Firsts, Father's Day and fishies! Or is it fishy's? Hmmmm....

Daniel & Cameron eating their first cotton candy at Camtown Youth Festival!!  We enjoyed bouncy houses, clowns, magician's, the park & hot weather!  Took along Grammy & Auntie Am for the fun!

Cammy & Daniel patiently waiting to go on the bouncy obstacle course!  Actually, they pretty much just bounced here at the entrance until they were given the ok to go! ;-)

Daddy's Father's Day gift from the boys!  A Treasure Box that has been lovingly decorated by the boys!  AKA: A shoe box that has had paper taped all around it to cover it up!  They made one for each of the Grandpa's as well!

Here is the inside of the Treasure Box!  Notice all the animal stickers since Daddy is the Animal Control Officer and he takes care of animals!  And since Daddy was working on Father's Day, we had him come home for breakfast and made him waffles!  He was given his cards at that time!  Then we had him come home for lunch!  I asked the boys what they wanted to make him for lunch and they said pizza! Unfortunately, we didn't have any!  So I asked again!  Daniel wanted to make grilled cheese sandwich and Cammy wanted to make chicken nuggets & fries.  So we made both!  So Daddy got grilled cheese, chicken nuggets & fries for lunch!  And that is when they gave him his treasure box!  It was a good Father's Day!

Here is part of the boys "Learning Corner"! As you can tell, it is going to SNOW tomorrow!  Actually, the boys guess that it is "Tomorrow it is going to Snow" every day!  Poor guys!  They don't realize that they live in the Northwest!

OK! Don't laugh at my pink sink! Yes, it has a matching pink toilet & matching pink bathtub!  But the bathtub is old, so you can take a hot bath for an hour without refilling the tub! ;-)  I recently added the cute little wall decor of ocean fish to continue with the "fishy/ocean" theme!  Next to the fish tank is a jar full of sea shells & rocks we have collected at the beach.

And here are the other other wall decor above the pink bathtub!  Compliments of the Dollar Store!

And I had the boys help make their lunches the other day!  Daniel loves jam sandwiches!  We got a little sticky, but they did a great job!  Such big boys!

And here is Cammy making his peanut butter sandwich!  That is his favorite!

And the finished product!  See Daniel's "cheese grin"? What a goofball!

Hope you enjoyed the quick pics!  

Love, Jen

My babies aren't babies anymore!

My little babies are growing into adorable little boys!  They will be 4 years old in August, and I can't believe how fast the time has flown since they were born!  Sometimes it feels like just yesterday that I got that call that we were pregnant!  And then laying on the table at the Dr's office for the ultrasound to show us how many babies we were going to have, and seeing those 2 little flutters of heartbeats on the screen!  And the delivery of them happening so quickly on August 19th, 2006 and the 4 weeks we spent in the NICU with them!  I know that the first six months are a total blur in my memory, but it seems that the last 3 1/2 years are now all gone! We will never get that time back with them, and I deeply miss the little itty bitty teeny weenie babies they were when we brought them home. I miss the non-stop snuggles and cuddle time we got when they were too tiny to get up and run off.  If the last 4 years have gone by this fast, I can't imagine what the next 14 years will be like, as they start school and sports and school activities.  They will be starting pre-school in September and as excited as I am for them, I am also sad that they are growing up so fast.  I try to write down all the funny things about the boys that happen, but we get busy and that doesn't always happen!  So here is a brief idea of what the boys are like right now, as they are approaching their 4th birthday!  They may be twins, but they are definitely individual little boys, with their own special personalities and attitude!

DANIEL RYAN CAINE (AKA Baby 'A').................

When Daniel was born we kept saying he looked like a little wrestler or football player.  He had this stout little body that just looked like it could tackle you!  And I'm pleased to say that Daniel seems to be that same little football player/wrestler type, because he tackles Cameron with no difficulty and keeps him pinned on the ground as long as possible, laughing the entire time!  We honestly believe he will be a good wrestler and football player when he gets older.

He has always been so very meticulous about the order he has his toys in and this has not changed one bit!  His trains belong in a special order (never put the caboose in front and the engine in back), his dinosaurs are in order by type and size, his blocks are stacked "just right" and he lays his blanky on top of him at night "just right" (even laying out the curled corners).  He has a type "A" personality that I believe will benefit him in the future!  However, the down-side is that he can not be swayed to do something different than the "Daniel way"!  And everybody must do it the way he thinks it should be done, or he dissolves into a mess of tears.  It is a major challenge to convince him that there are other ways that things can be done. And I will be the first to admit he gets this from his Mommy.  I believe that the "Jen way" is the best way! 

