When asked by my visiting teacher if I would like her to come to my house and just visit as usual, or go to the zoo with our kids, I gritted my teeth and decided the boys and I needed to get out of the house so I accepted the invitation and today we went to the zoo.
Of course the boys were angels.
I always stress about going anywhere by myself with them, but it has {almost} always been better than I anticipated.
During our "layover" of a day and a half, between Dallas and Hawaii we stayed in Provo and blessed our babies surrounded by family and friends.
We decided long before the boys arrived that we wanted to take our babies to Utah to bless them so our families could be involved. I'm so glad we did.
The boys were almost four months which was older than I had envisioned in my head, but it just worked out so perfectly.
Jesse gave them beautiful blessings and I received confirmation that the names we chose were the right names for our sweet boys.
Ian Jesse
We simply liked the name Ian from day one and his middle name is obviously after his dad. My family comes from a long line of naming the first son after the dad and I hope he grows up to be just like his daddy.
Passionate, creative, loving, comical, and just a little goofy.
Brigham Allan
Once again, we just fell in love with the name Brigham. It wasn't even on our board of names for the majority of the pregnancy, but one day it came to me and it just felt right. Allan is after my grandfather, (who I am also middle-named after). My grandpa passed away a month after Jesse and I were married and I miss him every day. He was the perfect grandfather and a wonderful man. I will teach Briggs about him and hope he can grow up just like him.
Hard working, mild mannered, truthful, sweet, and knowing what's important in life.
This is the group of priesthood bearers who laid their hands on Ian and Brigham's heads during their blessings.
The boys are so blessed to be surrounded by such wonderful men who are great examples of valiant living. I hope my boys can grow up to be like any one of these men.
Proud Grandpas
Beaming Grandmas
And beyond lucky parents
These are my cousins.
The other set of identical boys.
And of course with my twin siblings as well.
Who would have guess we'd have three sets of twins in 14 years.
My mom blames my grandparent's righteous living.
I think she's on to something.
It had been a whirlwind and the boys were starting to give me faces like these.
{Briggs}
{Ian}
So I figured I would take some more pictures of them later.
And later I did. As in three weeks later. Oops!
That's what happens when you go to Hawaii, and then come home and get sick for the two weeks after that. But alas, we got a few taken.
Despite being able to fall asleep at any given moment without warning, my mother has reassured me that I am in fact not narcoleptic, but am a mother.
And today has been the most perfect of motherly days.
{I} {B}
There is laundry strewn around the house in desperate need of folding, bills spread on the table needing to be paid, dishes stacked in the sink waiting to be washed, and the next size of clothes need to be sorted.
But instead...
I danced with Briggs.
I snuggled with Ian.
I thought about how I could rearrange my furniture to make more room for the various baby accessories we've most recently collected.
I kissed Briggs when he rolled head first into a toy.
I tickled Ian's chubby belly.
I sang songs, read books, and made ridiculous faces at them.
And in return I got lots of smiles, giggles, and sweet baby loves.
It was the most perfect of motherly days
{These were taken back in July but I'm usually the one behind the camera so I had to share some of me and my boys.}
(three months old)
Ian
Brigham
This mothering gig is hard, stressful, funny, and absolutely wonderful. It is definitely for me. And I'm so grateful Jesse works hard so I can stay home more with our handsome boys.
Who takes four month old twins to Hawaii? Husbaughts in Red.
Only crazy people. Sounds about right.
But we couldn't pass up a once in a lifetime trip with Jesse's entire family.
So we packed up the babes and off we went.
They really were perfect little travelers.
Except of course for the 5 poopy diapers we changed on our 6 hour flight.
In an airplane bathroom.
On our laps.
Yikes.
When she says "On our laps," she means everything was on our laps. And everywhere else. Fun.
The littles loved their leis from Mimi and Papa.
Those things stayed on the entire trip and the boys would stare at them and play with them.
Hawaii, what are you?
We had never been to Hawaii. We didn't know what to expect.
I had already accidentally said we were going to Mexico a couple of times before this trip, and when we showed up, we looked at each other and asked "does this look like Mexico to you?"
We were in agreement that Hawaii looked like little Mexico.
Which, in my opinion, is a compliment. Hawaii has the sort of "not terribly picky about architecture or city planning" vibe I get from every part of Mexico I've visited. It's laid back and worry free. I love them both.
Our house was about 45 minutes from the airport and it was exhausting getting there
At the beach
We really only took them to the beach this one time.
Believe it or not, it's a little bit of a mind-bending reality-shattering soul-crushing logic-defying hassle with babies!
There was a pound of sand in their carseats and if I wasn't worrying about them being too warm I was slapping more sunscreen on them. I was rather paranoid (and with good reason I think) about their delicate skin.
But they have officially been to and in the ocean now.
