A Great Birthday

Last year I turned 30 and Micah surprised me with a trip home to Michigan to visit my family. I was very happy to be with my family on my birthday as my mom always works hard to make my birthday feel special (she probably puts in a little extra effort since it is only three days before Christmas and she doesn't want me to feel overlooked), but since I was 8 1/2 weeks pregnant with triplets I wasn't feeling so great and I definitely wasn't able to celebrate with my favorite adult beverage. This year my parents were visiting us during my birthday so I decided to plan my birthday celebration myself.

My birthday fell on a Sunday and since my parents were going to be in town from Michigan and Micah's parents were able to drive down from Colorado for the weekend, we asked our pastor if we could have the babies baptized that day. All three did great during the baptism and the entire church service, which was a relief! We definitely don't make it to church every Sunday right now as it's hard to coordinate their three hour feeding and nap schedule with church, but it helped to have six adults (the two of us and the four grandparents) so there were lots of extra arms. We love our church family (Crossroads Fellowship Presbyterian in ABQ) and we are excited to raise our babies in such a great community of believers. It will also be very easy to remember the anniversary of their baptism since it fell on my birthday (which is also the anniversary of our engagement nine years ago).

Grammy Howard with Faith (left) and Grandma Snyder with Alexis (right) after their bottles at church before the service began

L to R: My parents, me with Faith, Micah with Jack, Micah's mom with Alexis, and Micah's dad

After a lunch at home with both of our parents, and a short nap which is definitely a luxury, Micah and I went to the climbing gym together. We both climb at the gym during the week, but we find it hard to go together since it means we need to find a babysitter. It was fun to climb together again!

On our way from the climbing gym to our hotel we stopped at Total Wine, which is relatively new in ABQ and Micah and I had only been there together once on a quick outing. We decided on a bottle of Pinotage from South Africa, which reminded us of our trip to South Africa in August 2012. Great memories and great wine!

We then checked into our hotel, Homewood Suites by Hilton in ABQ Uptown, took quick showers and headed out to happy hour. By this time it was actually quite late for happy hour but the restaurant that serves my favorite drink (raspberry lemondrop martini) has happy hour all day on Sundays so we were in luck! After a drink and an appetizer, we headed over to an Italian restaurant for dinner.

Overall it was a great day and the babies even got me flowers! But the best part was that my parents volunteered to babysit overnight so I got my first uninterrupted night of sleep since before the babies were born (even when they were in the hospital I had to wake up to pump every few hours). I think it's going to take some work to train my body to actually sleep through the night again as I definitely woke up a few times, but at least it was on my body's own timing and not in response to a crying baby!

Thanks to everyone who helped make my 31st birthday a great day!

The night before my birthday with the babies (since we were gone the night of my actual birthday). Left to right: Jack, Alexis, Faith.