When you ask Daniel to say "cheese" for the camera, he does this thing where he scrunches up his nose, has a smile like he is about to brush his teeth, and he furrows his eyebrows together!  It ends up looking like he is mad, but that is his smile!  We are trying so hard to get him to actually smile cute, because when he does, he looks adorable!  But for now, we usually get the "Daniel cheese grin"!  Such a goofball!

Daniel is afraid of the dark and HATES the closet door left open!  He swears that there are monsters in there and he won't go in his room if the closet door is open a crack!  He wakes up a couple times a night crying, and he seems to have many bad dreams about spiders and snakes.  I don't know why, but Bryan says he has nightmares almost nightly about these things.  Poor little man!  He also usually wakes up in the same position he fell asleep.  Flat on his back, arms over his head or his chest.  He likes having cold sheets and he flips his pillow over before he goes to sleep to get the "cold side of the pillow"!  He gets that from his Daddy!

He has FINALLY grown out of the stage of growling at us when he gets mad (which he did ALL the time), and has amazingly started to listen to us!  WOOHOO!!!  So now when we ask the boys to clean up the living room, Daniel says "OK Mommy!" and then gets right to work! (Cameron does not, but we'll get to that in a bit).  Daniel has also recently begun to try very hard to color within the lines in his coloring book!  He is carefully choosing the colors of each thing, and tries to color things the way they should be!  I am so very proud to see this!  Daniel is also Mommy's little helper!  I absolutely LOVE that he loves to help me carry the groceries into the house and helps me put things away!  It just puts the biggest smile on my face!   And when I am cooking dinner or making cakes or deserts, he is the first one to pull up a chair to the counter and help pour everything in the bowl and help hold the mixer!  Such a big boy! 

And Daniel has recently started dancing whenever music is on in the house!  And I'm talking crazy, wild, jump up and down, and spin in circles dancing!  It is funny to watch, but he just loves it!  And when I recently started exercising in the living room, he was the first to start exercising with me!  Very cute watching your 3 year old trying to do a sit up! ;-)

And I must share the hilarious thing that Daniel said the other night at bed time!  We were singing songs and Cammy started to interrupt. I said, "Don't interrupt Cammy!".  Daniel says, "Mommy! Cammy is going to interrupt like a volcano!"  It took me a second to catch what he meant.  He got "interrupt" and "erupt" confused!  I just started laughing hysterically, and that meant the boys started laughing hysterically, and then Daniel started saying it over and over again!  "Cammy interrupts like a volcano!"  I loved it!

Now on to CAMERON MICHAEL CAINE (AKA Baby 'B')........

When Cammy was born, he was skinnier and just looked longer than Daniel (even though they were both 19" long), and we started saying he looked like he would be a basketball player.  He is now about 1 -  1 1/2" taller than Daniel, and is still long, skinny and will probably be taller than his brother.  He has great balancing technique and very strong calves from walking on his tip-toes all the time.  He is very flexible and does AMAZING somersaults!  He just tucks and curls into this tiny little ball!  Daniel still tries to do a head stand when trying to do a somersault!

As meticulous as Daniel is about the order of his things, Cameron could pretty much care less! He actually enjoys knocking over brothers towers and doesn't care about the order he puts his trains.  However, he does LOVE to chug his trains all around the house and gets lost in his own little world of make believe!  Unfortunately, he thinks that his trains need a "wash down" and proceeds to chug into the kitchen and uses the dog water to "wash down" the trains!  If I had a nickel for every time he has been told to stay out of the dog water, I would be a millionaire by now!  Cameron also loves to play with balls!  He love to bounce them, roll them, throw them anywhere around the house.  I have found them on the counter, the hutch, the bookshelves, etc...  Actually, he just loves throwing anything.....  Hmmmmm.....maybe we have a future baseball player in our midst!

