Merry Christmas!

Well, it is Christmas and I decided to post another video (I posted Episode 6 of our show below). This video was made by Rachelle a few years ago for some event at church. The song she used was written by Rachelle's aunt Jeannie and it is called "Little Child". We played it on Christmas Eve and our kids liked it so I thought I would let everybody else see it.

***Update, I took the video off of YouTube but if anyone really wants a copy of it, they can let me know and I can send it to them***

Wilkinson Quints Show Episode 6

OK, so I made another video. I actually took a lot of the video I had made over the last few months and made a longer video. It includes video from our stroller ride with Aunt Linda, our trip to Rudy's, Riley's award ceremony for the Reflections contest, and our visit to the National Instruments company meeting. I also came up with a new beginning to the show. The beginning ends with "WQ+2" which I made in an effort to include Riley and Kaiya in the title.

I think the next video I am going to make will be about the sleep training stuff.

Getting ready for Christmas

Well, it has been a while since I have written or posted a video. I plan to post a video soon. Well, I had planned on doing that a month ago but just haven't had time. The main thing sucking up my time has been the calendar we made earlier this month. We are selling it for 20 dollars as a fundraiser and it is pretty great...if you like babies. Anyway, you can read more about it on our website at wilkinsonquints.org/calendar.html.
Here are some pictures from it:

January	February	March
April	May	June
July	August	September
October	November	December

Something interesting things have happened recently. Last week, Rachelle went and ran the Trail of Lights 5K near Downtown Austin. That was fun and I think next year we will ALL run it. That should be quite a spectacle. I was really proud that she could be running a 3 mile race four months after giving birth to quintuplets.

Also, we have had a bunch of people over. First, Candice, the doctor who delivered the babies, came to visit for a few days and helped us all get a little fatter. Next, my aunt Victoria came to visit and that was helpful. While she was here, we got to go see Enchanted which I can definitely recommend.

We also got to go to the little ceremony where Riley got his award for his video. He was the first student in school history to submit a video which was fun.

As I am writing this post, we are doing the sleep training. There are a bunch of books out there about how to teach your kids to sleep through the night and I think Rachelle has read all of them. I am not sure of the name of the method we use but it basically starts with creating a routine that you follow very strictlyeach night when you put them to bed. The idea is that they will start to recognize that it is time to go to bed and get sleepy. Our particular routine consists of feeding them at 7:00, taking off their clothes for a little diaper only time, changing the diaper, rubbing them down with lotion, putting their pajamas on and wrapping them up. Up until tonight, we would kind of bounce them and rock them until they went to sleep and then put them in their cribs. We have been doing this routine for the past few weeks now but tonight was Day 1 of the hardest part. In this phase, we do the routine except after we bundle them up and make sure they are calm (but not asleep) we go and put them in their beds. The result, as you might expect, is that they eventually began to cry. After you put them down, you go in after 5 minutes and give them a little pat (but don't pick them up) and then leave again. You next wait 10 minutes, then 15, then 20, etc... Eventually, they will fall asleep...in theory. Right now, It has been about an hour and a half and one of them, Ryder, is steadfastly refusing to sleep. The others, however, have all given in and are currently sleeping through Ryder's loud crying.

Lest anyone think we are mean, there are two primary reasons why sleep training is important. First, the babies need to learn how to fall asleep on their own. We did the same training with Riley and Kaiya and were able to avoid a lot of the sleep problems I had heard about from other parents. One of the biggest problems with getting kids to sleep through the night is that most of them wake up naturally multiple times during the night and don't know how to get themselves back to sleep without help. When they learn how to fall asleep on their own, they can wake up in the middle of the night and then go back to sleep without help which means they will tend to get more needed rest.

The second reason that babies need training is for the sanity of the parents. Parents need to be able to put the babies in bed and have some parent time.

Now, I definitely have to say that it isn't very fun. When we first put them down, it was an amazing chorus of crying that simultaneously made me laugh and cry. I wanted to laugh because it was just so comical to hear that many crying babies all at once and wanted to cry because it is a bit sad to hear that many crying babies all at once. Anyway, we will make it through this and pretty soon, we will be able to just put them down at 8:00 and have time to do all kinds of stuff... like catch up on making more videos.

Thanksgiving and a lot of cool stuff happening

OK, I haven't posted for a long time because I have been really busy. Too busy, in fact to make a video. However, I have a lot of cool raw video that I will be putting up here soon once I get the time to make it into something that isn't boring. Anyway, some of the cool things that have occupied my time in the last few weeks are - a big company meeting that featured my babies (that I have video of), a talk I had to give in church on gratitude, and Thanksgiving.

First thing I want to say is how grateful I am for all of the night shift people we have had over the past few months. Rachelle and I took our first turns at the night shift last week for a few nights and we quickly realized that had we been doing that every night for the last 3 months, we would be totally crazy. It isn't as bad as it used to be because the babies are starting to have a better schedule but it was still bad enough that it would wear us out really fast if we had to do it every day.

The next thing I want to talk about it football. We were watching the UT vs. Texas A&M game last Friday and as I was watching it, I was really surprised to look up and see one of my babies on the TV during the commercial break. After a moment, I realized that it was a commercial for an upcoming special report about our babies on KVUE (ABC) on Monday Nov 26th at 6:00 PM. One of Rachelle's cousins who was visiting us was shocked about how that kind of stuff didn't totally freak us out. I guess it was a little weird but kind of cool at the same time.

Also, speaking of football, I have to mention here that BYU beat the University of Utah (their big rival) this year in a very dramatic finish. I didn't actually see the game but I watched the score update on ESPN.com. I chose not to watch or listen to it live because I have learned that doing so really upsets me. The University of Utah is our nemesis and it always bugs me when they beat us (which has happened a lot in the past 6 or so years). Anyway, BYU won and I think it might be partly because of the clothes we put on the babies.


Another really cool thing that happened this week was that we went to Rudy's. For those of you not from these parts, Rudy's is a really good barbecue place here in Austin (and a few other places) where we like to go. Rachelle's brother Ryan was visiting so we decided to take him there. However, because we didn't have any volunteers for that time, we decided to take the babies with us for their first big outing.

It was a little crazy going there but we made it OK. When we walked in, a few people stared but we assumed they probably thought we just had a few families together with a bunch of babies. Anyway, we put them all in the back of the restaurant and had Rachelle's mom go and order the food. As she was ordering, she realized that she probably wouldn't have enough cash to pay for it so she asked Ryan to go get some from me. While he was going, the manager of the store asked her if she was with us. When she said "yes", he said that our meal would be on the house and kept insisting that we order a little bit more. He was really nice and it turned out that he has twins and understood what was going on with us. A little later, he asked to take a picture of the babies with a bunch of Rudy's Barbecue sauce bottles for their wall of fame. We said, "Sure", so they brought out their camera and took some pictures then gave us all of the bottles of sauce. It was very nice. Here is a picture of the event:

Other than that, we had the baby blessings for our babies today. Rachelle will talk about that so I will just mention it briefly here. In our church, we give baby blessings to newborns to kind of get them started off right. The blessings are given in our "sacrament meeting" which is the big meeting we have with everybody. The person that performed the ordinance was me and doing five was a bit of a challenge. We had a bunch of people come which was really great but I am sure that Rachelle will talk about it.

Something I wanted to also share were some TV news stories that happened over the last few weeks:

Here is one from News 8 Austin that they were showing on Thanksgiving day (the link to the video is down near the middle of the story):
Link to news 8 story


Here is also one from KEYE that they showed last week (the video is on the right of the story)
KEYE story

No time for videos this week

Well, there isn't an episode today because I just didn't have time to make one. On Saturday, I ended up spending about 4 hours in the morning helping one of the friends from church move. It was good exercise and I decided I probably ought to do that every week if I could. However, it was only possible because we ended up having a whole bunch of people come over and help on Saturday including my dad who is here for a few days. Because of all the help, I was also able to install a bunch of shelves in our garage with the help of Jim Haynie from church. Right after that, we still had enough volunteers so I installed a back up camera on our van so that we can see things when we back up. I got the camera from Costco and it seems to work pretty well. It is a little odd to have a bunch of people (some of whom we know and some of whom we don't know) coming and going from our house all the time but it sure does help.

