Chris and Jenni

Well, it’s been awhile once again since I’ve written. Why you might ask? I’ve been busy being a MOTHER ;) Yes it’s true, this passel of children do keep me busy.

Tonight Chris let me slip away from my duties, leaving dirty dishes and cluttered floors, and crying children behind me. Imagine Cait’s sweet little chubby face all screwed up with dread, the sight of her own personal maid getting into the van without her! And her fat little fingers clenching the fence around the porch, desperately crying, hoping that her efforts would lure me out of the van and back to her arms where I am much safer. But no, mommy’s know all the tricks. I know my littlest daughter well. I do hate to see her crying for me like that and to ease my own conscience I decided to play one of her favorite games. I rolled down the window and began to slowly drive away, waving and loudly saying, “Bye-bye!” and smiling. She can’t resist, she must stop her crying, no matter how badly she wants to cry she must smile and wave and say, “Ba-ba!” Yes, it worked. And now I can drive down the road to Safeway all by myself without that dreaded last look from my baby, “You are abandoning me here with him?! Don’t you love me MOMMY?!!!”

Upon returning Christian gave me the report that the children had a blast without me (how dare they!?) He also told me a little secret about what the children would like to get me, and that is what inspired this post. I love kids. They are so honest. Aidan always wants to buy me flowers, whenever we go to a store he asks me if we can buy me some flowers “this time?!” And yesterday we were at Costco and we passed some potted flowers and he so sweetly asked me, “Mommy, which ones of these do you like best?” I told him the pink ones, “Can we get them for you?” What a sweetie. When he asks about getting me some cut flowers I usually tell him no, and then let them see if they can pick out the ones that I like the best (just training them for when they actually have money). So tonight when Chris asked the kids what they wanted to get me for Mother’s Day, naturally Aidan wanted to get me some flowers. I love his heart, he so wants to please :) I don’t think they will because they will have a hard time keeping them a secret until Mother’s day.

Eamon was a little more creative in his idea of what he would like to get me for Mother’s Day. “Um, a scooter or a motorcycle. I think a motorcycle because it would be faster.” Um, yeah. The desire to go really fast on a two wheeled object has kind of left me, actually it was never really there even before I had children, now it’s really not there. But how would he know that? I mean, don’t mom’s like everything that their little boys like? I mean, why wouldn’t mom want a motorcycle, or a sword or a gun?! Those things are so cool! Ok, honestly. That just made my heart smile, he was thinking of me. What would be really cool to get mom? I love it. It’s better than a gift. My sweet boys, and my sweet girls. I am so blessed, there is nothing better than just know that I have beautiful children who think about me when I’m gone. I love them, and they make my Mother’s day a blessed and wonderful day. Everyday is Mother’s Day in this household! I get to sit and read to my beautiful children. Clean up messes, wipe dirty faces, teach them so many things, kiss their owies, and hug their little growing bodies. There are a million little snapshots that I wish I could capture every day, moments that make mothering so worth while. Like hearing my big boys playing outside for hours without arguing, hearing them tell Guenna to get away from the boundary line and then making sure I know about it, seeing Cait and Guenna play together like real sisters. There is so much joy in the midst of the many trials that we moms face throughout the day. But the joys far outweigh the struggles. I love my job, and the pay is great! It’s priceless.

Have a great Mother’s Day! Don’t forget to kiss those dirty faces!

It’s been…let’s just say it’s been awhile, since I posted a recipe on my Homemaking blog. But tonight I was inspired by chocolate. And I thought I would share the love around. Here’s a teaser…

Tomorrow I hope to post my recipe for Pulled Pork Tacos, so stay tuned!

Can I hear some applause?!!! Cait has decided that NOW is a good time to walk. Yesterday she took her first steps, she is going to be 13 months old next week. Definitely my slowest to walk, I’m not complaining, trust me! All the other kids walked at 10 months 3 weeks, I know what happens when these little monsters get more mobile! ;)

Um, okay I think I will just hang out here where it’s safe…

Oh…I think I’m doing it! I am I’m doing it, all by myself!

Did you see that? Did you see me move my foot forward?!! Yes of course honey, we saw it (so it might have been only about a centimeter but who’s counting right?;) No really, she has been consistently taking steps several times a day since yesterday folks. She is just so cute and proud of herself and we make sure we make a big deal out of it since she has been totally uninterested in doing any kind of walking up until just a few days ago. Is she cute or what?!

We just had our annual Tulip Brunch at mom and dad Burns’ house. What fun! This year’s crowd was small and sweet, it was lots of fun! Chris’ cousin Megan came, his uncle Bill and aunt Lotte, of course all of us and Carrie and CJ’s family and the old faithfuls, Doug and Carol and their new little bundle Amina. Guenna was in heaven with two babies to look at and poke, Cait was a little bummed that nobody would let her hold one of those little dollies!

The day turned out to be so nice, probably our nicest day of the year. So we had a wonderful walk to the fields, taking pictures all the way. The fields are always just brilliantly magnificent. The kids had a lot of fun running up and down the aisles and bouncing on the piles of flowers (I think they had some problems with the weather and they had to dig up a bunch of the flowers, we’ve never seen them do this before they usually just top the flowers and let the foliage feed the bulbs, anyway everybody had fun with the tulip piles! :).

