaming about what our kids would look like. Or chatting in the Scarborough Town Centre food court about who’s eyes she would have. My only request was that she DIDN’T get Scott’s toes. Sorry Keona…

I sat at the kitchen table tonight with Keona, my mom, and my little brother. We talked and laughed about all sorts of things. Somehow we got on the topic of how a little over a year ago, Keona went through a very moody phase. I was constantly telling her to “fix her face” and “cheer up!”

She said, “Oh yeah, that was annoying!”

I told her, “Your face was annoying!”

We both had a good laugh over that memory. I am ever so thankful that she passed through the I-just-want-to-be-by-myself-black-is-my-favourite-colour-leave-me-alone phase! Though her loud and hyper giddiness can be overwhelming and slightly irritating at times – I would gladly take it over mood swings any day!

Summer 2009

Since the day that we brought the triplets home from the hospital, she has been my little (now big) helper. Even with the mood swings here and there… :)

I think about my relationship with my mom, and how she will just drop by with a tea sometimes and we can sit and chat for hours… I look forward to having that relationship with my girls. I got to take Keona out shopping today. She bought jewellery, clothes (pinks and purples –not black!), and books. I do cherish my time alone with each of my kids – but I’m beginning to realize how fleeting it is. We only have four more years before she heads off to college or university. Four years…

Scott took her out for a lunch date and this is how he replied to my phone call… :P

My mom took her out shopping where she got more clothes, shoes, jewellery, lip gloss, perfume, and of course – more books! All of the typical teenage girly stuff. I am so proud of Keona already. I am glad that she is confident enough to stand up for herself, and others, when she feels someone is being wronged. Even if it means saving some frogs from boys who were killing them for fun, and then having to run to her Uncle Robbie when said boy threatens to punch her for releasing the frogs. (You go girl!) I have seen her mature a lot in the past year and a half. I am excited to watch her grow. Since she was born, we have been doing our very best to prepare her to leave. I’m continually challenged and encouraged by her heart for God, and above all else, I can’t wait to see where He leads her. I am so thankful that He chose me to be her Mom.

People always told us, “Just wait until you have your own!”

Then it was, “Well, just wait until you have more than one!”

Next came, “Just wait until you have a boy!”

And now we hear, “Just wait until you have teenagers!”

Well… here we go!

Memory 133,340–The Newspaper

When Jaclyn told me that Durham Regional News had contacted her about featuring us in an article, I wasn’t surprised. After all, she is quite interesting. I wasn’t surprised that they wanted to see the freak show triplets. I can sit and watch them go for hours. I wasn’t surprised that they wanted to feature model Ella, or Supermodel Keona. I guess even the dog is pretty interesting. But when I found out I was going to get to be in the newspaper, I was a little shocked. I even got to have my picture in there! It’s great being the fifth wheel around here.

Jaclyn: We don’t get the Whitby newspaper delivered. So the day that we knew the article was going to be in it, we tracked down some kids with a wagon delivering newspapers. I offered to buy one from them and they said I could just take it. I pulled the elastic off, saw the front page, and folded the newspaper over again right away! Scott asked what was wrong and I told him we were on the front page. At this point, he laughed at me and asked to see it. We figured it was going to be some little article in the back of the newspaper – definitely not front page.

The article was put together by Al Rivett, and was a tremendous encouragement to our family that we are on the right track. Al kept everything in such a positive light. He was great to work with too. The kids were comfortable answering his questions, and Ella even drew him a picture while we talked.

Prayer’s quote made the article! All of the kids’ quotes were in the online article which can be found here.

We heard a great deal of positive feedback from the article, and so far, no negative feedback. We have had a few encouraging things come of it. My wife has found some other home schooling families with lots of kids here in Brooklin. The kids are pretty excited about that prospect. The triplets had a cashier recognize them at the grocery store. And then this past week a restaurant here in Brooklin contacted us to offer us a free meal with the family… but not the dog. 

My only other experience of Shoeless Joe’s was not … was not a family restaurant that we would normally go to. This, however, worked out to be quite a blessing. When I spoke to the gentlemen on the phone I asked him if we could come in “pre-dinner rush”. He was rather pleased with the notion, and now we understand why. The place was empty. An hour later, when we left, it was packed. But we had this restaurant all to ourselves, which allowed for quite a nice atmosphere.

My wife talked me into getting an appetizer that we could all share. I didn't want to share with the kids. I wanted Caesar salad. But I’m glad I went with her idea because we discovered some kind of chili nacho amazingness. The best part about it was the random jalapeno peppers all over it. My big brother instincts kicked in and I began trying to find a sucker.

“Elijah, I will pay you a dollar to eat this.” 

The kid needs money. I know he’s cheap fun, but he looks at it, looks at my wife’s equally evil smirk, and says, “Five.” 

What?!?!? 