It has been fun to have my dad here. He seems to really enjoy holding the babies. Really, who wouldn't though? Well, I guess that people who are nervous about babies might not like it. There have been some people, mostly teenagers, who have been really nervous about holding the babies and it has been comical to see some of them try. It sometimes looks similar to people trying to figure out how to use chop sticks for the first time...except that these chop sticks are much cuter but get grumpy when you don't hold them right. I figure it is really good practice because most of them will have to hold a baby at some other time in life and they may as well hold these ones first because they are so cute. The only problem I see is that they might think that all babies are as cute as these and that could lead to a bit of disappointment when they hold other babies. OK, I am kidding...sort of.

Anyway, I notice that some of the videos we have posted on Youtube over the last year haven't been watched very much so I thought I would post one of those instead. Here is one we made one night about a year ago. It is a lip sync of a song from the soundtrack of a movie called the Singles Ward and is a sort of jazzed up version of a hymn from church. It was fun.

Programming for 5

This week's episode is a bit different than the other ones. I did a joint episode with the VI Road Show which is a weekly video blog that I work on for National Instruments. The VI Road show is something we originally started about a year ago to showcase the lighter side of VI or virtual instrumentation. Virtual instrumentation is a method of making measurement systems by using computer boards and software instead of big, expensive boxed instruments like the kinds you might see at a doctors office.

This episode covers the LabVIEW program or virtual instrument I wrote for keeping track of feedings and other things. I wrote most of it in the airport on the way out to Phoenix. It was really fun to make even though we don't use it yet. The reality is that I probably don't have a computer that can withstand getting wet from occasional milk, water, or baby throw up accidents. The computers they used in the NICU are mounted above the babies and now I understand why. If you don't know what I am talking about, then I urge you to take a look at Rachelle's blog. Anyway, making the program was fun and, at the time, was a good way to occupy my mind while I was worrying about Rachelle having all those babies.

Episode Number 4

OK, we still haven't officially determined what the long term name will be but that is partly because I haven't found the time to make a new title segment. When I find some time, I will come up with it. I have had some good suggestions and I know that at some point, I will decide. In the mean time, however, it will continue to be the Wilkinson Quints Show.

Last week, one of the volunteers mentioned the Reflections contest that is going on in Elementary schools. She said they had a new video category and the theme was, "I can make a difference by..." Well, we looked it up and the rule for videos was that the student had to write, direct, shoot, and edit their own video by themselves without adult interference. That seemed a little bit hard but we went ahead and asked Riley what he thought. We told him about how he needed to write a storyboard so that he knew what he was going to do before he started using the camera. He actually came up with a great little storyboard and decided all the things he wanted to do. I next showed him how to use our smaller video camera and set it up on a tripod. The rest was up to him. After he finished videotaping, he had to edit it. I showed him the basics of how to use Windows Movie Maker and gave him some pointers along the way. He actually chose all of the clips and trimmed them all himself.

Although it may not seem very impressive when you watch it I thought it was great. The lighting is a little inconsistent and the audio isn't perfect but, heck, he only turned seven in June so I guess I can cut him some slack. In reality, I was totally proud of him! The only problem with the whole thing is that now he thinks he wants to grow up and make videos for a living even though Rachelle and I really would like him to be a Statistician, Engineer, or doctor of some sort. Well, we will see.

The likelyhood of him actually winning the contest is probably pretty small but it was a great thing for him to do. He said his next one will be titled, "Riley and Kaiya having fun".

Aside from that, we determined that the van will not fit in the garage without taking air out of the tires. Our garage is actually long enough but not tall enough. I might take another look at it but for right now, we are going to have to park it outside which is OK because it helps people find our house. The van is really fun to drive but we determined that we will probably need to get one of those little rear view cameras so that we can see what is behind us.

Well, we have some really good ideas for our show coming up. Now, if we can just get the time. If we can't, then I guess Riley will just do them for us.

Lots of busy this weekend

Well, I didn't get to make any videos this last weekend. Rachelle's mom left on Friday afternoon and we were a little short staffed for much of the weekend. Rachelle and I did come up with some good ideas for future episodes if we can find the time this week. My aunt Victoria will be coming on Monday so that is exciting.

Something really cool that happened this week is that some people at my work including Joe Silva (my boss), Karen Villarreal, and Amanda Webster put together and finished up a diaper drive for us. A lot of people at work must have contributed because they were able to raise over 2000 dollars worth of diapers for us! I have been really impressed with the generosity of the people at National Instruments and am very appreciative. With coupons and sales, we should be able to make that last quite a while.

Something else that happened over the weekend was that we had a few miracle visits by people to help us out. In particular, we were having some issues on Saturday evening and one of the youth in our ward, an almost 17 year old girl named Kayla Hancock, thought we might need help and came over. How many 17 year old girls do you know of that would be willing to drop everything on a Saturday night and go hold screaming babies for 3 to 4 hours without pay? How cool of a person is that? I just have to say that her parents must be doing something right for her to have an attitude like that. With her help, we were able to sit down and watch a forty minute TV show (The Office) in only an hour and thirty minutes.

Another nice visit came on Sunday night. First Kayla showed up again for a brief but helpful visit and then at around 8:00, our oldest two were getting ready for bed while Rachelle and I we were trying to comfort and/or feed the other 5 who were all having some grumpy time. At 8:00, Colleen Bontrager, also from our ward, and her Mother-in-law dropped by to give us an extra swing. They saw our situation and ended up staying two hours which gave us some time to put the other kids to bed and make up all the bottles for the next days feedings. It was really nice of them and we really appreciated it.

I am just amazed at all of the many people who have helped us out. One of the most common questions I get from people at work is whether I am getting any sleep. I can honestly answer that I do get a decent amount of sleep every night because of the many volunteers we have. These faithful women who almost all have families of their own, come every night and often get little or no sleep. Without them and the many people who come during the morning, midday and evening, I don't know how we would deal with all of this. It is truly a blessing to be surrounded by so many good and trustworthy people from both church and work.

Anyway, I am pretty sure I will be able to do a video some time this week or during the weekend so watch for it.

WilkisonQuints Show episode 3

Well, thanks to our many volunteers and to my Father-in-law who was in town this week, Riley, Kaiya, and I were able to make episode 3. Without all the help from so many people, this whole thing (the having 5 babies thing) would be nearly impossible. I know that it wouldn't be totally impossible because there are people that actually do it without help. Without help, though, I think we would simply go nuts. We have even become accustomed to the many different people coming to our house. A side benefit to this whole thing is the opportunity to get to know so many interesting people in our area. We were pretty low profile before and didn't really know that many people but now... Anyway, I am constantly so grateful for the people that come over during the night especially. Without that, I don't know what we would do. Actually, I do know what we would do. We would get no sleep and would live in utter chaos.

Anyway, in today's episode we measured the van to see if it would fit in the garage but our results were inconclusive. We found that the van was approximately 10 measurement units high and the garage was approximately 10 measurement units high. See the video to find out what our "measurement units" are. Anyway, I guess we will have try it again another time. I think we should try using the preemie version of our measurement units because they would give us a little higher resolution.

Here it is:

WilkisonQuints Show episode 2

Well, we still haven't settled on a better name yet but I did like all your suggestions. For this episode we show the new van that National Instruments got us. We were able to go pick it up on Saturday thanks to a few extra people who came and watched the kids while we went. The van is really big and actually pretty comfortable.

I am still debating on how often we do the show. It looks like it might be every other week instead of every week but I think I will be able to get one up next Monday as well because Rachelle's mom and dad are both going to be in town. I actually edited this episode while holding Kaydence for some of the time, Kyndall for some of the time, and Ryder for some of the time.

