Michigan Trip Part 5: The Birthday Party!

I really wanted to celebrate Alexis, Jack, and Faith's first birthday with my family and since we left MI 12 days before their actual birthday on June 7th, I felt like it was close enough so we could throw a party. My parents, my older brother, his wife, and their two kids, my younger brother and his fiance, my grandma, and Micah's mom were all at the party, and I'm sad that I didn't get any photos of all of them with the babes! I guess they'll all have to fly out to ABQ next weekend for their actual birthday so I can get the photos :).

As I mentioned in my last post, Micah was only in town for a few hours between coming back from Yosemite and leaving with us to go home to ABQ, so we squeezed in the birthday party during that time. We woke up the babes from their morning nap at 11:15, fed them a quick bottle, and our guests arrived around 11:30. We quickly changed Alexis, Jack, and Faith into their "ONE" onesies as we didn't want them to get dirty before the party, and we all ate lunch while the babes played on the floor. After we were done eating we put them in their chairs for a few photos, fed them their favorite puree of sweet potatoes and chicken, sang Happy Birthday, and then gave them their cupcakes. After cleaning the babes up we opened a few gifts and then put them down for their afternoon nap around 1:30 so that they could get in some good sleep before we got on the plane and we could pack. It was a jam packed couple of hours and of course not everything went as planned as Faith refused to take her afternoon nap, but overall everything went well and Alexis, Jack, and Faith enjoyed their first 1st birthday party!

We put their chairs on the porch so they didn't drop cake crumbs in the carpet in the dining room. Jack is always interested in how things work and he was intrigued by the birthday decorations spinning above him.

L to R: A, J, F

Birthday hats!

Faith

Jack - he was not a fan of his hat

Alexis

Birthday bibs!

Eating lunch. Micah, Grammy (Micah's mom), and Adelle fed the babes.

Alexis

The cake. Although it looks simple, this took a very long time to make and was almost a Pinterest fail. We used two square pans and a circle pan to get the letters, but we made a few mistakes along the way which made it difficult to form the letters and I think I need to take Art 101 as it was quite difficult to make purple frosting! The babes cupcakes had a "special" frosting of cream cheese and a small amount of apple juice concentrate as I didn't want to give them a bunch of sugar before getting on an airplane, especially since they never have sugar. This is probably the last cake I'll ever make for the babes unless they want a circle or rectangle as I think I'll leave the decorating to the experts.

I love this photo as it shows all of the work that goes into getting three babes to smile at once! Clapping, singing, puppets...anything goes if it works!

Singing Happy Birthday. Instead of singing three times we sang, "Happy Birthday to Alexis, Happy Birthday to Jack, Happy Birthday to Faith, Happy Birthday to you," which is birth order and seemed fair even though they don't know the difference yet.

Cupcake time! Jack is really excited!

It was interesting to see how differently they ate the cupcake. Alexis dove right in, Faith ate pieces, and Jack was confused by the frosting stuck all over his hands!

Faith

Alexis

Jack - he got past the frosting issue and then it was a mess!

Luckily he doesn't have much hair yet so it was easy to clean out!

Alexis rubbing cake on her face. Surprisingly we didn't have to change any of their clothes after this!

Gift time! Alexis, Jack, and Faith are getting a water table from my parents but since that was too hard to bring back to ABQ with us they gave them water toys to open in Holland which will be used with the table.

Clothes from Uncle Kent and Aunt Emily. I love coordinating triplet outfits!

The cards were a hit with the babes

This card was really fun as it was animated!

Adelle reading the card to Alexis

Alexis

Jack

I need to learn how to photoshop as this would have been great if Micah was looking! L to R: J, F, A

We couldn't take the cards away or they would cry, so they are in the photo

Not sure how Alexis's feet ended up on Faith's shoulders!

Although we are probably crazy for squeezing in the birthday party and adding stress to our travel day, I felt like it was worth it as we won't get to celebrate many birthdays with family and 1 is a big milestone. I'm glad everything went so smoothly and I am thankful that my mom did all of the food prep so that I could focus on packing up our stuff for our trip home.

Michigan Trip Part 4

Our second week in Michigan was similar to our first as we visited with more friends and relatives and we went to various places around town. I think the photos tell the story best, so here they are!

My parents condo has a basement (which is where we slept as there are two bedrooms down there), so the gate was necessary but Faith thought it was a great place to practice her climbing. Maybe we have a future rock climber :)

Faith

Jack

Alexis

Our exersaucer at home doesn't have one of these yummy bars! All three thought this was fun to suck on. Faith is in the photo.

We ventured out to my friend Lyndsey's house one afternoon and Rachel (in the photo) met us there. It was fun to catch up with a couple of friends! L to R: A, J, F

Lyndsey has four children ages 7, 5, 3, and 4 months! Alexis, Faith, and Jack enjoyed getting their picture taken with baby Molly. Although she is quite a bit younger than our babes, she really isn't much smaller.  I love how Alexis put a protective hand on Molly's shoulder ;)

One evening I drove to Grand Rapids to see my brother and his fiance, and my parents took the babes to my niece and nephew's softball and baseball games. I helped get them settled at the game before I left, but they were so busy playing I don't think they even noticed I was gone! It was nice to have an evening off from putting them to bed.