Cameron does not listen as well as Daniel and we have not gotten past this stage with him yet.  It does not matter how many times we tell him not to do something, he continues to find a way to do it!  We have 3 goldfish that have somehow survived over a year now.  We started out with the small tank in their bedroom and found that Cameron kept feeding the fish....the entire container of fish food!  Yes, it should not have been left down in the first place, but even when we put it up, he would climb to where it was!  He is quite the little climber.  So it was moved into the hall bathroom.  Unfortunately, during the day, Cameron would sneak into the bathroom to stick his hand in the fish tank, or try to feed them more food.  So the fish tank was moved into our bathroom.  That worked for a while, unless he snuck into our bathroom, and once again, the entire container of fish food would be put in the fish tank!  Seriously, we are not sure how these fish have survived this long!  So after keeping him away from the fish for a while, we recently tried to put a larger tank with the same fish in their bedroom (the fish have grown from all the food)!  Within a few hours, Cameron had tried to take the lid off the tank and tried to "catch" the fish.  So it has been moved again into the hall bathroom.  The fish food is hidden and so far so good.  Either way, he is ENTHRALLED with the fish and could stand in front of the tank with his nose pressed against the glass watching them!

Cameron doesn't like to clean up the living room either because he says "it is hard work Mommy!".  He huffs and puffs like he is lifting 20 pound weights when he is cleaning up the living room.  It is actually quite funny.  He also gets easily distracted and begins playing with the toys he is putting away.  However, Daniel used to be this way too, so I have hope!  Cameron seems to get lost in his own world sometimes and doesn't pay attention to the things around him.  He is quieter than Daniel in this aspect where he quietly does his own thing and knows what is going on in his little world.  Daniel talks loudly while playing make believe.  It is neat to see the difference in them!

And don't call him Cameron!  He immediately says, "NO! My name is Cammy!".  We have been calling him Cammy for so long now, that when we call him Cameron, he doesn't like it!  We tried calling Daniel "Danny", and he DOES NOT like it!  Funny....

And when it is bed time, Cameron is the last to fall asleep!  He is wide awake and Daniel is usually snoring.  It takes FOREVER to get him to go to sleep!  In fact, last night, it was 10:00, before he was finally asleep!  And I put them down at 9:00!  I was laying on the couch, and he came out twice and peeked around the corner.  Silly little boy!  He is also the first one awake in the morning and takes the shortest nap.  We are lucky if he naps for an hour.  They are night and day when it comes to the amount of sleep they need.  And Cameron is the most restless sleeper!  His bed his torn to pieces by the time he wakes up!  Blankets on the floor, sheets all messed up, and even the fitted sheet is halfway coming off the bed! 

Cameron also loves to help Mommy in the kitchen!  Him and his brother take turns pouring the water, oil, whatever the ingredient is, into the bowl and they both hold the mixer!  I love having my boys helping in the kitchen!  They love to help Mommy make her cakes!



And we finally have potty-trained boys! Yippee!!!  Pull-ups for nap and bed time only and very rarely do we have accidents anymore!  Daniel is funny and doesn't want us in the bathroom when he is in there.  He likes his privacy.  I think he gets a little stage fright!  They even wear undies when we go out on the town and the boys tell us if they need to go potty!  I am enjoying the fact that since they are boys, if Bryan and I are out together with them, Bryan gets to take them to the bathroom! ;-)  Guess that is one advantage to them being boys!  Daddy gets potty duty while we are out! Ha!

Well, I know that was a long book, but it took me a few days to get it written, and I'm glad that I did!  It gives you a little glimpse in to our world and how the boys are doing! 

Have a wonderful day!
Jen ;-)

Reno, a cake, cute boys, ER trip, Nibi and a funeral! OH MY!

Well, the last 2 weeks have been a little crazy to say the least!  As you can tell from the title, we have had just a few things going on in our lives!  So let's start from the beginning and I'll try not to bore you with all the fun details.

So a few weeks ago we realized that our very first "baby", Nibi, had been losing weight and was pretty skinny.  So I took her to the vet.  She was a black cat that came into our lives a few weeks after we were married, so almost 11 years ago.  She was only 5 weeks old at the time a very skinny.  At the recent vet visit they ran some tests and sadly we found out that Nibi had diabetes.  We were devastated to say the least.  We found that it could possibly be managed, with shots twice a day and many visits to the vet for blood work.  We agonized over the decision, and came to the conclusion that she would not be a happy kitty getting tons of shots and having to go the vet (which she hated).  We also decided to choose quality over quantity.  A very difficult and heart breaking decision.  She had a good life and was spoiled rotten.  So we chose to put Nibi to sleep on Thursday May 13th.  It was a very difficult thing for us to do and we cried horribly over our loss.  We were with her until the end and had her cremated.  We will miss her terribly and always remember our first "baby".