I originally thought I would have time for these on Saturday and Sunday but we have found that those days tend to be some of our more difficult days because we take care of them with fewer people. We have found that we can do it with just Rachelle and I but it requires almost all our time. On Sunday when Rachelle and I were taking care of them by ourselves, I actually found myself carrying around three babies (Rustin, Kassidy, and Kaydence) for a brief period because Rachelle already had her hands full. I wish I would have got video of that but MY hands were full. I guess I need to train Riley on how to operate the video camera.

Something fun to do when you are checking out at the grocery store

This is a really short update but something fun you can do in the check out line at the grocery store or in the airport is take a look at page 68 of In Touch Magazine (a celebrity tabloid). Julie Bach, one of my coworkers, bought the magazine for some in-flight reading and found a good picture of the Wilkinson Quints. So there we have it. Brad Pitt and the Quints are in the same magazine.

First episode of Wilkinson Quints Show

Well, I was finally able to find enough time to take some more video and make a short episode for our show, the WilkinsonQuints show. If you think of a better name, then let us know. This show covers the return back to Austin. If it all works out, we hope to get the big van that National Instruments donated, and post a show about that. In later weeks, we hope to post some of the video we have taken of their various photo shoots because they are pretty cute. Anyway, here it is:

Lastest news segment and an update

Things are still settling in at the Wilkinson house. I have some video that I am excited to post but I haven't had the chance to finish it. Last night, when I got home, all the babies were peaceful and sleeping. Because we had myself and two volunteers, Connie Liddiard and Jill Taylor, Rachelle thought it would be safe to run to the grocery store and get some things. When she got back, we were all holding one or two angry babies. Under normal circumstances, the babies are relatively easy to take care of but when the all decide to get mad at the same time, it can be a real challenge. By around 9:00 that night, we had a total of 5 adults in there all rocking babies trying to get them to either eat or calm down. By around 11:30 or so they finally seemed to be calming down although I think it might have just bee sheer exhaustion.

Last night (Sept. 17th) we had someone from KEYE (CBS) News come over and interview us. It was fun because she was pretty excited about the babies and we let her hold Kaydence for a little while. She did a really good segment and I have it here:

KEYE (CBS) News segment

One of the volunteers last night commented that holding our babies is therapeutic. I have to agree. I really enjoy going home and getting a little snuggle time with each of them. Right now they are pretty snuggly and like to fall asleep on our shoulders. Also, a few of them have started smiling a little which is really great. I am really looking forward to when they start really smiling and then laughing. I remember th first time I heard Riley laugh and that it almost brought tears to my eyes because it was so funny and cute. Anyway, now I have 5 of those to look forward to.

I still have a bunch of video I need to post and will do it just as soon as I can finish it. In the meantime, you should check out the CBS segment because it was a pretty good one.

Week of craziness - will post more soon

Well, adjusting to a new house with 5 babies has been interesting. Last week was a really long week. I have some video that I will be putting up soon. I really want to try to put up 1 video per week to document how things are going. I have some good footage but I find that with work, baby feedings, and sleep, I don't have much time for anything else. I have some good stuff coming soon so I hope to post it within the next few days.

One thing that I have learned is that all diapers are not created equal. So far, the only reliable ones have been the Pampers Swaddler diapers. In many cases we have found that with other diapers, they simply leak. Today, someone picked up Kaydence because she was crying and found that with the amount of wetness surrounding her (we call the wetness "She-she"), she may as well have not even had a diaper on. On closer inspection, we found that the diaper she was wearing was not the type that we have found are reliable. I think things will change as they get bigger but right now, it seems that only those diapers work. This is something I didn't anticipate. I had thought that one diaper was pretty much the same as any other diaper. Now, I know that a diaper is only useful if it actually holds all the she-she in.

Anyway, sorry for the short and relatively uninteresting post. I really hope to put up some video soon because I have a lot of good stuff that I just need to get up there. I actually want to make a weekly 5 to 10 minute episode (sort of like a reality show) to put up on the blog. I have some ideas for it but I guess I will have to test it out. I have found so far that there is probably enough interesting stuff going on in our house to actually merit a weekly 5 to 10 minute video.

Home at last

We are finally home. It was a pretty difficult journey but we made it. We got to the airport and it took about a half hour to describe to the curb side check-in people exactly what was going on. They couldn't figure out why there were so many babies with the same last name and other people with different last names carrying them. In the end, we got through that.

Next, we had to go through security. This was a pretty serious ordeal. We at least were able to skip the main line and go through the first class line. However, when we got to the actually scanner thing, it took about 20 minutes to take out all the car seats, strollers, babies, computers, video cameras, and shoes for each of us. The security people were actually really nice, though, and we eventually made it through. When we got to the gate, we were a bit of a spectacle and a whole lot of people came up to figure out what was going on. There was a lot of picture taking.

We next got on the airplane. Because of some confusion from the airline, we were all assigned middle seats throughout the plane. Fortunately, however, the babies were all very good during the whole flight and everything went smooth. This was in part due to the preparation from Rachelle in making diaper bags for each baby with enough formula, burp cloths, new outfits, diapers, wipes, and candy (for the carrier) to last for about a day. When we got off, it was difficult to actually make it to the baggage claim due to the many people wanting to figure out what the deal was as we walked.

We met up with friends from church who had brought 3 suburbans to transport out 12 checked bags, our 5 babies, and our 5 adults back to the house. Rachelle loved what everyone had done to the house. In particular, the nursery that she didn't know about was a great surprise for her. Stephanie Coleman, Nancy Tueller, and Christine Woods from church really did an excellent job with it.

A few news stations were here as well. Here are the ones that posted stories last night:

Fox 7

KEYE

I will post some more when I have time. I took some video myself of the arrival and I also want to post the details of the computer application I wrote to help keep track of the quints.

Everyone is coming home to Austin very soon!

Saturday is the day! We expect to arrive at the airport around 2:00 pm this Saturday so it should be fun. I am going to fly back on Friday night and then we are all going to fly back on Saturday. There will be one person for each baby including myself, Rachelle, Rachelle's mom Betty Ann Curtis, my mom Sylvia Wilkinson, and Dr. Candice Park (the one who delivered the babies). Unless something else really big happens, we should end up having a few TV stations there to record everything so hopefully you will be able to watch it on TV or on the Internet.

I have now been back in Austin for more than a week and it has been good. I haven't really liked doing the single dad thing again but I can see that the end is near so it isn't so bad. One of the hardest things about this whole journey has been being separated from Rachelle for so long. However, that will end soon and we are all excited.

Riley started second grade and he seems to really like his teacher already. He insisted on riding the bus yesterday and I was actually a little sad to see him go. He is such a great little boy. Yesterday, after school got out, he had to find his bus but he wasn't sure which bus it was. He decided to say a little prayer to ask what bus to get on and when he finished, he looked up and saw his friend Jared in one of the buses and knew that was the right one. The faith of little children is just so inspiring.

I wanted to mention also that we received another large donation from another group of Masons in New Mexico. This time, it was the Orient of New Mexico, Valley of Las Cruces, Scottish Rite Masons. I am really amazed at the generosity of people and it will really help. Any day now, I expect to start getting a bunch of medical bills and it is really nice to have some of those donations to help us pay for all of that. Also, my manager, Joe Silva, sent out an email yesterday starting a diaper drive here at work. That was really nice. He roughly calculated that over the course of the next year, we would need to use nearly 16,000 diapers. I saw that number and thought to myself, "I sure hope we can potty train these kids soon." When I was in Thailand, I remember that most of the babies there didn't use diapers. Of course, maybe they didn't need to worry as much about it because they rarely had any carpet but usually just had concrete floors that you could simply spray down with a hose. That probably won't work well here.

