Short and Sweet

Last night after the kids had been tucked in bed for a while, Josh and I were upstairs watching TV. We kept hearing this kind of thumping noise. So I sent Josh down to see what was happening. He came back up and told me that all three girls were sitting on Kynden's bed and banging their heads agains the wall and saying "ow....ow...ow"....I thought that was hilarious! Those girls!

Catching up

I can't believe that it's been over a week since I last posted! Well, scratch that. With the week we had last week, I guess I can believe it. But this blog is all about catching up, so here's what our last week was about.

VBS: This last week I was involved for the first time ever in our VBS program at our church. I was asked to teach a class and I said yes. I was really nervous about it because, while sometimes I like kids (I certainly like mine...it's just those other ones that sometimes I have a hard time with) they're not my area of specialty. Some people are called to be teachers. I am not. However I choose to teach 5th grade based on the idea that none of my kids are in 5th grade...so I'd still be getting a break from my kids. I actually ended up loving it! I had NO discipline problems. My kids were great and fun and we had such a fabulous time! What I didn't realize is that teaching VBS, although being only from the hours of 9am to 12:30pm was totally a full time job. I woke up at 6:30 every morning to get myself ready, eat and get the kids ready and out the door. Then every afternoon on the way home, I had to work to keep the girls from falling asleep in the car. I put them down for their nap when we got home and then started to catch up on housework and figure out dinner. Then after dinner I got the kids ready for bed, looked over the next day's lesson and then gathered up everything I needed for the next morning. Clothes, shoes (for 5 kids), what I needed for class, packed the diaper bag, filled sippy cups....you get the idea. It was a very long, full week. But I will do it again next year.

Kitchen "Remodel": Well, last weekend before VBS started, I decided once and for all that I was fed up with my kitchen cabinets. You see, I have always liked the look of painted white cabinets in the kitchen. So in every house I've lived in, I have painted the cabinets. There were two things wrong with this idea in this house, however. First, I didn't do a good job of painting (I was in a hurry to get them done for some event happening at our house) so I didn't prep them well and I didn't seal them well so the paint was chipping. Secondly, I've never had white cabinets with triplets before. They were stained and always covered in something sticky and pretty much always looked like crap. So I decided I needed to do something different. I took the doors off of one side of the kitchen and decided to paint them black. The painting part was easy. But since the fronts of the cabinets are just flat and plain I decided to make them look nicer and I added some inset moulding to them. Anyway, that took a while before I could find the time to do this, so the cabinet doors were off all week. But finally yesterday I was able to get out there and finish it. I put the doors on, painted the moulding to match and I totally love it. I'm so excited. Soon, we are going to replace the counter tops in our kitchen and add on some cabinets which in turn will add much more counter space which I desperately need. I'm so excited!

Bats: We have discovered that we have bats living in our house. Josh and I were out on our hammock on Saturday night talking and eating blizzards when we started hearing this high pitched squeaky noise. Soon after we started seeing bats flying out of a crack in our house. Now, let me tell you, I am TERRIFIED of bats. This was very traumatic for me. Needless to say, I haven't slept well the past few night for fear of bats flying in through our window and flying around my head. Josh worked hard last night to hopefully seal up any entrance they could have into the house and make a way for them to get out but not back in. Hopefully we will be rid of bats soon.

Chickens: As some of you may know, one of the things I wanted to do after moving to Corbett was to get chickens. Soon after moving we did. Several of our chickens have gotten killed over the months here and it is very hard for me. We never knew what was the cause. I ended up selling my adult chickens several months ago because they weren't laying and at Easter I bought 3 baby chicks. We've raised these chicks for several months. One was mine, one was Bryce's and one was Jayden's and we each named our own. It's coming up on the time to where they are going to start laying. Sunday morning Josh looked out our bedroom window to see the neighbor's dog chasing one of our chickens. He yelled out the window and raced down the stairs but by the time he got there it was too late. So we lost another chicken. And likely it was the neighbors dog that has also been responsible for our other chicken losses. I'm very angry about this and not exactly certain as to how to handle this and still keep good neighbor relations. It seems like they would have said something to us and/or tried to keep better track of their dogs after they have seen this keep happening. I have written them a letter both because I'm not good with confrontation and for documentation sake if we should need it. We'll see if Josh lets me deliver it.