Nibi as a baby!  She was soooo tiny!

She was very playful and loved to hide under the kitchen rug!

We took her outside to play in the yard for the last time.  She was an indoor cat, but loved when we took her outside to play in a contained area. She loved laying the grass and rolling around. The boys came in to play with her and pet her and tried to feed her some grass.  RIP Nibi!  We miss you baby girl!

After we left the appointment to put Nibi to sleep, we drove to my in-laws house to pick up some luggage for a trip that Bryan and I were taking to Reno.  We were scheduled to leave the next day.  When we arrived at the house, my father-in-law, Bud, was sound asleep.  When my mother-in-law, Teri, tried to wake him and ask him a question, she couldn't get him to wake up.  And then once he started to wake, he didn't make any sense and was slurring his words and his hands were shaking.  We decided to call 911, and the ambulance came to check him out.  They decided to transport him to the hospital, so we followed them over.  After staying in the ER until 9:00pm, Bryan and I headed home.  After everything, it sounds like Bud had worked in the yard too much that day, and it was really hot and he didn't drink any water.  And then we think when he came in, and went to take some pain pills, he mistakenly took 2 sleeping pills.  To be on the safe side, the Dr. is monitoring his heart to make sure nothing else is actually wrong.  He is home now and seems to be fine.

And that leads me to our trip to Reno!  Last year I won a 2 night stay at the Peppermill Hotel and Casino in Reno and we kept putting off going.  Well, it was going to expire at the end of May, so we decided to go!  Now this was a big deal to us to go because we have not flown anywhere on vacation together since our honeymoon, almost 11 years ago!  We got up early Friday morning (May 14th) and headed to Reno!  When I say early, I mean we got up at 3:00am to leave at 4:00am to catch our flight at 5:30am!  Now mind you, we didn't get home from the hospital until 9:30pm and had not had dinner or started packing.  Plus we had put Nibi to sleep at 4:00 the day before we left, so we were tired as well from that.  So we stayed up past midnight getting packed and tidying up the house before leaving.  So needless to say, we were exhausted by the time we arrived in Reno.  But we had to wait for our room, so we had lunch!  Once our room was available at 12:00, we headed upstairs!  It was the nicest room we have EVER stayed in before!  It was in the new Tuscany Tower Suite.  So fancy and beautiful!  The hotel itself was amazing as well!  So once we got to our room, we decided to lay down and rest.  We ended up taking a 4 hour nap together!!!  We absolutely needed it though after the day we had before and how little sleep we got.  Our entire 3 days and 2 nights we spent in Reno were a wonderful relaxing time together to do whatever we wanted!  No schedule, no plans, no rushing around!  We spoiled ourselves with breakfast in our room one morning (they came in and set the table up all nice and pretty too)!  We enjoyed the hot tub and laying out by the pool and relaxing!  We stayed up gambling until midnight and enjoyed wonderful food at the many restaurants at our hotel!  We also agreed that we CAN NOT and WILL NOT wait 10 years to do something like this again!  We are going to make the extra effort to take time for ourselves to enjoy time like this again!  I think I fell in love my hubby a little more while we were away as well!  He really is my best friend and I love being married to him and spending time with him!

Chalk image drawn of us while in Reno!  The guy did a great job!

Waiting for our room to be ready! We were sooooo tired!

My handsome hubby at lunch when we first arrived!

Our GORGEOUS room!

The bathroom!  Double sinks, powder counter and TV!

The jacuzzi tub (it was awesome) and the huge walk in shower with double shower-heads!

The view from our room, down to the many pools and hot tubs!

My cute hubby again, doing a little gambling!

When we came home from our trip, I had lot's of work to do!  I have been doing cake decorating and had been asked by close family friends to make their 50th wedding anniversary cake!  We decided it would be my biggest yet (3 layers) and covered in fondant roses!  After about 36+ hours of work with a lot of my mom's help, we completed an absolutely beautiful cake!  Our friends were in awe when they saw it and were choked up!  So it was 3 layers (bottom layer was white cake with vanilla pudding filling, middle layer was chocolate cake with chocolate pudding filling, and the top was lemon with lemon pudding filling)!  It was covered in buttercream frosting (30 cups) and a swag of 80 purple and lavendar fondant roses with gold leaf accents!  Fondant heart cut-outs with gold candy dots were put on the rest of the cake to give a nice accent!  And it was topped with Dottie's grand-parents 50th anniversary cake topper!  It was beautiful (and yummy too)!