Update to media page

Just wanted to let you know that I updated the Media page on our web site to include all of the media we have received. Well, at least the stuff I could find on the Internet. I had been putting it off because it was fairly difficult to find everything but I think I have it all. You can view it here:

http://www.wilkinsonquints.org/media.html

On this page I have some of the most recent news segments that show me in my new house (see the links near the bottom of the page). One in particular from Fox7 News is pretty funny. Rachelle already knows that she isn't supposed to watch it until she gets back next week.

Something fun happened yesterday too. We opened up the Hill Country News and found that we were the cover for a special pull out Newcomers section for people coming to our area. They said they wanted to find a picture that would indicate the growth of the area and our picture seemed to fit the bill. I couldn't find it online but anybody living in an area where you receive the Hill Country News (It is free on Wednesdays) can open it up and see the picture. It was pretty funny.

Today I also took Riley to his school's open house and met his teacher. He seemed really excited and the teacher seemed really nice. It should be fun for him but will probably be a bit of a difficult adjustment since he really doesn't know anybody in his class this year. However, he really does a good job of making friends quickly so I think he will be OK.

Rachelle and the babies are doing really well. She is excited to finally come back to Austin next week and we are excited to have them all come back. It will be really interesting to see what life is really like when they all come back.

Jayson, Riley, and Kaiya back in Austin!

Well, we are now back in Austin. It was a bit of a long drive back but Riley and Kaiya actually did fairly well and I didn't have any accidents while I was trying to get the Goldfish, drinks, or Tic-Tacs (their new favorite treat).



Getting back to Work
I went to work on Monday morning and there was a huge poster that greeted me on my office door that said "Welcome Home Wilkinsons!" It is hard to read in this picture but at the bottom of the poster, it says the names and weights of each of the babies. My boss, Joe Silva, also told me that they are planning on doing a diapers for a year drive which is really nice. I am really amazed at how much my company and the people in my company have supported us. Amanda Webster, one of my coworkers, said that Rachelle is everyone's hero there. They have other posters in the lobbies of the buildings and I have gone by them and seen small groups of people looking at them. It is a little strange because we are sort of minor celebrities. I am sure it will probably fade and people will forget about it soon enough (until we pull our 5 baby stroller out!) but it is a little strange right now.

There was a lot of other stuff that greeted me upon my arrival both at the home and at work. Everybody has been really nice. Going back to work was a little weird. I had been out of the office and a lot had happened, none of which would probably be very interesting to the casual reader. In addition to missing NIWeek, the most important company event of the year, I also missed a good office prank involving a stolen bobble head Dwight from the TV show "The Office". I decided that it is probably better that I missed that because now I can't be blamed for any of it (which means there will be no retribution).

The Kids and the New House
The kids were very excited about the new house, their new rooms, and the toys they hadn't seen for about 7 months. It was a bit like Christmas. This means that, in their excitement, they made a huge mess...just like Christmas. We spent about an hour this morning cleaning up because I decided that I had better start enforcing the rules now before things got out of control. A significant portion of that hour was spent with each of them whining about it but after a little while, they finally realized that they were just going to have to do it or we were going to sit there all day.

Eating Thai food at my favorite Thai Restaurant
Also, last night I went to pick the kids up at Natalie Woods' house and we decided to splurge and go eat Thai food while the kids had grilled cheese sandwiches (which they liked better anyway). Having lived in Thailand for two years, I am a bit picky about the quality of the Thai food I eat. For anybody in Austin that likes Thai food, I strongly recommend Thamnak Thai on Buttercup and 183 (In Cedar Park). It is very authentic and the people are really nice. Because I speak Thai and because we have gone there so many times, they remember who I am and have been really nice about asking how things have been going with Rachelle over the past few months. Before Rachelle was pregnant, there was a time when we would end up going there almost once a week.

Thai food was also what we had for our anniversary dinner. It was funny, though, going to eat Thai food in Mesa Arizona. Normally, in every place except Utah and Arizona, when I go to a Thai restaurant and speak Thai, the people often jump in surprise because they have usually not ever met a non-Asian Thai speaker. When I go to restaurants in places with higher LDS populations, like Mesa Arizona or Provo Utah, they don't even bat an eye. It is a little better that way, though, because then I don't feel the same amount of pressure to try to dig up all those language skills to have a full blown conversation.

Update on Rachelle and the babies
Rachelle and the babies are all doing fine. Rachelle said that she put them all in the same crib and took some pictures so I am anxious to see them. They are all coming back in about a week and a half so I am pretty excited. Coming back with them will be Rachelle's mom, my mom, and the doctor, Dr. Candice Park, that actually performed the c-section and made the five super tasty cakes on the day of the delivery. It should be a fun trip and I am really looking forward to settling in and getting a better idea of what the rest of my life is going to be like.

Update for August 16

Well, Kaydence came home yesterday so they are all officially coming home in the exact reverse of their birth order. I guess those extra few seconds in the womb were pretty helpful. Kassidy is still having issues drinking a whole bottle so she is still in the hospital. She has to be completely bottle fed for at least 3 days before they will let her go and she has yet to make it past 2. I don't think it will be too long though before we see her here. When we told Ryder about it, he gave us this look:

He didn't seem to happy about the whole thing but I think he will be OK once she gets here.

Something else I wanted to give an update on are some of the super generous donations we have received. The company I work for, National Instruments (www.ni.com), suggested a very generous donation recently. They offered to pay for our plane tickets home but also (now this is the big one) offered to buy us a new 12 passenger van! Wow! Grand Canyon University (www.cgu.edu) had also offered to donate one of their used 12 passenger vans on almost the same day! The details are not all ironed out yet but we are opting to go with the new one but it was generous of both places to even offer at all.

We received another generous donation that came in part due to my uncle Ken's brother Gunnar. Gunnar is a retired Army colonel and West Point graduate who also happens to be the Grand Chaplain for the Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons in New Mexico. When my uncle Ken mentioned us to him, Gunnar asked if he could help. After some discussion, the Dona Ana Daylight Lodge #78, Ancient and Accepted Free Masons voted to give a very generous donation to us.

It is really wonderful and humbling to be the recipient of so much generosity. There are groups of people that have never even met us that are doing all kinds of stuff to help us out and it is absolutely amazing to see. I am amazed and grateful for all of it and feel, more than ever, that we are going to be able to do this.

Our 10th Anniversary

Today is our 10th anniversary. That means that I have known Rachelle for about 10 years and 8 months now. It has been a good time. For those of you who don't know us, I may as well recount our story of how we met. Rachelle was one of the Teaching Assistants in my Statistics class at BYU. She was a really good Teaching Assistant. She taught our lab class and I remember that on the first day of the lab, my lab partner whispered to me, "I wonder if we get extra points if we ask out the TA?" Well, I tried that and it turned out that I didn't get any extra points. But that is OK. I got a lot more. I actually didn't do exceptionally well in the class especially considering that I consistently had excuses for going to all three of the lab sections each week. It turned out that my mind wasn't as focuses on Statistics as it should have been.

Well, we dated for a few months and I decided that since we were probably going to get married anyway, it may as well be sooner rather than later. I had come to this conclusion in part because Rachelle's Grandpa Rappleye (who lived close to the University) came up to us one day and said, "Heavenly Father has saved Rachelle for you." After a rather awkward moment, I began to realize that maybe he was right.

I saw my opportunity with her graduation day. She was getting her Bachelors degree in Statistics on the same day that her grandparents were having their 50th wedding anniversary. I (or rather my mom) had a plan on how I was going to ask her to marry me. This plan was hatched a few years before I met Rachelle when my mom found 8 little stuffed cows at a garage sale and realized it would be the perfect way for me to propose to whoever it was that I was going to propose to. Many might wonder what 8 stuffed cows has anything to do with proposing. Well, those familiar with the "Johnny Lingo" might recognize the significance of the cows.