Well, that's about it for all the big things that are happening at our house this past week! I'm hoping that this week of catching up will be a little less eventful.

An up close and personal experience with our friendly, neighborhood firefighters

This weekend is an extremely busy weekend, which is preceding an extremely busy coming week. Yesterday (Saturday) I was at our church for the majority of the day decorating my classroom for VBS, for which I have been coerced...I mean volunteered to teach a class. Immediately following my arrival home from the church, I then got the girls ready to go and headed out the door again with my mom to go to a picnic that a friend from work was throwing so that she could show me off. Wait, I mean so she could show off the girls. They are definitely cuter and more exciting than me. We got back home around 8:30 pm. The girls went straight to bed. In case you're wondering where the boys were during all this excitement, they're off having some excitement of their own. Josh took the boys camping. They left yesterday afternoon and will arrive home probably later this evening.

So, this morning I hemmed and hawed about whether to attempt to get the girls ready and go to church all on my own this morning. The thought of having to sit all alone wasn't really even a deciding factor..although it usually is. But in the end, I decided that due to the coming busyness of next week, I would forgo the time/effort/work that it takes to get everyone ready and out the door in time for church. So instead I decided to get some errands run. Everything's a little easier with 2 less kids, right?

First on my agenda for this day was to go to Home Depot. I have decided to go a new route in my kitchen decor and needed to pick up a couple things. So I made it to Home Depot, made my rounds, asked some questions, and headed to the check-out with my purchases. I decided to do the self-checkout lane since there was no line. The very nice checker girl oohed and ahhed over the girls and thought they were very cute. (And of course, she was right) She noticed the fascination that the girls had with a couple of balloons that they had attached to the register and offered to make the girls some balloons. I accepted her offer, knowing that the girls are nuts over balloons. So we patiently waited while she inflated them some balloons.

I pulled the choo choo wagon out to our car, unlocked it, put my purse in the back, dropped in my keys and then proceeded to unload the girls from the wagon. Rather than getting in and out of the car, I did my 'new' routine and just unbuckled each girl from the wagon and set her in the car. Then when I had all the girls unloaded I only have to climb inside one time and buckle them all in, no problem. Well, unbeknownst to me, while I was in the middle of unloading everyone, Adelynn had climbed into the front seat and pushed the 'Lock' button on the door, which in turn, locked all the doors. I did not realize this. So I buckled all the girls into their seats, closed the sliding door on the van, (so as to not let the balloons blow out the door). I then loaded the choo choo wagon into the back of the van, closed that door and headed to the drivers door. It was locked. I'm pretty sure my heart stopped. But no problem, right? I have 4 other doors to check. One by one, I checked every door. They were all locked. I literally felt my stomach hit the ground and all the color drain from my face. I had no idea what to do, my mind was totally blank. Not only were the girls inside, but so were my keys, my phone and everything. I raced back into Home Depot, the whole way saying, "ohmygosh, ohmygosh over and over, not knowing what else to do. My only thought was that there was nothing I could do just standing there and maybe they sold things that unlocked car doors. I went back to the girl who made us the balloons. I'm not real sure why..I guess I just thought that she would remember who I was. She made some calls in different departments to find out if there was anything they sold that could help (besides a hammer or something). FYI: Home Depot does not sell things that unlock cars. I then made a slew of my own phone calls. To my mother in law at home, on her cell, to my father in law, to my mom...no one answered. In reality, I don't know what any of those people could have done to help. Josh has the only spare key and he was probably 2 hours away.