Ian had so much fun he wouldn't even let go of his lei for a nap
One day we went to a swap meet while we waited for our time at the Pearl Harbor Memorial.
Let me just say that this was another of these "Mexicanities" we encountered in Hawaii. The swap meet reminded me a lot of the tianguis you'll see everywhere in Mexico, and I love it. Swap meets are one of my favorite things to do outside, and one of a very few varieties of shopping I enjoy.
We did have to spend some (HAH!) of our time feeding babies and changing diapers.
We found a cozy curb and parked it in the shade.
Here Danielle is employing the lesser-used definition of the word "cozy," which means "the least ant-infested we could find at the time."
I was starting to feel like a Dr. Seuss book as I was nursing babies all over Hawaii.
I can nurse them by a tree
I can nurse them at the sea
I can nurse them on a plane
I will nurse 'til I go insane..."
And the boys respond:
I will poop during a nap
I will poop into your lap
I will poop while trav'ling far
I will poop all over the goll-danged car
Seriously, these boys like their food.
And 2-3 hours sure goes by fast.
Hubby showing off his puke repellent shirt.
And I'm kind of in love with this shirt. I mean I love Jesse.... in this shirt.
I was telling him all day long how cute he looked in it!
haha!
Rejoining the group after our feeding/changing detour.
Learning more about the attack on Pearl Harbor
Trying to keep cool.
Nothing like dipping wet wipes in water and keeping them on your babies' heads.
I actually discovered that their bottles' nipples act as great little squirters, so I would put the wipe on their head and periodically squirt water on it as it dried out to keep them cool.
Science!
The view from the USS Arizona Memorial
It's rare to have a picture of just three of us.
Mom, Dad, and Ian
Jesse took this picture of our "camera buddy"
It's not every day you see another red Nikon like Ruby.
The boys looked adorable in their Hawaiian outfits we got at the swap meet
We seemed to do a lot of this.
It was really warm in the house we stayed in so I couldn't hardly stand using a nursing cover so we pretty much locked ourselves in our room, I would nurse babies and we'd all fall asleep.
Hawaiian Shirt Buddies
Briggs, Papa, Mimi, Ian, and Uncle Laren
Keeping cool in the shade at the Polynesian Cultural Center.
{B} {I}
Briggs (and Ian for that matter) is not quite sure how he feels about being thrown in the air.
We're still working on it.
Whether they like it or not I'm gonna keep doing it, so they might as well learn to enjoy it.
It has always been a tradition of ours to take our own picture everywhere we go. I'm pretty sure we invented this.
And now we're including the littles in our fun tradition.
Although it takes a little more skill to get all four of us in.
We figured out one of us has to hold the camera and the other one pushes the button, which is why both our arms are out. Ruby's a gem, but she's a hefty camera for one hand.
Handsome hubby waiting for dinner at the PCC
See how that "handsome" up there is in black? That means my wife said it and not me.
Sweet.
We saw this guy and he seemed ok with us taking a picture of him with our boys.
Have I mentioned how dang cute these boys are?
And what wonderful travelers they are?
They were strapped into their carseats and pushed in the stroller for two full days and many other times in between. They did awesome.
{Briggs}
{And his dimples}
{Ian}
{And his dimples, too}
Jesse found some coconuts outside our house so he cracked one open and we drank the milk.
Another thing that reminded me of Mexico. I love coconut milk right out of the nut. Mmm MMM.
We even managed to take family pictures.
And don't judge our stripes, plaids, and shades too harshly. When we were told the dress code was white, khaki, and blue I discovered we didn't have much in these colors, and even less as I tried to decipher exactly what kind of blue we were talking about. Instead of packing up the boys to go shopping in hopes of finding nicely coordinating clothes, we wore what was thrown into our suitcases.
Some day, when I'm in charge of pictures, the dress code will be "clothes" because it is a good day if we're all wearing them at our house!
Probably our favorite stop of the trip was at the Laie Hawaii Temple.
It was absolutely beautiful.
We walked through the visitor's center there and watched the series of videos on families and the role they play in God's plan for us. It brought tears to my eyes as I watched it with my sweet babes sleeping nearby. Motherhood has changed my perspective on a lot of things. Particularly things of an eternal nature.
We both genuinely loved this part of out trip. The temple grounds are exquisite and the visitors' center is awesome. We both had tears in our eyes at some point.
{To find out more about LDS Temples, watch this great video}
We quickly became experts at capturing the four of us and our surroundings.
{Briggs}
{Briggs}
And more Briggs.
{He was just being too cute}
{Ian had zonked out by this point}
While we may have had a separate vacation from everyone else, all in all it was a great trip.
We did not burn anyone to a crisp.
We had several delicious encounters with authentic Hawaiian Shave Ice. SEVERAL encounters.
We ate at Giovani's Shrimp truck, just to say we did. Would not recommend.
