The Jones Girls

Last year we received our Quad stroller through a wonderful organization called United Cerebral Palsy (UCP).   They put our little Amanda on their Christmas Tree to be “adopted” by a family for Christmas.  A family “adopted” Amanda and gave us the quad stroller for Christmas.   I was so touched both spirtually and emotionally.

So this year I wanted, actually, Cliff and I NEEDED to give back.    I contacted the Director of UCP of Orange County and told her we wanted to adopt a child and her family for Christmas.   There was a 13 month old little girl and her mom and dad who was on the UCP’s Christmas Tree to be Adopted.  So that was our special little girl that was our true meaning for Christmas this year. 

I took Mom and we galavanted off to spend the afternoon shopping on Sunday afternoon.  She and I really had a wonderful time together.  I felt like Mrs. Clause checking off all of the items on the “wish list” for this precious little girl and her parents.   To be honest, I really had no idea how we could afford it.  I truly felt God’s love in my heart and I just knew it was the right thing to do.   I figured if it took me a year to pay off the credit card bill, then that is what I would do for this special family.  Cliff felt the same way I did.

Well a really neat miracle happened.  This is where The Lord and his Divine Intervention comes in.   When Mom and I got home from shopping, Cliff told me that he was receiving a Christmas bonus and it was enough to cover the Christmas presents that I purchased for the family.   I had the biggest, happiest smile along with grateful tears running down my cheeks.   I just knew this was God’s work.   Praise The Lord!!  

The next morning I wrapped all of the presents.  I wrote on each present “God Loves You”.  These presents really weren’t from me, they were from The Lord.   Praise Jesus!!   I contacted UCP and told them the presents were all ready.   Coincidently, our adopted family’s caseworker with UCP was visiting the famly that day.  She stopped by my house and picked up all of the presents and took them to the family’s house.   So this was another little Blessing.   I would have had to drive baout 3 hours total driving time to drop the presents off so this was truly a Godsend for me.

I truly see the signs that God gives me in subtle ways and sometimes in big ways.  

Merry Christmas!!

Sorry  I haven’t posted in a while.   On December 12th we met up with our very dear friend and spent the day with him at Disneyland.  Disneyland was decorated beautifully for the Holidays.   The girls had a blast.   They triplets went on the Nemo ride for their first time.   Cliff and I also took the triplets on their first ride on the Astro Rocket ride in Tomorrowland.    We took the girls to Toon Town and they got to spend some time with Mickey Mouse at his house.    Micky picked Maryssa up and she fell right asleep in his arms.  It was precious.  I swore I heard Mickey say “aww” in his costume (too funny).  The girls also met Minnie Mouse in Toon Town.   We got lots of pictures of them meeting Mickey and Minnie. 

We all had lunch in Toon Town.   We took everyone to dinner at The Plaza Inn.  We lucked out and a realy nice waiter got us prime seating for dinner.  It was really great. 

The highlight for the girls was watching Fantasmic.  Cliff has been showing them the show for a couple of weeks before we went to Disneyland.  So they were all pumped up and excited to watch Fantasmic.   They loved it.  Then there were beautiful fireworks afterwards. 

The weather was perfect.  We had a perfect day at Disneyland!!

This is Cliff, not Kimber,

I don’t post here as a rule but I made somthing I want Kimber to see. As you probably know we visited Disneyland a few days ago. What a chore that is with all these little ones. Well My,Our buddy Paul sent me one of these and I made one for Kimber.

Love ya Babe!! <3

For the past 6 weeks I have been feeling a bit down. The relationship between my mom and me seemed to be distant. I have been feeling a bit rejected by my mom. I haven’t mentioned this to any of you because I didn’t know if it was appropriate, but my heart has been hurting and aching for years about this. My mom moved out of state after I got married 10 years ago. I used to see her a couple of times a year from 1999-2004. When Savannah was born in 2004, she came down for 6 weeks but left early because she missed her boyfriend. She came down again for a few weeks when Savannah was 9 months old and then I didn’t see her for over 22 months after that. When I gave birth to the triplets my mom didn’t come to help me. She didn’t meet the triplets till they were almost a year old in 2007.