A very nice employee came out and walked out to the car with me. Then a manager came out. They were told by someone over the walkie-talkie to call 911. I've never had to have someone call 911 for an emergency with my own family. It's very daunting, humbling...I was trying so hard to suppress my panic at this point. I so did not want to be "that" person that loses control when something bad happens. But man, did I want to sob. Some tears did leak out, but overall I think I kept my panicked feelings under strict control. It helped very much that one, the girls were not crying or upset at all. They kept smiling and waving to me. And two, the lady employee kept talking to me in an upbeat way and about other things such as why when they landscaped the parking lot of Home Depot, did they choose to put in bushes with thorns. I've always wondered that myself. And the manager waited out there with us too and told me a story about leaving his kids in his truck and having the truck roll away and locking himself in the family car when he was 6 because he didn't want to get a shot at the doctor. God bless these people. Seriously. I would have totally been a wreck had it not been for them.

The fire department finally came. I say finally...it was really only like 5 minutes or so. But it felt like a lifetime. The 4 big firemen climbed out of their truck, asked me about the procedure to unlock the car and used this tool thingy to make a space between the window and the frame and they slid in this long blue thing towards the unlock button. Then they pumped it up with the same thing that they use to pump up the arm band to take your blood pressure. I wish I could have seen better what they were doing because it looked really interesting. All of a sudden the unlock button pressed and we flung open the car doors and saw three pink-cheeked smiling babies looking at us while playing with their big, red balloons. The firefighters all gathered around and looked at the girls and commented about how adorable they were, and how they all looked different, etc and they felt them to make sure they weren't overheated. The girls were fine. I thanked everyone several times as much as I could without breaking into sobs. I got into the car and had to sit there for several minutes to compose myself. "All's well that ends well", I guess...whatever that means.

Unusual insect life

We have lived in Corbett now for about 10 months. (It's hard to believe it's been that long!) And I like almost everything about living here. I love the scenery, I love the fact that I pass waterfalls on my way to and from places, I love the river, I love viewing the farmland and the rolling fields, etc. I love the schools. I really cannot think of any place in the world where I'd rather live right now.

However there are a couple things that I decidedly do not like about living here. The first thing is all the bikers. For some reason that I have not figured out, there are no bike lanes anywhere, which is odd because there are ALWAYS bikers in the road. In fact, I believe the Gorge area is one of the most popular biking areas in all of Oregon. And I find it very annoying to be driving along minding my own business and have to come to a halt because of some bikers riding in the middle of the windy road with not even a shoulder for them to ride on.

The second thing that I have decided that I don't like about living here are all the bugs. Our former house in Gresham was literally only about 10 minutes away, but there have been so many types of insects here that I have never seen in my whole life! It's really odd. And I'm not a huge bug lover. Actually, I'm not a bug lover of any shape or form. I kid you not, every single day, when I go to take a shower there is at least one mosquito eater flying around in the bathroom. I hate those things. I'm not scared of them, I just hate them. Well, let's be honest. I'm a little scared of them when they fly at my face for no particular reason. For some reason, our bathroom is a huge attraction for many of the insects that invade our house. There must be some swinging night life in our bathroom. Maybe it's like a club or a bar for insects. (I'm picturing the scene from Bug's Life) I don't know. What I do know is that in addition to our unusual insect life we also get some nasty a** spiders . The only good thing that has come out of these nasty spiders is: 1. At least they're not recluse spiders (I looked it up online) I think they're just some sort of common brown spiders on steroids. And 2. The intense fear that I have for these big spiders has taken away any fear I had of smaller spiders. I guess there's always a bright side.

Since She Asked...

Yesterday was a fun day. It was Mike and Beatriz's last full day here in Oregon and we (Josh and I) stole them away for the afternoon and took them to lunch. We didn't even have to bring the kids! We were able to have a nice time and good conversation. Mike and his family moved away to Georgia about 3 months after Bryce was born, so I have never had much opportunity to spend any time with him. Also since there's such a big age difference (6 years) between Mike and Josh, they weren't very close growing up either. So it was really nice for both Josh and I to be able to take some time, just the 4 of us to talk about life and marriage and everything else without anyone else around. So that was great.


Last night the whole McKenney family went over to my in-laws house for a BBQ for one last get together. Josh didn't even bring his camera, so to see pictures, again, you can go to Allison's blog.