Well… I wasn’t paying for dinner anyways so I agreed and we began recording. It wasn't that good… other than his squealing like a little girl. Then Lily thought that her little piece of jalapeno pepper was a regular green vegetable, and she popped it in her mouth. Oopsy. She screamed like it was boiling water… Then we noticed the guilty look on Elijah’s face. “Did you feed her that???” Yes... yes he did. We could tell by the chuckle. Thankfully after half a liter of apple juice she calmed down and went back to stealing her mother’s food.

Ella, on the other hand, went for it for a dollar. We definitely got our money’s worth with her. 

Here’s the evidence…

She started off by her patented “Momma..” when she realized it was going to hurt. Then she CHEATED! She popped an ice cube in her mouth when she was halfway done chewing the pepper! That is both genius and cheating. I still think it was worth the dollar though.

We took our time eating, talking about the golf that was on TV, and watching Lily steal all… not some… all of Jaclyn’s broccoli, cauliflower, beans, and red pepper. Jed zoned out as he downed his food like a machine; slowly savouring every little nibble.

 

Who cares about chicken fingers and french fries when there’s freshly steamed broccoli?!?

Then the desserts began to come. Lily was handed Jell-O. We don’t do Jell-O. She has never seen it before. When she got it in her mouth she just let it fall out to the ground. I think she didn’t know it was food. Actually, I don’t know that it is food either. But none the less, after 15 minutes of licking it, she finally 

decided to swallow. She still didn’t really eat all that much.

Keona had to order cheesecake. The other kids were delivered a few different things to try. The big winner was the giants homemade chocolate chip cookie with ice cream.

It was a good time. We are thankful for the Lord giving us so many opportunities to enjoy being family, and making memories together. We are also very thankful that people give us so many things. This past week we were given hundreds of dollars worth of non-perishable groceries. Someone randomly passed along a gift card for us through my Dad. And I ordered a breakfast sandwich at Tim Horton’s and it had bacon AND sausage! Well I appreciate that last one anyways. I’m just glad that God is my God. I like having Him running our life. It’s exciting, and encouraging, and fulfilling. I recommend it.

“Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.” – Jesus Christ (Luke 6:38)

Photo credit: Ron Pietroniro

Google to the Rescue

You may remember me mentioning several things breaking in a recent post. Honestly, my washer was the biggest concern. Just getting back from the cottage, I’m sure you can imagine the mountain of laundry that sat waiting. Late last Friday night, I was washing a few loads and the clicking and clunking kept getting louder and louder. I decided to google it. I came upon a post by a guy who said that his washer was doing the same thing and it ended up being 3 baby socks stuck in the pump filter. Hmmm… Well, baby socks don’t click, but everything else fit. So now where in the world was the pump filter, what did it look like, and how do I get into it? I went back to trusty google and searched how to find the pump filter.

I watched a YouTube video on how to get into it and thought I’d give it a go. Mind you, it was 11:30pm and I was trying to do this on my own. About 10 minutes into the process I ended up calling the triplets out of bed to hold the washer up for me! Half an hour, a baby sock (Yes, I said a baby sock!), two lego man legs, a lego light saber, a scrabble tile, a hair tie, beads, a bandaid, 23 cents later, and a handful of dog hair later, we had the washer working like new!

The girls thought it was great that we fixed it on our own!

Seriously, what did we do before Google??

 

And just because I can’t leave you with that nasty picture of all the filter junk…

Look who second shot my last wedding with me!

A Glimpse…(Another video)

Ever since finishing our last video, I couldn’t wait to do another! We had such an amazing time on vacation – we had to take some footage here and there to be able to look back on years from now when all of our children have abandoned us… :P

 

Hope you enjoy this little glimpse into our week!

 

If the video doesn’t load automatically CLICK HERE.

 

I have purchased a few song licenses for my business and this is one of them.

A Week at the Cottage

We couldn’t decide what to do this year for our summer vacation. We debated road trips, using our airmiles to fly somewhere, camping, hotel stays, renting a cottage… Once we factored in price of gas, the fact that none of us are “campers”, our new family member (who happens to take up more space in the van than an adult) and that Scott and I wanted to just RELAX… we decided that a cottage would be the best choice. We had never rented a cottage before and didn’t really know where to look, so we went to google. I pulled up a cottage rental website and we ended up renting the very first one we looked at. I’m a shopper… I would have spent days looking around, searching for the perfect place – but not Scott… he’s a self-proclaimed buyer. I’m so thankful that I trusted him and went with this place! We ended up getting an amazing deal, and it was the ideal place for our rather large family!

After cramming everyone and everything into the van for a week away – we were off!

Lily fell asleep 10 minutes before we left our house. She was not impressed when we woke her up to put her back into her car seat. She may have cried half the way there…

The cottage had three bedrooms upstairs with three queen size beds. There was another bedroom in the basement, two more single beds, and couches in both the main floor living room and the basement.

