New Video on Quint Talk - The secret language question

Here is the latest video. It is about how the quints are learning how to speak and the rumor that multiples often develop a secret language.



We are expecting our next Quint Olympics video to come out some time around August 16th but we might get another "super short" out before that. We are also considering some outtakes videos since Riley and Kaiya are pretty silly.

Our video from "Fox and Friends" morning show

So, we had that article last week on abc.com. Because of that, we got a call from a guy at Fox News that wanted to have us on their show. We had to go to down town Austin pretty early. They wanted us there about a half hour before we were on. The only problem with that is that it doesn't take long for 5 nearly two year old kids to get board of sitting. This is the result:

Some attention about the fact that we don't get much attention

Today there was an article on ABC news about us. It is here:

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=7747473&page=1

It was funny because the reporter that interviewed Rachelle kind of already had in mind what he wanted to write about and only seemed to use the statements Rachelle said that supported his hypothesis. He was hoping to hear that things are really tough for us now and that our help has evaporated. The reality is that if we needed the help, it would be here. It is here at any time we have needed it. Right now, we still receive a lot of help from our friend Virgina, our friend Cassaundra, our friend Halli, our friends the Bollingers, our friend Barbara, our friends the Winerts, our friends the Zamoras, our friends the Reeses, our moms and dads, and a whole bunch of other people. I just want to make sure that all those people know that we really appreciate it.

Anyway, the ironic part was that the article was about how we don't get attention anymore...and here they are giving us a bunch of attention. Kind of funny.

One other thing to note...we are in the process of making a few more quint YouTube episodes. The one we are working on now is a special one that will probably not come out until August (because it is extra special).

5 days without Rachelle

Last week, Rachelle went on a trip to Utah for the BYU Women's conference and to visit some family and friends. Because of that, I got to stay home with the kids. This was a good experience for me because it helped me appreciate what she does just a little bit more and help me realize that she is much more cut out for it than I am.

Fortunately, we have a good friend from church named Virginia that came over ever day. She is like an extra grandma to the kids and really helped out a ton. In fact, about half way through, I realized that I was acting more as back up for her. She came every morning at 6:00 AM, went home for a 2 hour lunch and then came back until the babies were asleep at about 7:20 PM. Without that help, I would have really struggled. As you might guess, it is really hard to watch 5 walking babies at once. Speaking of that, I wonder how much longer I will be able to call them "the 5 babies". I mean, Kassidy tried to dress herself the other day and they are all starting to say a few words so I don't know if they are really babies at this point.

Well, the 5 days went by without any major incidents and I got to go back to work. Rachelle had a great time and even got to sleep in one day. For her sake, I wish she could have stayed longer and slept in a few more days. For my sake, I am glad she is back.

I really wonder how long it is going to be before we can sleep past 6:00 AM. I remember that with the other two kids, it was nice because on the weekends, we could switch off with one of us going out and taking care of the kids while the other one got to sleep in a little. That doesn't happen anymore and I miss it. It is really a lot like a farm I guess. These babies just aren't going to feed themselves... at least not for another 6 months or so.

Something else I realized is that my work is a lot less draining than taking care of those kids. Mothers really do have a very rough job and deserve a whole lot more respect than our society gives them. I heard a woman the other day on TV say something like, "Some woman are more than just mothers." It made me kind of sad because many people seem to think that being a mom (especially a stay-at-home mom) is a path for those that were too lazy or unintelligent to do something better. That is pretty sad and something that scares me about our society. I can definitely say that some of the most intelligent and hard working women I know are stay-at-home moms. Rachelle is no exception. She graduated with a Master's degree in Statistics and had a whole lot more job offers than I did when we started looking. She was also making about 20 percent more than I was when we started working. When she chose to be a stay-at-home mom, it was a big sacrifice for her. Gone was the additional income, gone was the recognition for her talents, and gone was the adult conversation. However, I know our kids are benefiting from that decision and will continue to benefit from it for the rest of their lives. Besides, at this point, daycare would be so expensive that it wouldn't even be worth considering.