My main reason for this post however is to satisfy Allison's desire and post the recipe for the dessert that I made last night. When us girls had a girls' night on Wed night we went to Papa Haydn's in Portland and I had a raspberry tart. It was so good that I decided that I wanted to emulate it for the next night. So this recipe is one from my family cookbook, but I altered it slightly.

So here's my raspberry tart recipe:

Crust:
1 cup flour
1 1/4 sticks butter (definitely not low calorie)
2 Tb sugar (You can add more if you'd like it to be sweeter)

Mix together and spread into a (9x13) casserole dish. *Now, I used a circle pizza pan and I tripled this recipe...It really depends on how thick you want your crust* Bake @ 325 for 15-20 minutes..since I tripled the recipe I baked it for a lot longer than this. Bake until it's firm and golden brown. It's really important to make sure that this is baked thoroughly..otherwise the toppings will soak in and make it fall apart. A little over baked is better than under baked.

Filling:
8oz cream cheese, softened
1 cup powdered sugar
1 small carton cool whip

Mix together and spread over totally cooled crust.

Topping:
Raspberries and glaze.

This is the part where you can be a little creative..and of course you can use whatever berries you wish. If I had it to do over again what I would do is to get a ton of raspberries and hand place them solidly over the entire filling and then pour the glaze over the top. What I did last night was mix the whole raspberries with the glaze and spread it all over the filling.

Glaze:
Approximately 1 cup of raspberries smooshed in a sauce pan. Bring to a boil with about 2/3 cup water. Mix 1/3 cup water with 2 Tb cornstarch. After the berries are boiling add in the cornstarch mixture along with sugar to taste..approx 1/3 cup. Return to a boil until it starts getting nice and thick like gravy.

Allow the whole thing to chill for approx 2 hours or so to get nice and cold. You can also garnish with whipped cream. I put a decorative edge of whipped cream around the edge of the pan to keep the filling in place..but if you use a casserole dish, you wouldn't need to do that.

Soooo good! A perfect summer dessert!

Bryce's party and Mike

As some of you know by reading Allison's blog, Josh's older brother Mike and his wife Beatriz are here visiting from Georgia. They arrived on Saturday and will be here until Friday. We are so glad that they have come for a visit and have fallen in love with Beatriz. If you'd like to see some pictures of Mike and our family activities go check out Allison's blog. In order for me to post pics, I have to blog from Josh's laptop where all of our pictures live..and I'm too lazy. Due to the fact that most of the family activities seem to be "spur of the moment" as opposed to planned out and some of them are not "three-two-year-olds" friendly, we have not been able to participate in everything. "Spur of the moment" is hard to pull off with 5 kids. And yes, I'm sad and complaining about that. I guess that's another thing to consider when "planning" on having triplets.

At any rate, on Sunday night we had everyone over for Bryce's 8th birthday party. Technically his birthday is not until the 13th, but we are going to be out of town next Saturday and wanted to plan it when Mike and Beatriz were here. So Sunday night my family and Josh's family came over for fun time of being together, eating and playing in the water. Bryce decided that for his birthday he wanted to get a pool...a big pool. So we asked everyone to chip in for the pool and we bought it prior to the party. All the kids had a blast playing in the pool. Again, for pictures see Allison's blog. Again, I am lazy.

Bryce chose to order a cake from costco rather than have me make one. I was okay with this. One less thing to do. In fact, the party really could have been sponsored by costco. "All" we did was get the house and yard cleaned up. Because Bryce is such a special child, he did not want the standard 'Happy Birthday' written on his cake. What he wanted was, 'Enough talk, Let's Fight." I think it's from some x-box game they've been playing. We compromised on 'Enough talk, Let's Party'. Also because I'm a super great mom, I forgot the candles. Josh decided to encourage the "future photographer" that is coming out in Bryce and ordering him a new digital camera for his birthday. He loves it. And I love all the pictures that now exist of me. You know, the ones with wet hair, no make up, and angled from a 8 year old height. I've never felt so gorgeous.