I asked her 6 weeks ago if she would come down for my 40th birthday which was on November 29th. She said she didn’t like traveling to see us and that she couldn’t deal with all of the girls. It hurt to hear that. My mom is just not into being a grandma. I felt so stupid for even asking her to come down and I told her to take care of herself and hung up the phone. So for the past 6 weeks it has been really tough. I have been keeping extra busy with Amanda and Maryssa’s surgeries and recoveries, volunteering different parties, play dates, moms socials with my 2 different moms clubs, taking the girls on lots of outings, etc. to try to numb the pain.

I received an e-mail from my mom the day before Thanksgiving telling me her plans for Thanksgiving and to also to wish me a Happy Birthday. It was a simple 2 line e-mail and it sucked. I tell you, I just felt empty. No phone call, no birthday card, NOTHING. Who was this distant person that I call my mom? It just really hurt. I cried in Cliffs arms and cried on and off for a couple of days. I threw myself into making everything from scratch for Thanksgiving. I took the uncarved Halloween pumpkins, cooked them down and froze them to make 7 homemade pumpkin pies with homemade pie crusts on Thanksgiving morning. The day of Thanksgiving, I made pumpkin bread, homemade biscuits, homemade artichoke & spinach dip, my friend Kaye’s corn recipe, my firend Annette’s artichoke recipe, baked the turkey, and made so many more dishes from scratch. I was trying to stay busy by cooking and playing with the girls so I wouldn’t think of how sad I was about the lack of relationship I had with my mom.

The morning of my birthday, 11/29, I was ok. I was so happy to have my husband and girls with me and so grateful for them. Later in the morning I cried really hard and just felt empty. I was thinking of how my mom had gone into labor with me right after Thanksgiving dinner on 11/28/68 and at 4am in the morning on 11/29/68 I was born. I just missed my mom so much and felt so abandoned by her.

My friend called me that morning and invited me out for ice cream. I told her I wanted to treat myself to a pedicure. So we went to do that while Cliff babysat the girls for a couple of hours. We came back at about 2pm. When I got back, Cliff met me at the front door and walked me to the backyard. There was a huge surprise party for me with all of my closest friends and my 2 brothers. Cliff grabbed a microphone and announced he had 2 surprises for me. The first was a special person came to celebrate with me. Slowly I saw a shadow and I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was my mom!! She had bought airline tickets to come visit me 6 weeks ago and wanted to surprise me. All of the 6 weeks of my anguish and pain lifted off of me when she said that she wanted to be here with us and spend almost 3 weeks with us, till 12/16. I almost fainted. Cliff had been planning this party and my mom coming down for over 6 weeks. It was so amazing!! My 2nd surprise was a wonderful band that I really love called Hot August Nights www.HotAugust.comThe singer looks and sounds exactly like Neil Diamond. I am a huge Neil Diamond fan. I got an incredible performance and sat next to my mom, hugged my mom and hugged my husband, my girls, my brothers and my friends so tight. The band gave me an autographed memorabilia T-Shirt and autographed CD as a present for my birthday. My husband has never given me a birthday cake the 10 years we have been married, but he got me one for my big 40th!! It had my favorite colors, white and yellow roses and said Happy 40th Fabulous Kimber. It was just an amazing and unforgettable experience.

I had planned a big family reunion for 12/13 and my mom is going to be here to enjoy it with us!! This is the BEST birthday present ever and I love now being 40!! Woo hoo!!!

Lately the triplets have been climbing on the bar stools in the kitchen wanting to sit down on them.  So I have been allowing them to practice sitting on them and they would sit on them for longer and longer periods of time.    I then started letting them do their drawing, coloring and artwork on the kitchen peninsula on their bar stools.  

Than last week I sat all of them down and fed them breakfast for the first time while they were sitting on the bar stools at the peninsula in the kitchen.  We have a flat screen TV in the kitchen that has satellite and a DVD player.   So I let them watch Sesame Street in the morning and they eat their breakfast while I am drinking my coffee, making Savvy’s lunch for preschool and load/unload the dishwasher and clean up.   

This has been such a huge and wonderful change for me and for them.   I can prepare their meals in the kitchen while they all sit down at the counter.   Previously, I would have to prepare their meals in the kitchen, then load them all up in booster seats at the dining room table, put bibs on, then bring all of their meals out one by one.  Then after they ate I would have to clean them, unload them from the booster chairs, clean the booster chairs, dining room table and floor.   Talk about time consuming.   So now there is no booster seats and I help them climb up and I prepare their food and had it to them right there at the counter/peninsula table.