And of course, I must include the cutest picture of our growing little men!  They were dressed so very handsome for the anniversary party and we took tons of pics of them!  Here is the best one we got! 

Cameron Michael Caine & Daniel Ryan Caine!

So after the anniversary party was over on Saturday, we relaxed for a little bit.  But then my mom and myself needed to prepare for a funeral we needed to attend on Sunday.  It was the most difficult funeral because it was a 3 year old little girl that was tragically killed by accident, when a wooden play structure fell on her at her babysitters house.  We never met little Abbie Mucha, however, I grew up with Abbie's dad Kurt and his brother Kevin.  Kevin and I graduated together, and we have known the Mucha family since I was in preschool.  It was so sad to have such a young life cut short early, but the family found it in their hearts to donate many of her organs to others, so that Abbie would live on.  It was especially hard because she was only 7 months younger than the boys.  I could not even imagine the pain the family feels.  But it was nice to see so many from the community come to the service to support the family, and so many that graduated with Kurt.  This is one of the benefits of living in a small town and I'm proud of the closeness of our classes.  Please keep Kurt, Angie and Lilly Mucha and the entire Mucha family in your prayers. Here is her picture and the link to her obituary.

This is the 2nd child's funeral I have been too, and it breaks my heart.  Children should not die.  It simply is not fair.  So please hug and kiss your children any chance you get.  Life is a precious gift and we do not know how long we will be here, or how long our loved ones will be here.  And don't forget to tell the the ones you love how much you love them. 

So all our love to you from the Caine Family.

Love,
Jen

Picture update!!!

I just realized that I have not updated pics on here in a while!  And I also realized that I didn't mention our little family trip to the beach at the end of January!  Just me and Bryan and the boys headed to Newport for 1 night.  We were able to enjoy our last weekend with Bryan off, before he returned to his Animal Control job that has him working weekends.  It was a stressful trip with cranky kids that left their listening ears at home, unfortunately.  But we did have some fun times as well!  Here are some pics from that weekend!

We have also been doing some "learning" at home together!  I had some art projects for the boys to do!  One of them was beaded pirate necklaces!  Here are pics of them with their necklaces!

The boys also LOVE to help me cook or bake in the kitchen!  So I decided the other day, to have them help make their sandwiches for lunch!  Daniel love jelly sandwiches, and Cameron loves chunky peanut butter sandwiches!  They did a great job and didn't make too much of a mess!  Such big boys! Oh, and Daniel invented "grape on a pretzel stick", for an extra special snack!  Too funny!

And our little Daniel man is quite the little organizer!  He always has been and gets very frustrated when things are out of order.  Which Cameron seems to enjoy knocking over or messing up anything Daniel gets in his perfect order!  So I caught Daniel lining up his dinosaurs, and then realized he actually has them lined up by the type they are!  They have many of the same species of dinosaur, and he had them organized by species!  Such a smart little boy!  A little too smart sometimes as well!

Well, I hope you have enjoyed this picture update!  Sorry it has been so long, but I am trying to do better!  Enjoy your day everyone!

Jen ;-)

It's a very, very, very sick house!

This last week has not been fun in the Caine household!  Monday evening Bryan started feeling all stuffy & achy and had a sore throat.  It got worse on Tuesday and he ended up with a nasty fever and the chills.  He was off work Tue, Wed & Saturday (he is normally off Thur/Fri).  Meanwhile, I wound up with a nasty stomach bug Tuesday afternoon and was home sick Wed/Thur/Fri!  And on Wednesday morning, Daniel woke up with a nasty hacking cough and was feeling icky and then on Friday night he started complaining that his ear hurt.  Cameron was feeling fine the whole time! 

But then on Saturday, Cameron woke up with the nasty cough!  I took the kids and the hubby to Urgent Care and Daniel ended up having an ear infection, and Bryan's had lasted so long that he was put on antibiotics and cough medicine.  Sunday started out better with Daniel feeling a bit better, but still coughing.  Bryan returned to work, but was exhausted by the time he got home.  And Sunday afternoon around 4:30, Cameron started complaining of being cold and he had the chills!  I took his temp and it was 103.3!  So more Motrin and a shower with mommy to help bring down his temp, and have the steam help with his cough.  I kept giving him the Motrin through the night to keep his temp down and Bryan said he seemed a bit better this morning. 

