One of our best friends has the cutest kid! This is Urban. She wanted some pictures marking his one year since birth and I wanted to practice with my camera settings so we went to the splash pad! I can't wait till my twins are old enough to go to a splash pad because it was so awesome capturing the water blobs in the air! I just had to share some of these to show off his cute face!!!!
My sweet Mercedez 
My tender hearted Sawyer
I'm free!!!! This was my pumping zone. Oh, how much time I spent here. Bought this glider for the twins room to rock them. It immediately was moved to our room where it was designated for pumping. Notice the mugs? I would down both of them while pumping. I always got so thirsty! I got pretty good at balancing the 9 oz bottles on my knees while holding a book so for the 15-20 min I would rock and read. I have read probably 25 books in the past 9 months just from pumping sessions. I made it 9 months, 100% pumping for my babies. Thought the massive amounts that we froze would last a month or so. WRONGO! It lasted about a week. I can't even tell you how much better life is now! It has been night and day in regards to my hormones! They feel very well balanced now and I don't feel at all depressed. It's amazing. I no longer every lay down or sleep during the day. I actually feel like a regular person and get up and clean and cook and play with my babies more. I have energy and just feel so much better! I'm glad I could pump for as long as I did, but wow, do I feel great! Sorry kids, you get 3 months of formula. I did the best I could. So here's what's been happenin in our lives the past 9 months:
We took the twins camping in August. (the pic looks horrible because I didn't know how to use my camera outside). This is the one and only pic I took with grandma. Everything was fine and dandy until we went to sleep. Mercedez was so cold and in unfamiliar territory so she kept crying and I had to put her in my sleeping bag to keep warm and neither of us slept the entire night. Worst night ever. Other than that, we had a good time.
Hanging out with twins. We really try to put them in matching outfits, or at least coordinated outfits but it is so hard to find cute things that go together for a boy and girl. Me and Justin are thinking of creating a store for multiples!
Justin had a birthday!!! He's 28 and here he is sporting his birthday presents all at once. New crosstrainers, a freaking sweet bat that I surprised him with (he's already hit like 4 homeruns with it) and a backpack. The one he was using was from high school and his mission and like a million hikes and vacations we've gone on. Happy Birthday honey! I'm so glad you were born! Sidenote: You may be thinking, "backpack? What for? Didn't he graduate in December?" . Yes he did. But he's decided he wants to be a chiropractor, which I am all for! So he has a few pre-requisites so he went summer semester, is in school now for fall and we're headed down to California in January to do some accelerated classes before next fall when he will start the Chiropractic program. We're still looking at schools. There's one in Cali (which we've already vetoed because we were not impressed), Oregon, Texas, and Iowa. Those are the ones we've narrowed down. We just need to go and visit the campuses to get a feel for them. Except the Cali one. We already visited that one and it's out, to our dismay. I was really rooting for that one because, come one, it's Cali and we'd be close to family. Sad.
As mentioned above, Justin is in a couple softball leagues, team name "Pitch Slap". Last month he got in a pickle between second and third base, and the amateur third baseman went to throw it and failed to reach his desired location which would have been the second baseman's glove. Instead, from like 3 feet away, at Moch 5 came a softball smack into Justin's face. I saw him on the ground and still didn't know that it was his face that got hit. It had looked like his shoulder. Then he stood up and started spitting out blood. So I went over and he'd come off the field and was pacing and spitting more blood and his teamate came over and handed me his tooth! Root and all. I had no idea tooth roots were so freaking long! I was a little in shock (even though I'm a nurse, I think it's so different when it's your husband) and I looked up at him and said "What tooth is it?" He opened his mouth and there was a huge gaping bloody hole. It was his right front tooth. It was ghastly. I'm sure the look on my face right then was not reassuring for Justin because I just silently looked at him with wide eyes. I had no idea what the next step was. Luckily, everyone around me was thinking for me. A man ran over and said to put the tooth back in! I would have never thought to do that in a million years. So they shoved the 2 inch root back into the gaping bloody hole and we got ahold of our detist after hours. We headed to the dentist and that's when I got a good look at his lip. There was a gaping hole there as well!!! The tooth had pretty much came out, then shot through the inside of his lip and out, cutting the inside pretty good and leaving a ragged hole on the outside. I thought for sure it was going to leave a gigantic scar, but luckily the face and mouth heals up real quick and nice. We went to the dentist, had him secure it with some bond and wire, went to the ER to get stitched up. No dental insurance. Awesome. Two root canals later, the dentist said the tooth could still die so watch for discoloration, but we did everything we could to save the tooth. But it looks good now and you can barely see the scar. I actually think the tiny scar makes him look a little hotter! Nice war wound honey! (the pic is two days after the stitches. His lip was so much more swollen!)
