What would you do if you had a million dollars?

I’ll tell you what I’d do, man. Party with two sets of quads at the same time, man. That’s what Chris Goerlich and I decided to do a couple of weeks ago as our wives’ quad mom group planned their third annual quadmom vacation. Chris emailed me because he was taking his kids north to visit Mari’s family and their trip happened to roll right through Wichita. We made a quick weekend party of it. Here is how it went down.

(L to R on the step): Finn, Cohen, Sophia, Pius, Forrest, Noah, and Laine. Danna in the front.

The Goerlichs rolled in here around 5 p.m. Friday night. There was all of the normal sniffing and feeling out that goes along with 3-year-olds. They stayed pretty close to their own siblings the first night. The Goerlich quads have met other sets of quads before, but this was the Graf quads first rodeo. They were so excited to see and meet them.

We decided to have them all have a “slumber party” in the Grafs’ bedroom. As the Goerlichs are veterans of this situation, they handled it very well. The Graf boys also did very well with it. Danna, on the other hand, screwed it up for everyone. She is usually the last one asleep anyways, but now she had four more 3-year-olds in the bedroom to terrorize. I felt like I had an infant again because I had to go into the room about 4 times through the night because Danna would wake up screaming. It wasn’t a fun night time for us dads, and I can imagine, for her roommates either. Amazingly, though, we survived.

This was their cluster…err…sleeping quarters for the two nights.

On Saturday morning we took the 8 man crew to my cousin, Ashley, and her husband, J.D.’s swimming pool. We rocked it for a couple of hours over there, and mine were so excited at first because I actually swam with them, too. I am terrified of water for myself as it is, but when I add my four toddlers to the pool my anxiety level goes even higher. So normally, I sit on the side and count to four…CONSTANTLY. All 8 of the kids have puddle jumpers and have become very good at “swimming” so it wasn’t bad. We had a blast, and it worked really well because they were all wiped out and took a nap so we didn’t have to battle Danna again.

Taking a break from the pool for some snacks.

Saturday evening we grilled out over here. I made “spicy burgers” for the adults, and chicken and hot dogs for the kids. They all ate really well and they stayed up pretty late driving our four power wheels cars around. What was really cool was that as the day went on, the kids started to interact with each other a lot more. The kids had a ball playing with each other throughout the day. Saturday night bedtime went a lot better so it was a good end to a good day.

The Grafs and Goerlichs attacking Stubby on Saturday night.

Dinner time!

Pius and Finn cruising the back yard.

Danna watching Cohen and Forrest.

Chris finally figured out how to make the fire truck go. Add a dude on the back.

Pius doing his best to charm Sophia. After they left Sunday afternoon, Pius and Laine started fighting about who Sophia would sleep next to the next time they came over.

Sunday morning we rolled out of bed, ate some breakfast, played with the powerwheels/in the basement for a little while and it was time for the Goerlichs to continue their trip. It was one of the coolest things I think I’ve seen. My kids interacting and playing with another set of kids that they had a ton in common with. I know Moni always says that those girls are her best friends and she is so thankful she met them. In this last year, as I’ve got to know each of the couples more, I’ve really started to feel a bond with all of them, too. How lucky for us to have such great friends that we share a pretty unique trait with:)

The last month…

Well, we left off about a month ago with the Riverfest, dentist appointments and severe weather.  In the last month, we’ve potty trained (pee only) Danna, I’ve had 4 book signings locally, Moni and I celebrated our 11th anniversary, we survived the 4th of July and the kids have continued to drive us FREAKING CRAZY!  I know I’ve said it before, and I apologize for repeating myself, but people need to change the term “terrible two’s.”  Two-years-old was easy compared to this three-years-old stuff .

The potty-training of Danna was so easy, it pissed me off.  The first day, we woke up and put on her panties.  She WOULD NOT go potty on the potty.  She would hold it for hours.  I could tell she had to go, but she wouldn’t let it go while she was sitting on the pot.  The second day, her and Moni had a battle of wills.  Moni kept pumping the fluids, sat her on the potty (she would sit, she just wouldn’t go) and wouldn’t let her off until Danna went.  Danna held it as long as she could, but when she realized she could pee on the pot she was basically trained.  I think in the last two weeks we’ve had one, maybe two, accidents.  She’s known what she was doing the whole time.  As far as pooping, she still won’t do that on the pot.  She will wait until nap time or bed time and go in her pull up.  Not sure how we’re going to combat that for sure yet, but any ideas would be more than welcome:)

This beautiful, little girl is too smart for her own good.

The week of Father’s Day, Suzanne Perez Tobias came out and interviewed me for an article that ran that Sunday in The Wichita Eagle.  It was a lot of fun for the kids to see themselves in the newspaper that Sunday, and it was GREAT publicity for my book.  I had four signings the past couple of weeks and they have all been a lot of fun and, for the most part, very well attended.  I’m sitting at 346 copies sold, and I’m hoping to start traveling to speak to/do signings for multiples groups soon, and the book is still available for order here on our website.  I was invited by Rainbows United, Inc. to speak here in Wichita in early August so I’m pretty excited about that.

The picture that was in The Wichita Eagle

Moni and I had a low-key celebration for our 11th anniversary on June 24th.  We had an all-day family fun day.  We went to the park and played on the playground and fed the ducks.  After the park, we went over to Uncle Jim and Aunt Renee’s house for some swimming fun.  It was a long day, and the kids were ready for bed.  After we got home and got the kids to bed, we were joined by some family and friends to celebrate for the rest of the day.  The following pictures are from our fun day at the park.

As for the 4th of July, it proved my theory of feast or famine.  We were invited to four or so parties, and couldn’t attend all of them.  It seems like when we have one thing on our calendar, we get invited to multiple other things so we can’t make it to everything and that’s a bummer.  Maybe as the kids get bigger, and we get more efficient in our travels we’ll be able to attend more things…hopefully anyways.  The following pictures are from the 4th of July “fireworks extravaganza”  at the Graf house.  Can you tell who the two are who weren’t at all interested in firing off the fireworks were?  The little Diva didn’t even care to watch.

        

   

See you later:)