Side note about the story of Johnny Lingo
For those unfamiliar with the story of Johnny Lingo, I will enlighten you here. The story of Johnny Lingo takes place on an island in the pacific where people would pay for a wife with cows. The going rate for a good wife was about 3 cows. Johnny Lingo was a famous and wealthy trader among the islands and wanted to marry one of the woman on the island where he grew up. Mahana, the woman Johnny Lingo wanted to marry, had a reputation for being the ugliest girl on the island. People thought he wanted to marry her just because he could get her for one cow or less. On the day of the bargaining with Mahana's father, everyone was speculating that Johnny would show up and offer only half a cow for Mahana. Instead, he surprised everyone by offering Mahana's father 8 cows which was more than anyone had ever offered for a wife. Nobody could understand why Johnny, who was such a good trader, would do such a thing when he could have got her for much less. Well, after the payment is received, Johnny and Manaha get married and head off to the "Honeymoon place". When they get back, people are shocked to meet Mahana and see that she is absolutely beautiful. When people ask Johnny how that happened, he explains, "It was really the 8 cows. You see, Manaha has always been beautiful. By offering her father 8 cows, I knew that when the women would meet together in the market place and brag about how many cows their husbands had paid for them, Mahana would always know that her husband had valued her more than any other woman on the island. She would forever be the 8 cow woman and when she knew this, all the beauty she had within her came out and she became an 8 cow woman."

I gave Rachelle the 8 cows in sets of two throughout her graduation day and right when we arrived at the 50th Wedding Anniversary celebration, I pulled out the last cow who had a tuxedo and a ring around it's neck and asked her to marry me. As you might have already guessed, she said, "Yes". We were engaged for about 4 months and got married on August 14th, 1997 in the Salt Lake Temple. Ten years later, I have found that marrying her was the single best decision I have ever made in my life. She has always been great and the experiences of the last few months have just exposed a bit more of her greatness for everyone else to see. She was definitely worth every one of those 8 cows.

Baby Update
Also, just to update everyone on how the babies are doing, Rustin, Ryder, and Kyndall are all home now and are doing great. Kaydence is on deck to come home next and we expect to take her home tomorrow or the next day. Kassidy is still being a bit stubborn about the eating from a bottle thing but is still doing well. I expect she will figure it out in a few days and we will get her here by the beginning of next week. Volunteers from church are helping out a lot and even stayed here all night with them to give Rachelle and I a little sleeping break. Tonight, they are going to let us go get some Thai food for our anniversary.

Ryder and Kyndall now home, Rustin to come today (August 12)

I can now say with certainty that taking care of 5 babies will be hard (not that I ever thought it would be easy). I know this because I have found that taking care of just TWO babies is hard. Last night, I was peed on twice between the hours of 12:00 Midnight and 3:00 AM. First Kyndall had a go at me and then, not to be outdone by his slightly older sister, Ryder had an even better go at me. I think they must have talked with each other and decided to go all at once so that I would be better prepared to deal with the arrival of the others. I am grateful to those two for training me early about the dangers of changing diapers. Now, I will hopefully be more prepared to anticipate and hopefully avoid those problems in the future.

Later on today, we expect to pick up Rustin. Originally, he was supposed to come home yesterday but they decided to send Kyndall instead which is good. If Kaydence goes home next, then they will be coming back in the exact reverse of their birth order. I guess that the first shall be last and the last shall be first. I am hoping to actually start updating the web site a little more. I haven't had a lot of time to do that lately but I think that when we get in a groove, we will start to be able to figure out more time.

Ryder will be the first to come home on August 10th (tomorrow)

Well, today we got the call from the doctor telling us that Ryder is coming home followed quickly by Rustin and Kyndall. The only thing remaining for Kaydence and Kassidy is to be bottle fed for three days straight. When they can successfully do that without receiving other types of feeding, then they will go home too. I am not sure we are ready but yet but, really, will we ever be ready? For some reason, I was thinking we would have at least a month before they started coming home. Now, it looks like they could all be home by a week from today.

It looks like we may have an option for a van now. My cousin Samantha Lee has a sister-in-law that is one of the owners of Grand Canyon University here in Phoenix. They are just about to trade in their 12 passenger vans and might offer to let us buy one of them for a really good price. We went and looked at it today. It was huge but that is what we need. If it all works out, we will probably sell our mini van here and I will just drive the big one home next week some time.

Tonight, Rachelle and I got to go on our first date in months. We went and saw Hairspray and then had some ice cream. It was a lot of fun and was pretty relaxing. We are nervous about the babies coming home but we figured that we should take the time to relax while we still can and deal with the non-relaxing stuff when it comes.

All the quints in one spot, Candice the Magnificent Doctor, and Mac

Rachelle is now back home and is realizing that recovery will take just a little longer than she had originally anticipated. Somehow she imagined that after the babies were born, she would be up running around coordinating things. Instead, she is still a bit swollen and has to walk really slow. Things are going well however and she is improving more every day.

They moved the babies to the main campus of Phoenix Children's hospital and it is nice. They are all in cribs and only Rustin has an oxygen monitor on. I think that the only remaining step they have to finish before they can go home is to be able to eat without requiring any tubes through their noses (they usually stick a tube through their nose to feed them when they are not very good at sucking). Two of them are still a little lazy and are not that interested in sucking on bottles but three of them are eating pretty well.

On Tuesday, we were able to get all of the quints together in one spot. First, we put them all in the same crib for the CBS Early Show and then for a fun photo shoot later in the afternoon. Here is one of the photos we took:



Another thing that I really wanted to mention again was how cool the Doctor was that actually performed the C-section and took out babies. Her name is Candice Park and she was instrumental in getting Rachelle through those last weeks. Here is a picture of Dr. Park, Rachelle and the babies:





Candice is LDS (Mormon) and makes some of the best cakes I have ever had. In addition to being an awesome doctor, she is the gospel doctrine teacher (or adult Sunday school teacher) in her congregation and I really can't say enough good things about her. In addition to that, she is dating a former member of two National Championship BYU Volleyball teams and former member of the US National Volleyball Team, Mac (short for Mackay) Wilson. I thought this was one of the coolest things I had ever heard. For those of you who don't know me, I am a huge BYU Volleyball fan. I honestly liked going to the volleyball games a little bit better than the football games. The Volleyball games were a little more fast paced and it was just fun to see those guys hammer that ball down. It was awesome.

Anyway, I graduated in 1999 which was the year of their first championship and clearly remember Mac. I just thought that little thing was God's way of making me laugh and saying that he is watching out for Rachelle AND me. Of all the people in the world that could have performed that C-section, we had probably the most perfect for us. It is amazing how that worked out. Now, the last thing I want to say in this post is, Mac, if you are reading, you should know Candice is a definite keeper.

We were on the CBS early show this morning

Well, Rachelle and I were on the Early Show this morning. That was pretty interesting. It is a little difficult to do that stuff with with that little ear piece in. Over all it was pretty fun except for the getting up at 3:00 AM part. When I came back, I watched it and thought it was uncomfortable to watch. It is hard to know where to look and when to respond to the questions they ask in your ear. Although it is hard to see, we put them all in the same crib and it was great to see them there. Here is the link:

CBS Early Show Link

The babies are all progressing nicely. Most of them are off the IV and Rustin, Kaydence, and Ryder are eating well. Kyndall and Kassidy are also doing well but just are kind of sleepy so they are not as interested in eating but I am sure they will figure it out.

Some video of the quintuplets first meeting with Rachelle

First, I want to say thanks for all of the really nice comments for my previous post. I sort of got going and just wrote a bunch of stuff from my heart so I am glad that it seemed to come across as I intended it. I really have been hoping from the beginning that our story would give hope to people and help them know that miracles really are possible.

For a few days after Rachelle gave birth to Rustin, Ryder, Kassidy, Kaydence, and Kyndall, she didn't get to see them. During a press conference, one of the doctors told me that she thought they would be able to take them over to her room to see her for a short amount of time. The light wasn't very good but I took some video of the meeting anyway. The babies are all doing well. My dad and mom (Kevin and Sylvia Wilkinson) came to see them and had a great time holding and feeding babies. They are all still attached to a bunch of tubes and Rustin still has a bit of a breathing issue but they are all doing well. I am especially grateful when I see some of the other poor babies in the NICU. Some of them are not doing nearly as well as ours and my heart really goes out to all those who have babies that really struggle.