Justin ran the Ogden Marathon (this pic from St. George). I didn't get any pics of him sadly. But I did venture out on my own with 4 month old twins in the stroller to meet him at the finish line. We waited, and waited, and waited. I finally figured we must have missed him seeing as it was like over an hour past the estimated time he was going to finish. We left and not 2 min of driving he called. We barely missed him! Apparently this race was very harsh on him. He started cramping up really early and it was torture the rest of the way. But at least you finished honey! And in pretty good time for being so cramped! I think he's done with marathons though. He'll be sticking to halfs and 5k's.
In May, our Aflac check that we banked out on (thank you twins for cashing out from being in the NICU, at least there was one positive thing about being there) ran out. Therefore, I decided I better get a job. I was a little rushed seeing as at about the same time Justin became commission only. No more salary. We were counting on that salary. So I seriously applied for like 30 different RN positions. And of course you have to do it online and answer a million questions which answers to those questions either give you a shot at an interview, or bump you out of the running before ever even looking at your resume. I have 5 years nursing experience. All that experience being at Primary Children's Hospital. Also over 2 of those years being the Nursing Director at the Residential Treatment Center I was at. I'd say I have a good foundation and experience. I couldn't even get an interview for post-partum. There are no major pediatric jobs other than Primary's which are hardly hiring, so almost all the calls I got were for Psych! Ok, the RTC was NOT psych nursing. Hospital psych is a whole different world. I found out in one of my interviews that basically right now, there is such a shortage of nursing jobs, that there's like 350 applicants for each job and so there's those questions to weed out all applicants but 20 for interviews. So even if I have 5 years experience, if I answer NO to "have you ever worked post-partum", even if all my other answers were awesome, the person that has been a nurse for 4 months and has worked post partum pretty much gets the job. Long story short, I had two offers in a step-down ICU, both in Salt Lake, but I really didn't want to drive that far. A hospital 7 min away from my house had a psych position and a super flexible schedule. So I took it, after touring and realizing it really wasn't that bad and pretty much just babysitting. WRONG! I couldn't stand it. I really gave it a good try but it was awful. I'm not going to get into all the details cause this is already turning into a super long post, but holy crap. My mind, body and spirit could not take it. It was flat out evil at times. Like the devil himself was there. Emotionally I couldn't handle it. Then a job that I'd applied for and pretty much got, but they just didn't have anything for me called. KidsOnly Home Health. Sweet! I took the job. I'm the nurse for the Northern Region. Sadly, they don't have much referrals yet coming my way so I have a job, but really not working. Hopefully they get some cases soon for me.
June 8th was our anniversary and we spent it down in California with Justin's family. His parents were awesome and watched the babies 2 days and a night so we could go play. Well, tried to play. I was a walking zombie, still having to pump in the middle of the night. So I had to drag all my pumping equipment with us to the hotel. I certainly didn't feel up to getting into a swimming suit, so we pretty much just relaxed and slept a lot. Went to dinner, then the next day went to Knotts berry farm. We both thought it would be a lot funner. Standing in line with 12-14 year olds was almost comical. Seriously, there were hardly any grown people. And it was hot and all these kids were wearing shoes, socks, jeans, and hoodie jackets! What the? I was sweating to death and I had on half the stuff these kids were. It was weird. They did have some fun rides though, and Justin had been eyeing the 3 point shot basketball game that you could go try. There were like 4 different stations and 5 balls at each and you had like a minute to shoot them all. All these little kids were barely making like 2 or 3 out of the 20. So Justin was itching to show them up. So he took his turn. He didn't make one!!! It was hilarious. It's ok honey, I know you're a good basketball player! So there's our life in a nutshell.