Anyway, I just want to say how awesome it is to have great mothers like her in the world. Rachelle, my own mother and mother-in-law are all great mothers and we are lucky to have them. Daddies are definitely necessary but I realize now that I could never do as good a job as Rachelle does. Those are my thoughts after a week without Rachelle. She is simply awesome.

The pinewood derby

I know that it is weird for me to post so soon after the last post but something interesting happened today. Today was the pinewood derby for cub scouts and it was Riley's first pinewood derby too. For anyone that doesn't know what that is, the cub scouts and their mom or dad make a car out of a block of pine wood and race them. Ideally, it would be really nice if the boys made their own cars by themselves but the reality is that making a decent car requires power tools and a bit of know-how...which means the dad pretty much does everything but sand the car.

Well, I was pretty nervous for this because there is a lot of pressure. You see, Rachelle's dad and her uncle John all were big winners of the pinewood derby (which means their boys all won the pinewood derby) in both design and speed. In order to be considered an official part of the "club", I felt like I needed to do something special.

Fortunately, Riley had a good idea. He wanted to make the Batmobile and I thought that would be pretty fun so we did it. Here are a few pictures of how it turned out.

Before painting and adding in the nozzle

After painting and adding in the nozzle:



Back view (where the weight is).


On the night of the race, I wasn't sure how it would go because I hadn't really run it on anything and wasn't totally sure that it would go straight. To make a long story short, it went straight and I feel like I can be part of the club now. He won both the design and the speed portion.




Now I just have to manage expectations for the next year because I don't want him to start thinking he will always win. He was doing pretty well I think. He went up to every kid after just about every race and told them how good of a job each of them had done. I was really proud of him for doing that but I told him afterwords that I wanted to make sure that he also did it when he lost. I think he will.

Finally, another video and another blog post

OK, it has been a really long time so my guess is that nobody reads this anymore. Even so, I decided to post something anyway since I have finally made a new video. We have been having trouble making new videos because they only take one nap a day and we have a hard time making the commentary. Because of that, we decided to go with a simpler format for now. We do still have some quint olympics ideas going but they are going to take a little while to actually make. We have a friend, Ally, who recently won American Gladiators that we are hoping to have come out and do a baby gladiator episode with them.

Anyway, here is a new video:

New Quints in Town

A few weeks ago a new set of Quints were born here in Austin. The parents are Casey and Ethan Jones. They came and talked with us early on to get our perspective on things and we tried to help them get ready for it as best we could. Their blog is here:

http://www.joneslife.net/blog.htm

They are a great couple with a lot of faith and things seem to be going pretty well for them so far. We try to pray for them often because I know (from experience) that they can use all the prayers they can get. It is nice to know that we could assist someone in a way that many others had assisted us. As for us, we are doing well still. Last week HEB (a Texas grocery store) gave us gift cards that I think will be enough for a year's worth of diapers. We were floored. Apparently, they were doing some research to figure out how they can help the Jones' family and in doing the research they found out about us and decided to just give us a big donation. It was really nice of them especially since we are sort of out of the limelight now.

You also might have heard on the news about the octuplets born to a woman in California. Yesterday, someone from the BBC contacted us and wanted us to be a guest on their World Have Your Say program to talk about what it is like to have high order multiples. Rachelle couldn't do it (because she had to take care of five semi-grumpy little people) so I did it during lunch. I thought it was just going to be a little phone interview but it turned out to be a little bit bigger than that. I ended up having to go to a local public radio studio (KUT) and particpate there. throughout the program, the host and myself talked with a whole bunch of guests from all over the world ranging from the couple that had the first set of octuplets to various doctors in singapore, Nigeria and places like that. I even got to talk with the oldest set of triplets current living in the UK (three 81 year old men that were pretty funny to talk to). Anyway, it was pretty interesting. I did get into a bit of an argument because a caller from Washington state called in and said he thought it was bad that the government would give tax breaks for children. He thought that the government should be discouraging people from having children and should make people pay MORE taxes for having children. It was pretty weird and I wish I would have told him that if the government wanted me to pay more taxes for having the children I have, then I would do it because it would be worth it.

Anyway, that is it. Just wanted to give an update since I haven't written anything here for more than a month. I have some video that I need to finish but it is getting too old so I will probably have to make some new stuff to put up there.