New Quints in Town

A few weeks ago a new set of Quints were born here in Austin. The parents are Casey and Ethan Jones. They came and talked with us early on to get our perspective on things and we tried to help them get ready for it as best we could. Their blog is here:

http://www.joneslife.net/blog.htm

They are a great couple with a lot of faith and things seem to be going pretty well for them so far. We try to pray for them often because I know (from experience) that they can use all the prayers they can get. It is nice to know that we could assist someone in a way that many others had assisted us. As for us, we are doing well still. Last week HEB (a Texas grocery store) gave us gift cards that I think will be enough for a year's worth of diapers. We were floored. Apparently, they were doing some research to figure out how they can help the Jones' family and in doing the research they found out about us and decided to just give us a big donation. It was really nice of them especially since we are sort of out of the limelight now.

You also might have heard on the news about the octuplets born to a woman in California. Yesterday, someone from the BBC contacted us and wanted us to be a guest on their World Have Your Say program to talk about what it is like to have high order multiples. Rachelle couldn't do it (because she had to take care of five semi-grumpy little people) so I did it during lunch. I thought it was just going to be a little phone interview but it turned out to be a little bit bigger than that. I ended up having to go to a local public radio studio (KUT) and particpate there. throughout the program, the host and myself talked with a whole bunch of guests from all over the world ranging from the couple that had the first set of octuplets to various doctors in singapore, Nigeria and places like that. I even got to talk with the oldest set of triplets current living in the UK (three 81 year old men that were pretty funny to talk to). Anyway, it was pretty interesting. I did get into a bit of an argument because a caller from Washington state called in and said he thought it was bad that the government would give tax breaks for children. He thought that the government should be discouraging people from having children and should make people pay MORE taxes for having children. It was pretty weird and I wish I would have told him that if the government wanted me to pay more taxes for having the children I have, then I would do it because it would be worth it.

Anyway, that is it. Just wanted to give an update since I haven't written anything here for more than a month. I have some video that I need to finish but it is getting too old so I will probably have to make some new stuff to put up there.