Justin's aunt sent us these adorable personalized blankets she made and I've been wanting to get some pictures of them ever since. So we had a little photo shoot. Note to self: Don't ever try to have a photo shoot by myself again! Definitely need two hands for that!
These little munchkins are almost 8 months old. We've been trying out solids for a little over a month now. They're doing pretty good with it, but it can get overwhelming at times trying to bottle feed PLUS try to feed them solids when I'm by myself. Sawyer took a week or so to catch on and Mercedez took right to it, but now Sawyer's doing awesome and she's wanting nothing to do with it. A common saying in our household "If it's not one, it's the other."
These babies are 100% bottle fed with 100% breastmilk. I have been pumping for almost 8 months now. I didn't think I'd be able to last this long pumping, but with the help of the lactation specialist, a hospital grade pump, herbs and a dedicated 2 hour pumping schedule that first month of their life, I was making enough milk for triplets! Seriously, I can fill two 9 oz bottles after a pumping session. I'm sure I could have nursed if I wanted to be a depressed, anxiety nut case for 3-4 weeks until they got big enough to catch on. Mercedez mouth was so tiny she could hardly get any part in and they were just so little. My plan had been to nurse and I remember sitting in my bed with my twin nursing pillow, babies in their bassinets and working with them to nurse. I sat there 3 hours never moving from that spot. By the time I had tried to feed both, neither one had eaten enough and were fussy,and couldn't sleep and it was almost time to feed again! I pretty much had a breakdown and decided I couldn't wait the few weeks it would most likely take for them to get big enough to catch on, but I was determined that they get breastmilk. And here we are 8 months later. Has it been hard and time consuming? Yes. Is it worth it? Yes. 
I love to pinch these cheeks!!!!!!! We've put them on a schedule from the beginning (also thanks to the NICU for adding to the strictness of that schedule). But occasionally one deviates from the schedule due to the fact that they're two completely different people and therefore have different sleeping needs at times. I'd say those are my hard days, when one wants to sleep longer and the other decides nap time is over and wants to eat. I'm literally feeding one, playing, then putting them down for a nap only to get the other one up and do the same thing. When this happens when do I eat? When do I pump? When do I shower? When do I pee? Pretty much don't have time for those things. 
So there's their cute faces and an 8 month update! They've been rolling around like crazy and can sit up for short periods of time and love to cruise around in their walkers. I'm happy to let them take all the time in the world to figure out how to crawl! Life might get a little crazier when they're mobile!
I can't believe my babies are 7 months old! It sure has been aSometimes Justin would get ahead of himself and say things like "I can't wait until they do this..." and I'd have to remind him that that would come way too quickly and then what we had with them now would be gone!
I still remember holding Sawyer when he was still so little that he'd curl up on mychest as I rocked him. I started crying cause I realized he probably wouldn't be doing that much longer. Sure enough, about a week later, that phase was over and he wantedto arch his back and raise his head to look around.
I savor the moments like that. The ones I know are going to be gone soon.
I never thought I'd be considering piercing my little baby girl's ears. Growing up we could get ours pierced I think when we were 8. Or maybe it was 12. Either way, we were older. But Justin has mentioned it a couple times. He thinks it's the cutest thing. And I do too. When I see a baby girl with sparkly little pink studs in her ears I think it's adorable. So why do I have such hesitations? I'm not sure. Somehow thinking about making holes in her perfect new little skin seems awful, yet I'd be fine with it in 6 years. Why would it be any different to do it now if I'd be fine with it in 6 years? I think it really comes down to the thought mentioned above. I don't care if she's not old enough to take care of them on her ownand I don't think I'm taking a "choice" away from her by not waiting till she's old enough to decide on her own if she wants them (I don't know a little girl that doesn't want their ears pierced) so it's not because any of those things. I just don't know if I could bring myself to do it. Once it's done, there's really no undoing it. What to do, what to do.