In honor of the fast-approaching 1st birthday celebration for The Fab Five, I thought I’d share a little bit about each of the little crazies that make our world so joyfully unpredictable…emphasis on the unpredictable part!! In what will forever be unfair to Lila and Ryan, I’ll go in birth order for this little tribute… :-)

Brooklyn Faith, what a beauty! If I had to choose one to be the pageant queen, it would be Brooklyn, hands down. She has the most striking features of the five – big hazel eyes, full lips, super long eyelashes, and a killer smile! She is also, without a doubt, the sweetest of the bunch.  Quick story:  my “alarm” goes off every morning around 6:15 – the sound of babies laughing, squealing, and hollering at each other and at me, signaling the day’s beginning. So I trudge upstairs and take them out of their cribs one-by-one , change them, hand them their morning bottle, then head back in for the next one in line. When I start pulling them out to get the process going, I am greeted with pained shrieks of anguish from all but one of the remaining babies left bouncing in their beds. “How could you not pick me, Daddy?!,” they seem to be saying. But Brooklyn? Nothing but smiles! And that sums up Miss Brooklyn’s persona – sweet, patient, loving, and absolutely adorable!

Britton Grace – that smile says it all, doesn’t it? What would have been as appropriate and equally telling is if I had posted a picture of Angry Britton right next to this one. Yes, the little one, the one we most commonly call Little Bit, is also the uncontested diva of the bunch. Remember that story above about pulling the babies out in the morning – Britton usually goes first! She definitely has her moods – angry, fussy, inconsolable – but she also has a delightful feistiness that more than compensates for some of her less than delightful moods! She is still so, so tiny (she wears size one diapers!), but do not underestimate the might of this little one – I am certain she will be the first to do the many “firsts” among The Five!

Jack William – my boy! My lonely, mistreated, helpless little boy! Poor Jack has the unenviable fate of having six women determine his every move in life…every.single.move…Girlfriends? Only if the six approve. Dressing himself? Not without the girls’ consent. Thinking for himself? Not a chance! Fortunately, Jack seems to be well-designed for the gauntlet that awaits him in life…laid back, content, happy-go-lucky, easy as it goes…that’s Jack. No kidding, Jack is just happy, seemingly all the time. We are literally surprised when he is upset about something as if that is something babies are not known for! While the rest of our world swirls about at the pace of a chicken on crystal meth, Jack doesn’t seem to notice, or care for that matter. He is as content as content can be…for now, at least, and we are going to enjoy it while it lasts!

Lila Addison – the one we thought was as laid back as Jack has proven herself to be quietly mischievous. When Lila is quiet, something that happens less and less these days, she is probably venturing off to explore and get herself in trouble! She is our only babbler, was the first to say ma-ma and da-da (and mean it!), and I’m pretty certain will have no trouble competing with Britton and Ryan for the personality award! She is also the one that seems to be most connected to Eliot McKenna – read more on that here: http://www.joneslife.net/2009/10/a-special-bond/.  Her tongue is always waggling like you see above and her blue eyes absolutely sparkle…what a cutie!!

And then there was Ryan. Actually, if you are keeping up with this blog you are probably most familiar with Ryan Elizabeth, otherwise known as Ryan the Lion, as she has been the subject of many, many videos and blog updates…what can I say, she’s an easy subject for camera and keyboard alike!  She was the only one making any noise on the day of their birth and she hasn’t piped down yet! She is without a doubt the most colorful of the bunch! From her lightning quick smile to her equally ferocious roar to her collection of facial expressions and the accompanying sound effects, Ryan keeps us Smilin’…and laughing…and usually shaking our heads in bewilderment! First to crawl, first to walk, and she will probably be the first to pitch herself headfirst off of some high place, sending the whole gang of us off to the emergency room to watch her be the first to wear a cast…Ryan, Ryan, Ryan…oh my!

Alright, so I’m sitting here, freezing my tail off (it is 65 degrees in here!), in a hospital room that will house Casey and me for the next 24 hours or so.  Casey is in surgery at the moment and probably will be there for another couple of hours as they work to repair the damage done by the Fab Five’s seven month lease on life inside Casey’s belly.  More on that in a few days…

This is how you roll when you've got eight on board!