Jack

Alexis (top) and Faith looking through the gate towards the front door

Alexis

Over the last few months Faith has had a little trouble with her PJ's. Somehow she manages to get her legs into the body of her PJ's and she has trouble getting them back into the correct leg holes, so she has woken up screaming several times with both legs in one leg hole (kind of like a mermaid). I've realized that the tighter fitting PJ's don't let this happen but the girls don't have many pairs, so I have been putting her in Jack's PJ's some nights. Here is our lil' slugger, Faith, ready for bed :).

I realized on this trip that tupperware really is one of the best toys. You can put stuff in it, bang it around, or even wear it as a hat! Alexis really enjoyed wearing her tupperware hat!

Since I always sit in the front seat of our 4Runner, it was kind of fun to ride in back of the van (that we borrowed from my sister-in-law Jodi - THANK YOU!!) and be able to see and talk to my babes. Faith often sat in the back row next to me and she always stared at me with this precious look on her face. So darn cute!

Our evenings were busy most of our time in MI so we did many morning baths instead of night baths. Here are three babes ready for their morning bath! Top to bottom: J, A, F.

Faith actually fell asleep sitting up in her crib during one afternoon nap. I kept hearing her make little cries so I went down to check on her and found her sitting up but swaying  a little and she would cry every time she almost fell over. I didn't know this was even possible! I laid her down and she fell fast asleep in her "comfort position" with her three pacis close by just in case!

One afternoon my grandma came over for awhile to hang out with the babes and she even helped feed Faith lunch. It was fun to spend some time with her while we were in town.

Alexis

We went to Disney World when I was 8 years old and the only souvenir I wanted was a huge Mickey Mouse. Since I had saved up the money for it my parents let me buy it even though it was a hassle to get back to MI on the airplane. Little did I know that over 20 years later my own children would think this was the best thing ever! They were so excited when I brought it up from the basement. L to R: J, A, F 

I also got a huge bear for Christmas from my grandparents around the same time, and our babes found that to be a lot of fun as well! Alexis had fun with the bear!

Jack

One afternoon we ventured out to Kollen Park to enjoy the sunshine and sit by Lake Macatawa. Here are my parents with Jack, Alexis, and Faith at the park.

Micah's cousin's son had a birthday while we were in town so it was the perfect time to get the great grandchildren together with Grandpa Howard for a photo. This is only 2/3rds of the great grandchildren though as Micah's sister's three children were at home in Colorado and another one of Micah's cousins has a daughter but they don't live in town. 

One thing I really wanted to do while in Holland was visit the beach, and we were lucky that the Sunday before we left was great weather for it! The babes did try to eat the sand, but when we go back in August I'm sure they'll figure out quickly that it's not the best thing to put in your mouth. L to R: A, J, F

We were in a hurry to get out to the beach and I completely forgot toys, but we had enough water bottles to go around which provided great entertainment for our short time there (since we had to get home for bedtime!)

On Monday we celebrated our babes 1st birthday (12 days early) as that was the only chance to celebrate with my family. I will write about that in my next post as I have many photos to post.

Our travel back to NM went smoothly overall. Micah had an epic trip back to MI as he finished climbing El Capitan on Saturday night and slept on top that night, Sunday he and his climbing partners hiked down which took a few hours, packed their truck, and then got stuck in holiday traffic in Yosemite National Park. For awhile he was worried that he would not make it back to Las Vegas in time for his flight (he flew in and out of there as it is on the way from ABQ to Yosemite and his friend could pick him up and drop him off on his drive), but luckily they did make it to the airport in time. Micah had a midnight flight out of Vegas, a layover in Chicago, and then he landed in Grand Rapids around 9:30 a.m. He made it back to Holland around 10:30, we started our birthday party at 11:30, put the babes down for a quick nap at 1:30, and then left Holland at 2:30. It was a quick stop back in Holland for him, but we definitely made every minute count!

This time we planned for a little more time at the airport than we did flying out of ABQ and we had enough time to feed the babes a bottle before going through security (thanks to some help from my parents) and then we were on our way to Minneapolis. Our first flight was short and all three babes stayed awake for the duration. We had a very short layover in Minneapolis and really only had a enough time to buy food to eat on the plane and use the restroom before boarding our next flight. Although Jack cried a bit as he had trouble falling asleep, all three slept for a portion of the flight and overall they did fine. Although it was hard for me to leave my family behind in MI, we have some great friends in ABQ that picked us up from the airport and even brought us a pizza for dinner since they knew we wouldn't have any food in the house or time to run out to get anything with getting the babes to bed. Thank you Dan and Val for your kindness and thoughtfulness!

Stay tuned for my next posts about our birthday party and our time in ABQ since returning home!