From the day that we booked the cottage, the kids and I began praying every night that we would have good weather for the week that we were there. Up until the day that we left it was forecasted to thunderstorm the entire week. I’m not going to lie… I was checking the weather forecast several times a day hoping to see it change… While we were driving up to the cottage we drove through a storm system and that was the last drop of rain that we saw all week. Praise God for hearing out children’s prayers! They never once worried about the weather…

No joke… this was our view out the back window all. week. long.

We had a private beach and shallow water for about 100 feet out. The kids had a blast catching tadpoles, minnows, crayfish, clams, and even fireflies!

Scott built his very first campfire. Thankfully Jessica was there to give us some guidance. :)

We spent many hours rowing around with the kids. After Scott had been fishing for several hours and nothing to show for it, he took me out with Prayer. We watched him fish. I fought the wind to try and keep the canoe form blowing into the rocks. Finally, I convinced him to let me try. Two minutes later, I caught my very first fish EVER! I may have screamed the entire time I was reeling it in. Scott was kind enough to hold my fish for a picture… ;)

The kids kept trying to fish off the dock and I just kind of laughed thinking that it was way too shallow to catch anything there. Sure enough, Keona caught a sunfish. She was quite proud of herself!

The dog was terrified of the water. If we even called him down to the beach, he would run to the house and try to get into his crate.

Eventually Scott gave up trying to reason with him and threw him in! He stayed in with the kids for a few minutes, but that was the end of it.

We pretty much lived off of fruit, PB & J sandwiches and BBQ’d food. Lily was always my lunchtime helper. The bigger kids weren’t interested in leaving the beach until the very last moment.

We had a deer walk down the road in front of the cottage. We watched it graze in the field across the street every day. This was a big deal to us city folk!

We drove into town one day to grab some extra fruit and we drove through a very Amish area. The kids were in awe watching the horse-drawn carts and ladies in long dresses and bonnets. We went out again later in the week and I brought my camera. Scott asked why I was bringing it and I said, “In case we see deer, or moose…” and Prayer pipes up, “Or Amish people!” I explained that it wouldn’t be polite to take pictures of them. The triplets understood, as they’ve had people ask to take pictures of them on several occasions!

We played board games when the sun was high. Scott was pretty sun burnt after the first few days.

Lily loved the beach and water. She sat in the sand for hours just filling a bucket with sand and then dumping it out, over and over again.

Scott started to get sick in the middle of the week. By Wednesday night we knew he had a sinus infection. We spent Thursday morning driving around to find a walk-in clinic. We made the best of it and found a really fun park for the kids to play in while we killed time. He was able to get some antibiotics and we headed back to the cottage just after lunchtime. We were supposed to leave on Friday morning, but decided it might be better to leave really late on Thursday night and drive while the kids could sleep. As we were packing the van to go, it started to thunder. The boys were out on the canoe and we quickly called them in because it looked like the storm was coming in quickly. I think it just appeared that way because we could see so far off because it didn’t rain at all until we were driving home.

I didn’t take as many pictures as I had planned because I was so busy having fun with the kids. My iPhone definitely came in handy down on the beach.

From waking up to gorgeous sunrises on the lake, watching deer graze in front of the house, the beautiful humidity-free weather, the perfect beach for kids, catching fish, roasting marshmallows, seeing fireflies for the first time, and watching the sunset on the other side of the lake every night… We just felt so spoiled. God went above and beyond what we had asked or hoped for.

I think the pop may be kicking in…

Playing Catch Up on Life

We were blessed to enjoy a wonderfully relaxing family vacation last week. We rented a beautiful 4 bedroom beachfront cottage and loved every minute of it. Waking up to the biggest bay window I’ve ever seen, overlooking the sunrise on a lake, may have been my favourite part. I have a TON of photos, and video of the kids enjoying the private beach. Not to mention our dog being a HUGE chicken and Scott having to throw him in the water… So many memories for the kids. So many answered prayers… I will blog about it!

But for now, we’re playing catch up. I’m editing sessions every spare moment once the kids are in bed, weeds are taking over the gardens, laundry is piled high, window locks have broken, a van door just about fell off, light bulbs burnt out, the washer is making a strange noise (I think there may be a Lego man stuck in the gears), the dishwasher has decided to only work every other cycle… Oh, and we have a newspaper coming to photograph and interview us in two days. Life goes on. Our vacation was perfect, and blessed, and peaceful, but right now it’s back to reality for us!

I did however, take a few minutes while a recent session was uploading to throw together my daily Instagrams from June.

I love documenting life – even if it is just with my iPhone…

I’ll be back soon with photos and hopefully a video of our vacation!

P.S. Pray that nothing else breaks between now and then… :)