One of the really cool things about having quintuplets is that a bunch of professional photographers are interested in taking pictures of your babies. There was a great photographer at the birth that took some really wonderful pictures. You might have seen them because they used them in the newspapers and the news reports but they are awesome. We hope to be able to show more later. There is a decent change that some of the pictures will be in a Newsweek article some time in the next few weeks but I will let you know for sure. They can always change those things if something more significant comes up. Speaking of that, there is also a decent chance we could be on the CBS Early Show but I don't know for sure yet. If we are, I will try to let you all know. If we did, that would mean I would probably have to be there at 4:00 AM which is a little early. However, it would be fun to share our story with a big group of people like that so I won't mind. It will probably be a small taste of what the next few months are going to be like anyway.

Something else I wanted to mention is that my team at work (Sean Eason, Chris Roysden, Mitch Wilson, and Mike Devlin) are all preparing right now for NIWeek. NIWeek is an annual conference National Instruments has every year in the convention center in Austin. Normally, I would be in charge of the AV portion of the keynote speeches during that week. As you might guess, I am not there right now and have left it in the hands of my team (particularly Sean Eason). Thus far, they have done a remarkable job making the necessary preparations to pull it off and I am really grateful to them for that. I just wanted to wish them good luck as they go into this next week and let them know how really grateful I am to them for everything they are doing. To check out what they are doing, you can probably see some of the video posts of it next week on:
ni.com/niweek

Update for August 2 and a really long post about my thoughts

Well, Rachelle is improving and they took her off the magnesium this morning. She also got to move up to her old room which means that they thought she was well enough. The doctor actually thinks she will be able to leave on Saturday or Sunday.

The babies are doing well still. Rustin is still having some breathing issues but they are working through them and I am sure he will be OK in a few days. They moved Kassidy closer to the others which is nice because I don't want her to feel left out. The hospital here and the NICU are both awesome. They have really been great. A lot of people have been really great and have offered all kinds of support. It is overwhelming for me. Today, my old BYU roommate, Chris Thompson, and his wife Kathleen sent me a package that had a very generous gift in it. I really have a hard time knowing how to respond to such generosity except to say thank you from the depths of my heart.

I want to mention how grateful I am for all of the service that people have given us. I have always been a very independent person and very proud that I have been able to make it on my own. Rachelle and I are very similar in that regard. After we got married, which was just before she started on her Master's degree and just before my Junior year of college, we were completely on our own financially. We are very frugal and managed to even save a bit of money and avoid debt while finishing our degrees. We have even managed to avoid debt (except for the house mortgage of which we have paid off a significant percentage). I say this, not to brag, but to help you understand how much of an adjustment it has been for us to realize that we will need help in our situation. Early on in the pregnancy, I had the distinct impression (which I firmly believe came from God) that one of the purposes of our pregnancy was to give other people the opportunity to serve and receive the blessings one gets from serving others.

A number of years ago, I discovered one of the secrets to true and lasting happiness. It is service to others. In serving others, we forget ourselves. We forget our own problems or recognize those problems in different ways that make them seem less formidable. I firmly believe that it is only through serving others (including our own family members) that we can really find true happiness. Rachelle and I are in an unfortunate position where we can't do much to serve others right now (except for our own children). Some people may think that doesn't sound so bad but it has been difficult for us. One of my fears is that I will get used to it or that I will come to just expect it. I honestly hope this doesn't happen because it is difficult to find happiness when you are frustrated because other people are not always doing your bidding. I think that is the trap that movie stars (especially those that were famous as children) often run into. The impression I received early on about this pregnancy being an opportunity for others helped me to be less fearful of accepting help. I pray often that the Lord will bless those that have given us service like Rachelle's aunt who has Multiple Sclerosis, Natalie Woods who has a big family and a house of her own to deal with, Chris and Kathleen Thompson who have just recently had their own new baby, and many many others, even strangers, who I don't have room enough to list.

One of the other things I want to say is that had we chosen to reduce to twins, I know that we would have regretted that decision for the rest of our lives. We had a very difficult choice early on. We could have chosen to reduce to twins and have a much more normal pregnancy or put everything we had into getting all 5 babies here safely. We obviously chose the latter and we knew that it would forever change the course of our lives. I am not suggesting that everybody who reduces should forever feel guilty about it. In many cases, reduction is necessary to save either the mothers life or the lives of some of the other babies. I really empathize with all of the people that are faced with that decision because it is a very serious one with real consequences. We made that decision knowing that the probability of a good outcome was not very high and we have been incredibly blessed by the results.

Rachelle and I will celebrate our 10th anniversary on August 14th and it will not be what we had imagined on our wedding day 10 years ago. All of the plans we made over the years have now completely changed. Very early on, however, I came to realize that God's hand is in this and our new path will be even better than what we had originally planned. Just looking at the faces of those wonderful babies tells me that. I don't know exactly what kind of things we are going to be able to offer these children but I do know that they are going to grow up in a household with a Mom and Dad that love them very much and will do everything in our power to give them what they need (but not necessarily what they want:).

I don't know why God has sent us these beautiful babies and helped us out so much while so many other good people with high order multiples are not given these same blessings. I credit the medical staff at the hospital for their diligence and concern but I still feel like it was a miracle that things have turned out like that have. I feel like these babies must have been sent to us for some important purpose and I am excited to spend the rest of my life discovering that purpose.

Update for Wednesday Aug 1

Well, a lot has happened today. I was pretty amazed at all of the crazy news coverage we had. I actually had come to the conclusion that 5 babies wasn't that big of a deal because of the recent sextuplet births. It turns that is actually is a pretty big deal. I think breaking the record helped a lot and that is something I am very happy about because it means healthier babies.

Rachelle is doing a little better. She did end up having to go on the magnesium again but it was a fairly low dose. She was feeling pretty rotten this morning but she started feeling better in the afternoon. She actually got to see all the babies for the first time today and I hope to have some video of that up on the website as soon as I get some time.

We did a press conference in the morning. It was pretty fun. All of the news media people I have met have been very nice. There was a lot of cameras there and I answered a bunch of questions about the babies, how they are doing, and how it felt to have it all happen. A bunch of it was on the evening news here in Phoenix and it feels a little silly to see myself on TV. This evening, I did see a few really great reports on
Channel 3 (ABC): (may require some registration)

Fox 10

Channel 5 (CBS).

I was actually surprised to see them because of the tragic bridge collapse that happened today. I assumed that our quintuplets would not be as interesting after news like that but I guess I was wrong.

One thing I did find out today is that we probably are not going to get any van donated despite all of the news coverage we have had. This is a bit of a bummer but I am hoping we can find a used van somewhere that will not be too expensive. Our friend Natalie Woods talked to a bunch of dealerships (she has been so helpful with this whole thing along with so many other people) and they might be able to give us a decent discount. She did say that Hewlett Chevrolet was the nicest dealership she talked to.

Natalie also told me that Randall's ( a grocery store owned by the same company as Safeway) donating 1000 diapers to us! That is really nice and should probably last us at least a month. I heard that it was originally organized through Jason Wheeler at KEYE. I have not been able to verify that but I hope to find out the specifics soon so I can thank them.

Thanks again for all your prayers and everything else.

Follow up and current news coverage

We were pretty busy yesterday with everything. Right now, Rachelle is doing OK but she has some issues with her kidneys that the doctors are trying to sort out. They told her yesterday that she might have to go back on a smaller dosage of the Mag to fix the problem which she is not excited about. The only thing she has really seen of them has been the little video that I put on YouTube yesterday so that is a bit sad.