I do have to do a little sweep up under the bar stools and tidying up, but it is so much easier than cleaning up all around and underneath the dining room table, chairs,  hardwood, and booster seats.

I have also got them trained to eat their snacks at a little picnic table I have in the den for them.  All 4 girls will eat their snacks and watch TV.  Sometimes I will let them have little cups of dry cereal in the morning if I am straightening up the den and I will let them eat at the picnic table in the den and watch TV.

I have been really working with Miranda on potty training this week.  For the past few days she has been peeing 50% in the potty chair and 50% wearing diapers during the day and wearing diapers at night.  Today she has not worn a diaper at all and she has peed on the potty chair and has not had any accidents.  She also pooped in the potty chair for the first time today.  I am so proud of her.   She walked in, said she had to poop, sat on her potty chair and pooped. Just like that!!  I am hoping she will potty train fully in the next couple of weeks.  She has plenty of cute little panties that she loves to wear.  

Amanda and Maryssa are sort of potty training but they are going to take a little longer.  Every time Miranda sits on the potty chair they like to sit down too so hopefully they might learn from Miranda.  My goal is to have everyone potty trained by the Fall 2009 before they start preschool.   The preschool requires them to be potty trained.  They would be going to preschool twice a week in the mornings.

Just a couple of days ago Miranda had taken off her diaper in her room.  She had pooped in her diaper and didn’t want to have the poopy diaper on her.  When she took it off the poop got everywhere.   Ugh.  It was so gross.   So hopefully we are seeing the end of diapers for her soon!!

When I was driving the triplets home from Amanda’s Occupational Therapy appointment yesterday, someone hit us.   I was on Euclid and Chapman in Fullerton and stopped at a red light.   I always look in my rear view mirror when I stop to see if the person behind me is stopping.   This is a reflex action after I got rear ended back in 1990 – what a bad accident that was!! 

Anyway, as I was looking in the rear view mirror, this black Toyota car kept on driving and not stopping.   I got nervous.  I assessed my surroundings to see if I could get out of her way but there were cars all around me.  So I prayed to God for protection, pressed my foot hard on the break, and I held on tight to the steering wheel with anticipation that we were being hit.   I focused my vision on my triplets in the back seat praying…   Wham!!  We were hit pretty bad in the rear.  She must have been going 30 mph.    I jolted forward even in my seat belt, but I was ok.  The girls jolted forward but were ok.  Thank God.  Savannah was in preschool safe and sound.  Again, thank God.

Then she got out of her car to assess the damage to her car.  She didn’t ask if I was ok or say sorry.   I told her I had triplet babies in car seats in my car.  I was so mad that she didn’t even ask if they were ok or check on any of us.  This girls was 18-20 years old.   I bet she was talking on the phone or text messaging.

I called Cliff to see if he was home.  I told him to get here and bring a camera and told him we were ok and what happened.  Then I called 911 to have the police come and the paramedics to check all of us out.   They were there in a few minutes and checked us all out.  My neck and lower back were sore.  The triplets all check out fine.  The paramedics told me a baby in a car seat is safer in a accident than an adult in a seat belt.   Very interesting…

The police took a report.  I didn’t even want to talk to get the girl, she was acting like the victim.  She stated she had a head concussion 2 days before the accident.   She called someone on her phone, probably her boyfriend and I heard her say that she wasn’t paying attention and hit us.  I should have gotten her insurance and driver’s license info but my girls needed me in the car.   I figured all of this would be noted on the police report.   it was a new car so I am sure she had insurance.  If not, we have uninsured motorist coverage on my insurance policy to protect us. 

Cliff arrived and immediately check on the triplets.  He then took pictures of both of our cars, the street, etc.   He assessed my car and said my tail pipe was destroyed but I could drive home slowly and carefully not going over 35-40mph.   So the police officer stopped traffic so I could get out of there.  I drove home carefully and I noticed when it was approaching 40mph the car would shimmy. 

I called the insurance agent and then picked up a minivan car rental from Enterprise.  Today I am taking our minivan into our mechanic who also a body shop as well.

Thank God we are all ok.  I am sore but will be alright.