I, on the other hand, woke up this morning with a sore throat and what felt like swollen tonsils!  I was really hoping to not get sick, so I am going to try and rest more later and keep this bug at bay as best as I can! I have a cake to do this week for my baby sister, Amber!  She will be turning 28 years old (not really a baby anymore)!  I have candy flowers to make tonight!  And I also need to start working on my fondant roses for an anniversary cake I am making for May 22nd!  It will be the largest cake I have made so far!  3 layers and probably 100-200 roses!  I can't wait to see how it turns out!  It is for our dear friends 50th anniversary, Dottie & Frank Knighton!  They are like another set of grandparents to us and a part of our family! 

Well, I hope that this finds all of you doing well and hoping your house is not a very, very, very sick house! 

Love,
Jen

Missing Grandma & such big boys

I am sorry it has taken so long to get this thing updated!  Life has been extremely busy, as always!  Lot's of things going on at our house and with our family.  From August 2009 until February 16th, 2010, myself and my family were spending a considerable amount of time taking care of and spending time with my Grandma.  She was diagnosed in August with Stage 4 Small Cell Lung Cancer and battled valiantly for 6 months.  Sadly, she passed away peacefully on February 16th.  The last 2 months have been difficult without her in our lives.  She is so deeply missed by us all and has left a huge hole in our lives and our hearts.  Her 75th birthday would have been on April 16th.  My mom, my sister, my aunt, and our friends Dottie & Jeannette and myself, all headed to Lincoln City for the weekend of her birthday to celebrate Grandma and gamble in her memory.  We had a wonderful weekend together with beautiful weather and Grandma watching over us.  We did a beautiful rose memorial on the beach.  We took a dozen roses and each of us took 2.  We placed them in the sand in a row and eventually the ocean start to come in and surround them.  It was beautiful and emotional.  We miss her so very much.

                              Roses in the sand                                         Grandma & Grandpa walking at Relay

Now on to the boys!  They are 3 1/2 years old now and growing more every day!  The things they say and do just make us laugh!  Cameron is about 1 to 1 1/2 inches taller than Daniel now and he seems to have sprouted up out of the blue just recently!  He eats like it is his last meal and continues to ask for 2nd's and 3rd's!  Daniel on the other hand, barely eats anything at all.  So they are both on opposite eating spectrum's right now.  I'm sure that soon enough, Cameron will barely eat anything and Daniel will be eating like crazy! 

They have been set on what their favorite colors are for a while now, and it has become extremely consistent.  Daniel loves the color green and wants his sippy green, his plate green and colors everything with green.  Cameron on the other hand, loves the color purple.  Everything he colors is purple!  They both seem to be right handed as well and are doing very well with their fine motor skills!  I just bought some art projects the other day and one was a beaded pirate necklace!  The beads were fairly large and they did a great job!  I have noticed that they have been more deliberate while coloring to try and stay in the lines!  And the other day, Daniel started to trace his hand all by himself!  Such big boys, growing and doing new things all the time!

And they are FINALLY potty-trained little boys!!!  They wear underwear throughout the day now, except for nap time and bed time of course.  We finally got Daniel to poop in the potty!  That was an achievement in itself, as we had the hardest time getting him to go on the potty!  Such a huge relief to finally have them potty trained!  I am so proud of them and excited every time they go on their own!  Hardly any accidents either, which is great!

And since they are finally potty-trained, we registered the boys for pre-school the other day and they will start in September!  I am so excited for them to experience pre-school and grow and develop and learn!  I think they will have a wonderful time and hope they do well!  They haven't done daycare or pre-school before, so this will be new for them to be in an environment with other kids regularly.  I really hope they do well!  They will go 4 days a week for 3 hours per day.  It is a bit spendy, but a wonderful school that will give them a great start in life! 

The only problem is that Bryan and I will not be able to take them to school the first week!  We will be on a cruise with my parents and my sister and her boyfriend Dustin!  We were supposed to go on a cruise with all of the family and my Grandparents.  It was a surprise that we were supposed to go with Grandma and we were so excited.  Then she got very sick and the cruise got canceled.  We have re-booked the cruise and we will go in her memory.  We will be headed to Mexico on the Royal Caribbean cruise line!  So excited to go!