Now on to the recent past…the Thanksgiving road trip.  Oh boy – the trip, the trip, the trip!  Were we a bit too ambitious with our decision to take all five ten-month-olds on their first road trip – a typical four hour quest – over the Thanksgiving holiday?  Hmm, I’d have to say and emphatic “Yes!” to that.  However, we needed it, the family really wanted it, Eliot loved it, and the babies, well, they’re babies and they’ll never remember it!

So here’s the deal.  We hadn’t been home in what was getting close to two years.  Everything happened so fast after we found out about the five that we didn’t have time to sneak up to Denton for one last visit before life went into overdrive.  We tried to go up last October, but had to cancel because Casey was already feeling really rough and we did not want to put her on the road in that condition.  Obviously, our parents have been down quite a bit to see us, but nothing feels quite like going home and being a guest in the town you grew up in.

The trip up was eventful enough as what is normally a four hour jaunt up I-35 quickly became a six hour trek.  We stopped in Waco for a bite to eat and yes, we took the babies inside the restaurant!  That was actually a lot of fun because we had never been anywhere with all five where others around us didn’t already know about the babies…oh, the looks that we got!  One lady just had to come over to take a peek at the TRIPLETS…and just about hit the floor when she saw the other two…funny!  After that, there was a more urgent pit stop after Brooklyn threw up which seemed to set off a chain reaction of general fussiness out of all five.  We won’t mention the part where I left from that pit stop with the trailer door wide open and pulling over on I-35 to close it…I was a little frazzled, ok?!  Wait, did I not mention that we had to borrow a trailer to make this trip possible?  Oh yeah, no vehicle exists that I know of that can transport our family along with all our stuff under the same set of wheels without the driver having a commercial driver’s license!

Welcome to the tiniest restaurant in Waco - Health Camp!

When we finally made it home, the babies had had enough fun for the day, but we weren’t done with them yet!  I guess it’s not every day that your son/daughter comes home with their five babies so both sets of grandparents had parties planned for their friends to meet the babies while we were up there.  My parents got to go first so we walked into about 30 or so folks, eager to grab a baby and expense some good lovin’.  Casey’s family had a similar arrangement for the Friday after Thanksgiving.  In between those two days, aside from the added challenge of caring for the quints while also putting together a huge Thanksgiving feast, the holiday was as it normally is – lots of food, lots of football, lots of family and more of the first two to cap off the evening.

The trip back was about as eventful as the trip up, but we managed to make it in a little less time.  There were two stops again, but this time we all stayed in the car.  And right about Waco, the babies were done with traveling and were quite eager to let us know about it.  You could clearly see the relief on their faces when we finally got them back to familiar surroundings in Jones Baby Central back in Austin.

So we made it…we survived the first of what we expect will be many road trips in our future.  Were we a little overly ambitious?  Yes, I really do think so.  It was a ton of work, complicated by the resurgence of this nasty, little, lingering cold the babies have been fighting for the last three months.  At times, Casey and I felt like we were roadies on the Fab Five World Tour – only thing missing was the free swag!  There were also plenty of assurances to the family that they would likely not see us in Denton again anytime in the next 2-5 years…

Nobody gets out of the car on the way home!

But I must admit that it was worth every ounce of effort.  The parents, family, and friends certainly appreciated us being there (and were also thrilled by every bit of love they were able to expend to help keep the calm!).  But more than that, I think it did the three of us a lot of good – Casey, me, and Eliot, I mean.

Going home for the holidays is just what you do in this country and that is what we have always done in our family.  It’s rarely easy and it’s always too short-lived, but it’s what you do.  And it felt really good to be home, to be surrounded by family…

…to struggle simply for the sake of being together as family.

Our lives have been so far from normal for so long that we have forgotten what normal is anymore.  Our familial traditions have either been turned upside down, have limped along unrecognizably, or have been cancelled altogether over the last 18 months or so.  And somehow, amidst the chaos and the crying of crabby babies and the added stress of a population boom amongst the Jones and Krueger households, being home felt normal again.  And that fact alone, without a doubt, made this trip worth every ounce of effort it required to make it a reality…just don’t expect it to happen again anytime soon!