Wowza!

It's definitely been a weekend. And then some. About the middle of last week, Nathan and I decided that it would be possible for us to head to Portland on Friday in order to go to Johnny and Laura's wedding. Johnny has been Nathan's best friend since Johnny was 4 and Nathan was 6. Since meeting both Johnny and Laura, they have become like family to us and the idea of missing their wedding was heart-wrenching. So on Friday we got up early, left the house by 6:30 am, headed to Boise for the boys' 10:00 (Boise time) eye appointment, made it back to Baker in time for my 1:00 follow up appointment with my OB, and were on the road to Portland by 3:oo. After stopping off at Johnny's apartment briefly to introduce him to the boys, we finally made it to Nathan's mom's house by around 10 pm. Needless to say, it was a long day. Thankfully, Jan offered to stay up practically the entire night with the boys, giving Nathan and I the chance to get some much-needed sleep.

As for the twins, they are master travelers; besides when they let us know they were hungry, we hardly heard a peep out of them. And just let me say that Nathan and I have become masters of changing and feeding on the fly. No, not while we're actually driving, but we did make two stops on the way there, one outside of Hermiston and one in Troutdale, where we managed to change both of the boys on my lap and feed them both with minimal opening and closing of doors (it was a bit chilly outside). I will never again underestimate the benefits of a well-stocked diaper bag and I love the fact that the dashboard of our Durango can double as a family-sized dining table, perfect for preparing bottles!

The rest of the weekend was a blur of activities and visits. Johnny and Laura wedding on Saturday was a beautiful Catholic affair spanning an hour and a half, with a very lively reception afterwards. Jan did Grandma duty for us so we didn't have to worry about the boys bawling their heads off in the middle of the wedding, although I did pick the boys up and bring them to the reception for a few minutes to meet Laura and John's parents; unfortunately, they couldn't stay for very long because the DJ was playing the music so incredibly loud. Also on that day, the boys got to meet their great grandparents (Jan's parents) for the first time and see their Grandpa Ger again. After the wedding, Nathan went to bed while Kate and I sat up with the boys and watched Ghost Hunters on hulu.com...pretty good show by the way...and just chatted.

On Sunday the boys' met another set of great grandparents (my dad's parents) and then had a maiden voyage in their stroller when Ger, Nathan and I took them to Costco to get gas ($2.03/gallon!!!), a few zillion baby wipes (ok, 1408 to be exact), and six cans of formula. We managed to squeeze in a quick dinner at Old Spaghetti Factory before the boys started whining for food, which we thought was pretty great timing on their parts...talk about being troopers!

We were suppose to head home early Monday morning, but it was a long night with the boys. I was up with them until 6:30 am when I finally handed off baby watch duty to Nathan. He told me he'd wake me up in a couple of hourse, and then promptly fell asleep on the couch with one of the boys on his chest. Adorable, but I didn't wake up until 11:30. And let me tell you, getting yourself, your husband, and twins all packed up is not a quick process! Add in a couple of feedings, feeding myself and Nathan, and Nathan getting two hours of work done for the newspaper and we didn't leave Jan's until about 4:00 pm. So much for leaving around 7 am! As we were stuck in traffic on Sunset Highway, surrounded by pea soup fog, we remembered that a normally 5 hour drive has now been translated into a 6-7 hour drive thanks to having two infants along for the ride. Figure in the nasty traffic between Hillsboro and Troutdale, and we were looking at not getting home until around midnight. No dice. We called up Nathan's dad and ended up spending the night at his place.

Which actually turned out to be a ton of fun. Some family friends came over to meet the boys, who graced us with a four hour period of being awake and not fussy. Oh, and we had a major event! While enjoying some tummy time, Levi rolled over, from his tummy to his back!!! Usually this doesn't happen until around 3 months...keep in mind that the boys are still 8 days away from their due date and you don't start looking for milestones to happen in preemies until after their due date has arrived. That's called their "adjusted age", which technically means that the boys are -8 days old. I think we can safely say that our boys are over-achievers! We, of course, made a huge deal over this and watched with bated breath for him to do it again but evidently he tuckered himself out during the first go-around.

Anyway, we finally got on the road to come home at around 9:30 am on Tuesday and got home at about 3:30, having only stopped once outside of Hermiston to feed and change the boys. It seems like they have started staying awake more during the day and sleeping more at night...except for tonight, simply because they slept so much in their carseats yesterday. Guh. Today we have another doctor's appointment and I'm hoping to hear that they've both reached 6 lbs. On Thursday they'll be 39 weeks, with only one week left until they're "full term".

In other news, I got a call from my boss yesterday letting me know that I am almost out of leave time hours. I was really hoping that I'd have enough to stay home until just after Christmas, but evidently that isn't the case. So I will be heading back to work on December 1st and (thankfully) starting out on graveyard shift. This way I'll be able to get my toes wet again before diving head first into day shift after having been gone for 4 months straight (shudder). I'm hoping that the gal who has been covering for me will still be willing to cover Christmas Eve; I have Christmas Day off, and it would be great to have both days off since it's the boys' first Christmas and we have about 10 family members coming into Baker from around the state to spend the holiday with us and the boys. As bummed out as I am that I don't get another month to just stay home and hang out with Levi and Asher, I am excited to go back to work.

And now I have a boy crying for me to feed him. Night!