I have gone and held them each last night. While I was doing that, I had a bit of a taste for how difficult this is going to be. Giving them each the attention that they need will be a very difficult task. It took me several hours just to hold them each for a brief period of time. However, they all seem to be doing fairly well and are all still beautiful. They are also all fairly different. For anyone that saw the video I put on my blog yesterday, you might have seen the little girl that was looking around with her eyes open. That is little Kaydence who was the smallest baby. She seems to have some drive. Ryder and Rustin are both a bit loud and appear to get each other to start crying. Kassidy has been seperated from them all because she was in the normal nursery. However, last night, they decided to move her to the NICU because she had a hard time eating and breathing at the same time. Kyndall seems like a sweet little thing. I wish I could see her face more clearly because it is covered with the little oxygen mask over her nose. This is called CPAP and it really is just normal air with a little more pressure to help them out a little.

We got a lot of news stations and other things interested in us yesterday. Here are some that I know about:

Austin American-Statesman

FOX 7 Video
FOX 7 News

KEYE News

KVUE News

KXAN News

Thanks again for your prayers and we will continue to need them.

5 Beautiful Babies!!!

Wow, what an experience that was! I can hardly believe they are here. I was in the delivery room and it was awesome to see one beautiful baby come out after another. I took a bunch of video but I don't know if I will have time to put it up here yet but I just wanted to let everybody know that the babies are here and they are beautiful. Although I might not have enough time to put it on YouTube, I have some video that I am sending to the local Austin TV stations so look for it there. If I don't post it tonight, I should for sure have it by tomorrow. Something else, that I have to mention because it was so cool is that the doctor that actually performed the c section (Dr. Park who is really awesome) actually baked five little cakes for the birthday! I will put a picture of the cakes here:


Here is the video (I will try to put up pictures of the babies for those that can't see the video):

Final Post Before the Big Day!

One other thing I wanted to do was get one final post in before tomorrow. I am not sure when I am going to be able to post anything tomorrow but I will do it as soon as I can. I wanted to just thank everyone again for all the support and prayers you have given us. This has been something truly remarkable. In the beginning, I would never have guessed that things would be like they are. In the beginning, I was so nervous and unsure of what the rest of my life was going to be like but, for some reason, I feel pretty good about things now. We are surrounded by people that are sincerely concerned for us and really want to help us out. We still have such a long way to go but I really feel like angels are watching over us and a lot of that is due to the prayers from all of you.

If I can get it soon enough, I will hope to get a post in tomorrow. Also, if everything goes well, KVUE should be doing a follow up story tomorrow night on the news. There is also a decent chance that the Austin-American Statesman (the main Austin newspaper) will be doing a story about us for the Wednesday paper so look for it. Whatever they do, we will be sure to put links to it up on our blog and web site soon afterwards.

Again, thank you all for all your support and keep praying for us. I am sure we will keep needing it.

The spelling of the names

I think there were a few of you out there (like Jeanette Nielson in Thailand) who can't view the video (which is a shame since my kids are so cute) so I thought I ought to write them out. I also want to do this in case one of my kids was less articulate than he or she should have been. Here are the names spelled out:

Rustin
Ryder
Kyndall
Kaydence
Kassidy

There is a very real danger that I have spelled them wrong so I will have Rachelle check this to make sure they are all correct. Also, keep in mind that something strange could happen and we could completely change our minds.

Something someone pointed out to Rachelle yesterday, that I thought was funny, is that July 31 is Harry Potter's birthday. OK, so Harry Potter is a fictional person that some think is evil but I still thought it was funny thing especially considering the last book just came out a week ago. We still won't be changing their names to match Harry Potter names though. Personally, I think that would be kind of funny but it probably isn't a very nice thing to do to your kids and Rachelle would never go for it so we will probably stick with the names listed above.

Riley and Kaiya discuss the names

OK, I think we are ready to disclose the names with the understanding that these could potentially change. To do this, I have engaged the services of two adorable kids who discuss it in the video.



So that is it except for the spellings which we will supply later.

The names

OK, I am getting ready to post the first names. Stay tuned and I will post them later today (unless we change our minds).

Rachelle's Story Featured on our Local News!

Update: I heard just today that my dad also worked it out so that his side of the family will be helping with the washer and dryer as well. I am actually really glad that we have the opportunity to do something that will bring the families together.

Last night, KVUE, a local ABC affiliate showed a story about Rachelle that was really nice. They used some of the video I put on yesterday's post as well as a bunch of other stuff. It was really good and you can check it out at by clicking on this link:

KVUE news story

It was a really busy day for Rachelle yesterday actually. Originally, a news crew from one of the Phoenix stations (Channel 3) was going to come and get some video of her here for a local Phoenix news cast. Unfortunately, right before they were going to come, they had a really tragic helicopter accident where their helicopter ran into another news station's helicopter and killed both the crews from each. After that, they called Rachelle and told her they probably wouldn't be able to do the story yesterday.

Something else that I wanted to mention was that more and more people are stepping up to help us out. My uncle Ken is a graduate of West Point (Class of 66) and sent an email to all his graduating class about us and many of them responded very generously. Also, my mom's side of the family (The Nelsons) got together and decided to buy us a really nice washer and dryer! When I say really nice, I mean super nice. That is really so generous of them that I feel kind of bad but people keep telling me that I need to stop feeling bad about that kind of stuff so I am working on it.

Anyway, I visited with Rachelle a lot last night and we went to take a tour of the NICU. It was amazing how little those babies are in there. While visiting the NICU and seeing those babies, the reality of what is about to happen set in (it does that every once in a while) and I felt just a little overwhelmed. However, that passed fairly quickly and I got back to just thinking about what is going on today instead. I realize, however, that in just 72 hours from now, I will have 5 babies and a tired, but recovering, wife. I guess I had better read that Harry Potter book soon.

The tightness of the belly and some video of Rachelle

Update: There is a decent chance that Rachelle's story will be on KVUE in Austin tonight at 10:00 so check it out if you get a chance (we will have to hear from others how it went).

I visited Rachelle for a long time yesterday evening and we had a good visit. A few weeks ago, she started telling me that her skin felt tight. Almost every day since then, she says that it feels tighter than it did the previous day. Yesterday, she said she felt like it was going to burst any second. I put my hand on it and it was amazingly tight. I don't know how those babies are going to be able to grow any more! It looks like if you put a pin in her, it would all pop (not that I plan on doing that).

We also discussed names yesterday. We have had a pretty good idea on names for a while but had a small disagreement on a few of them. I think it is resolved now but I will wait for Rachelle to actually announce them. I have to admit that at first, I honestly couldn't remember all of the names we had come up with. We discussed a lot and I had a hard time trying to remember the ones we settled on. I remember them now but will wait until I get the OK from Rachelle to share them all.

We also took more video the other day that I wanted to share. This is a video of Rachelle posing for photos that her mom is taking. She looks pretty good as you can see. If it were not for that big thing in the middle, she would probably look fairly normal. While we were there the other day, the dietitian came in talked with her about what she should eat. Although the dietitian was serious, the things she recommended were kind of funny.

Babies getting smarter every day

One of the things I decided the other day (that I was hoping would motivate Rachelle to keep going) was that from now on, every day the babies are inside her is equal to 1 additional point on the ACT standardized test. We expect that getting into BYU (let alone qualifying for scholarships) will be even more difficult than it is now so they will need the best ACT score they can get. Right now, I figure they are at about a 25 (which is pretty good) and in just 5 more days they will be at a 30 and will almost be good enough to equal what their mom got on the ACT. OK, I know this isn't really accurate, but it gives us some good motivation anyway.

Betty Ann, Jeanie, and I went to the hospital today and the ultrasound person measured each of the babies. After seeing what the estimated weights were for the last ultrasound, I really wondered how they were able to determine weight since they obviously can't just go in and measure the weight of the baby. After talking with a few people, it appears that they basically have some weight charts that are based on various physical measurements they can make from the outside. These include things like the size of the femur, the size of the head and a bunch of other measurements. It basically means that if those measurements are within a certain range, the baby will be within a certain weight. What they can't really tell is how much fat each of the babies will have since they can't see that on the ultrasound. Based on averages, however, they can know that babies with certain measurements will be approximately a certain amount of pounds.