Bryan and I will also be headed to Reno in May for a 2 night stay at the Peppermill!  I won the 2 night stay at Relay For Life last year and it needs to be used by the end of May 2010.  So we will be headed off for a little alone time and our first big trip somewhere together since our honeymoon 10 1/2 years ago!  It should be fun and we are so excited to go!

Well, that should cover things for a little bit!  I will really try harder to keep up on this better!  It is nice to look back at what is going on, and my entries shouldn't be as long if I update it more often! Have a wonderful day everyone!

Love,
Jen

Multiples and More - Question of the week!

Do you think parents of multiples are more likely to become divorced? Why or why not?

 

As a busy working mother of 3 1/2 year old twin boys, it is my opinion that parents of multiples have many additional challenges in making their marriage work.  It doesn't mean that they are more likely to get divorced.  It just means that they sometimes have to try harder.

 

Like many parents of multiples, we had to go through fertility treatments to even get pregnant in the first place!  This brings extra strain to the relationship, but it can also bring you closer because of all the different things that you go through together.  How many husbands in regular marriages can say, "I gave my wife shots in the rear so she could ovulate." or husbands that have had to "deposit" their "man juices" into a cup so that a doctor could help their wife get pregnant!  I consider all of these challenges to be part of our vows that said "in sickness or in health", because it really does come down to being a health issue.  But it can easily become a self esteem issue as well that brings strain on any relationship.  I think that sometimes husband's and wives go through these challenges and it either makes them stronger, or pulls them apart.  And unfortunately, sometimes going through these challenges together, pulling them apart and then finally having 2, 3 or more babies all at once on an already precarious relationship, can sometimes break up a marriage.  Or, once again, all of the challenges can bring a couple closer together.  

 

And I am very happy to say that this is what has happened to me and my husband.  We both can simply look at each other and know what we went through together and why we did it.  We have shared things together that our families can never understand and most of our friends as well.  It has created an extra special bond between us and reminds us that we went through hell to have our twins and if we can do that, we can do anything!  Do our 3 1/2 year old twin boys drive us absolutely batty?  Duh!!!  They are 3 1/2 years old and wild little animals!  But our friends have kids as well, and they have crazy times with their kids!  We simply have crazy times 2!  However, one of my friends has 4 kids (ranging from 2-8 years old) and personally, I think her job as a Mommy is harder than mine!  Even though she wonders how I deal with having twins! I tell her I don't know how she deals with having 4 kids!  I don't know any different!  They are all I have had, and I have learned how to do things double...all the time...everywhere!  

 

For those that are pregnant with multiples, I have to admit that the first year or so is the HARDEST and most challenging on parents of multiples with the feeding, carrying multiple babies, diapers, traveling, sleeping, etc.... of multiples!  But once they are up and running, it gets better....sort of...in a different way!  

 

So I kind of went off on my opinion to the question, but here are the specific questions we were asked to answer from the Multiples and More website ....

• What aspect of parenting multiples have you found to be the most difficult as it pertains to maintaining a relationship? - My answer...... I think the most difficult for us has simply been agreeing to parenting challenges that any other parent deals with.  How to parent, how to discipline, how to potty train, etc...  Nothing really specific to them being multiples.  My husband was wonderful when the boys came home with feeding them, changing them, etc...  We kind of liked that we each always had one of our own and we didn't have to share one baby!  
• How do you maintain a healthy marriage/relationship? - We still have "date nights" and quiet time to ourselves after the boys go to bed! Even if it just a movie on the couch! We still make time for each other!
• If you were to give one piece of advice to a couple who just found out they were pregnant with multiples on how to stay happy together, what would it be? - Remember that you are a team! Neither of you can get through this by yourselves!  You need each other, and your babies will need you!  Always remember that you are in this together!
• Do you think the MOST study is accurate? - I have kind of wondered this before and was curious if it really is true! I also heard the infamous Kate say that parents of multiples are more likely to get divorced.  I personally don't think it is true.  And not that it really matters, but if you look at all the other "famous" multiples and their parents that we have seen on TV over many years, I believe that they are all still together!  I personally think that being married and having multiples makes for a stronger relationship!