Based on these measurements, our babies appear to be doing fairly well. Perhaps a little too well because it looks like, if the weight guesses are even within +/- 1 pound, she stands a good chance of breaking the record for largest total birth weight for quintuplets. I am not going to write the specific weights here. You will have to get those from Rachelle's blog. I would view them with a word of caution though because they are big enough that we are still not sure if they can really be accurate.

Also, for some more exciting news, I got some video of Rachelle's tub (without her in it of course). Rachelle wrote about this in her last post so I thought I would get something visual so people could see it. Check out the video here:

Forgot to mention the significance of the 24th of July

Yesterday was the 24th of July. In addition to marking 33 weeks of gestation for Rachelle, it is also a significant holiday that I forgot to mention. In Utah, the 24th of July is Pioneer Day celebrating the long and difficult journey made by so many people across the plains to Utah in the mid 1800s. Because both Rachelle and I have pioneer ancestors, I thought it deserved a mention. One of Rachelle's ancestors is a guy named Tunis Rappleye. Aside from having a first name that reminds me of the "chicken of the sea", Tunis was actually a really awesome guy and was in the "fourth 10" company of the original group that entered the Salt Lake Valley (Utah) on July 24, 1847. My own ancestor, Robert Taylor Burton, came in a little after Tunis and was one of the rescue party that endured incredible hardships to rescue the ill fated Martin and Willie Handcart companies.

Each of these men and their families left their comfortable homes and endured hardships that I have difficulty comprehending. I feel like I owe a debt to these ancestors that really paved the way for me. They endured all these hardships and risked (and sometimes gave) their lives to do what they thought was right. I have to admire that courage and that ability to stand for something so unselfishly. I am sure there were times when they grumbled but in the end, they made it and were glad for what they were able to overcome. I just hope Rachelle and I can live up to the legacy they have left us.

For more information on the history of Pioneer Day, see the following:


http://www.media.utah.edu/UHE/p/PIONEERDAY.html

Speaking of pioneers, I also wanted to mention was that Rachelle is having another ultrasound today and we hope to find out the weights of the babies again. Although she probably isn't going to break the gestation record, she might actually break the record for baby weight. Check in tomorrow to find out what they are.

33 Weeks Today!

Today marks 33 weeks and that means only 7 more days to go. Rachelle's mom thought that since she is doing so well, we might want to just go ahead and go for the record but I doubt we will do that. As we have seen in the past, things can change in an instant so we want to be ready for the worst.

Rachelle has been saying that her skin feels a bit like it is stretching to the limit right now. That doesn't surprise me because I heard that during the 32nd and 33rd week, the babies gain about a half a pound each per week. I honestly don't know where they are going to find that half pound from because she really doesn't eat much. Her face and arms are getting really thin. She is a little sad, though, because her arms have lost a lot of muscle tone due to being on bed rest for the last four months. She is afraid that it will take her a long time to recover from the bed rest. There are some women who have to go on bed rest for each of their kids and I feel sorry for them.

She hasn't been able to type very much but she has been able to read a little of Harry Potter. She is at page 250 right now but it is a real struggle for her to get in a position that makes it easy to hold or prop up that heavy book. She used to be able to sit up but she has to lay on her side all the time now.

A funny comment we got in an email a little while ago was, "What is it like being a celebrity?" Fortunately, I still don't know what that is like because we really aren't celebrities. I think if this had happened 20 years ago or if we had stayed in Austin, we might have been a little more well known there. We will see what happens after the babies are born. I am still very glad we came to Phoenix for this even though our babies won't be true Texans (as someone recently pointed out to me). The comfort we feel knowing that we did the best we knew how is very good. As we mentioned in early blog entries, we knew that by coming to Phoenix, we were doing the very best we knew and would feel comfortable with whatever outcome happened. If we had not come here and something had gone wrong, we would always regret not coming here because we would say to ourselves, "If only...". I have had enough "if only I would have (fill in the blank)" moments that I really didn't want another one. Now, we are at 33 weeks, well beyond the national average gestation for quintuplets, and things are going as well as we could have hoped. Just one more week to go and then the real fun will began.

8 days and counting (one more day until 33 weeks!)

We visited Rachelle at the hospital last night and she was doing really well. She was actually having fewer contractions last night than she had been having in the previous two weeks. They weighed her yesterday and I thought I heard them say that she should expect about a pound a day until she delivers. I haven't been able to update our progress page lately so I thought I would include it here. I need to take another belly measurement of her but last week's was 53 inches.

Rachelle talked with one of her doctors yesterday and the doctor said that she hadn't seen any singletons that had gone home with their mom's when they were born at 34 weeks. This was actually a bit comforting for Rachelle since she would like a few days to recuperate before the babies get here. However, we have heard of other situations where the baby or babies actually did go home with the mom. We figure that even if any of the babies go home with her, we will have enough help that things she should have some time to rest before the real work begins.

In other news, I thought I would include some more pictures. The first is from when Rachelle's brother Ryan visited on Saturday.


Also, while Ryan was here on Saturday we took some pictures at the pool. We got one of Riley doing a dive into the pool:



This has really been a great summer so far and I hope that it continues to be great going into next week:)

Update for July 22nd and More pictures!

We visited Rachelle again last night and they did an ultrasound. Everything is still going well and as of today she only has nine more days until they scheduled C-section. Here is what the big white board over her bed says on it:

As you can see, she has several daily goals which usually have something to do with the DVDs of TV shows she is watching. I imagine that the next ones will also include the final Harry Potter book which I picked up for her yesterday. The Hydro part is a treatment that is basically like a bath. On the previous floor she was on, the Hydro area was basically just like a normal bath tub. In the new one, they actually have a crane that they use to lift her into it. It makes her feel pretty silly and I am hoping we get a picture of the crane before she leaves.

We also took some other pictures on Thursday. This one was one of my favorite:


Nine days is a pretty short amount of time. I guess that means I need to start seeing all the movies and reading all the books I want to read before I don't have any more time. There is a real possibility that these babies won't be in the hospital very long so I better get going. Yesterday I went with my Mother-in-law Betty Ann to see the movie Hairspray. I thought it was one of most entertaining movies I had seen in a long time and I am sad that Rachelle didn't get to see it. John Travolta as a woman was a little disturbing at first but you kind of get used to it because it is really kind of funny.

Rachelle's brother Ryan is also in town. We took him to visit Rachelle and that was fun. He got to see the ultrasound although, to be honest, it wasn't that interesting. It is hard to distinguish anything in ultrasounds now. They mostly just look for the heart beats too so you only see some blobs and then some heart valves.

Overall, it was a great day yesterday and despite the fact that Rachelle is getting so close, she is really doing well.

Update for the 20th and 21st

OK, I didn't get a chance to do my blog yesterday but it wasn't because anything bad happened. I was just a little too tired. However, things are still progressing well. We visited Rachelle yesterday and she is still doing really well. The goal is still at 34 weeks and I still think she might actually make it. She had an ultrasound where they looked at the fluids in the placentas yesterday and everything looked good.

There was an article yesterday about the sextuplet mom that had her babies a month or so ago. The first baby went home yesterday and it weighed 4 pounds 3 ounces. From that, I think it is possible that Rachelle could actually go home with the babies a lot sooner than we originally thought. It actually is making Rachelle a little nervous because at the rate they are going, they could come home at the same time she will. Also despite the fact that she probably won't break the record of 34 weeks and 3 days, she might actually get close to breaking the record for birth weight. Already, she is way above average gestation time for quintuplets (which I think is 27 or 28 weeks). Today, she is also above average for Dr. Elliott's quintuplets. The strange thing is that she is in really good spirits. Another thing that Dr. Elliott confirmed is that if the bad contractions start again, they will not put her on the magnesium but let her go. This means that they could come pretty much at any time...so stay tuned.