Well, we took tons of pictures and there are too many for me to write about. You can see the slideshow of the tulip pictures here. Enjoy! Hope you are all having a great “spring” :)

Nana and two of her little cuties :)

Eva in the tulips, isn’t she just an angel? :)

Smiley baby Amina, she’s such a little sweet heart and we decided she fits in perfectly into the Easterly family ;)

I AM SO TIRED! Why is that? ;) We had a really fun day today visiting (in real life) our friends from Rain Garden. They live in Minnesota and are in the area visiting family. They blessed us with their company today on a cold windy April day in WA. It’s always fun to meet someone in real life that you’ve been in acquaintance with for a couple years online. Thanks you guys for coming over, we had such a great day of visiting and getting to know you better. Your boys are absolutely beautiful! Hope you come to see us again next time you are in town! Blessings!

Well, only for the night, then tomorrow we drive down again for a day of meeting up some virtual friends I’ve never met. I’m really looking forward to our BBQ tomorrow but after this week I’m ready to stay home for another 2 months and I will be just happy! I’m sure you all know about the gas prices and how it affects us families with cars that don’t get very good gas mileage. Oh well, life goes on!

Better head to my own bed and sink in and get some good rest, we have a very fun and long day planned for tomorrow! Hope you all had a great weekend, by the way, my mom is awesome and watched our four busy kids while we went to dinner in Seattle, we had an absolute blast by the way! Anyway, I will catch up later, but now I need to sleep :)

Cait was determined to get his glasses off his face, you can see she has a handful of hair bracing herself so she can reach around to grab his glasses :) Cute girl!

We had a great to visiting “umpa” the last couple days. The kids didn’t want to leave, or they wanted to take him home with us. You know, Grandpa has all the fun stuff like, rivers, ponds, bridges, rocks, tractors, cows, and dead birds hanging on the fence. It’s funny too because he has absolutely no toys to speak of and yet the kids had a blast! Of course they did get to play outside and that was just tons of fun. I think it was good for dad to hang around some of his grandkids for a couple days. I posted some of my favorite pictures from our visit, more to come. We are heading back down south for a visit with my mom for the weekend, and to see Great Grandma Webster. And Chris and I get to have a date in Seattle, we are really looking forward to that!

Sitting on a rock by the pond :)

Cait in the wheel barrow, sitting under the “Fat Albert” tree :)

Please pray for my dad these coming weeks. His girlfriend Brenda, died on Friday night. She was a sweet lady and a wonderful companion for my dad. He really loved her and is feeling pretty broken and lonely right now. Brenda has had a lot of health problems, and last week was fighting for her life and her heart just gave out. She had congestive heart failure and has spent the last month in and out of the hospital. We were really shocked when we got the news, I guess we all just thought she would pull out of it again.

The kids and I are going tomorrow to spend a couple days with my dad. Should be a good time, and hopefully he can get his mind off of being down with all those grandkids around. Please pray that the Lord will minister to Him, and that He will turn to the Lord for help. Thanks.

Aidan was doing his “best” to smile, sometimes it  just doesn’t come out quite right ;)  I posted a bunch of their Easter pictures because I thought it was hilarious how many pictures we took, and how few of them turned out with all smiles!

Are those not the cutest little piano hands you’ve ever seen?! I love Cait’s fat little hands, and feet. Chubby babies are so much fun! :)

I just posted a zillion pictures today. I realized when I started going back to see how far I needed catch up, I needed to post pictures as far back as when we announced we are expecting again! I guess I’ve been a little tired and unmotivated :) This is where the pictures start. I haven’t gotten completely caught up, nor do I think I’m going to blog about the really cute ones, but you can see them at least! There are some fun ones in there! My favorites are the ones of Eamon and Guenna dancing :) Have fun!

Aidan and I went over to drop off some needed chocolate chip cookies (to our little baby’s mommy), and this auntie needed to hold her little niece. She is just so beautiful, and there is something so amazing about newborn babies. I love their feet, their tiny little hands and how wrinkly they are those first couple weeks. Eva is just beautiful and I think CJ, Carrie and Jazzy are pretty much transfixed with this sweet little bundle. I wanted to get a picture of all four of them but Jazz was gone so next time :) We’ve been talking about how much fun our girls are going to have growing up together. We are definitely going to have to get them matching dresses next year! :) My kids have been so anxious to see and hold her this week but they’ve been sick so we’ve had to stay away. But next week hopefully we will get to see her more.

Well I better head to bed, but thought I would post some pictures of our new sweet baby. Eamon was telling me today that he wants her to come home. I asked, “where do you mean?” He said, “to her home!” I said, “oh yeah she’s home, she was only in the hospital for a day and now she’s home with auntie and uncle.” “Oh.” :) I think he felt a little uncomfortable at the hospital, and now he’s glad she is at home safe with mom and dad. But I think secretly he would like her to come to our home! I don’t think her mommy and daddy would go for that!

One of the cochin hens, and Thelma one of our banties. Believe it or not, they both laid eggs in there today! This is not the first time I’ve seen Thelma in there with a large hen. I think she gets a little impatient with them and pushes her way in there! The first time I caught her in there with another hen, the hen was actually setting on top of her, this seems to work a little better! The funny thing is that we have four other nest boxes but the hens all want to lay their eggs in the two boxes :)

Happy Birthday Dear Cait! from Chris and Jenni on Vimeo.

Guenna made the realization that whenever we were saying “birthday cake” we were actually saying “birthday Cait” So for awhile she was calling Cait “birthday Cait” as if that was her new name :) Little two year old girls are so cute! And I must say, this little one year old is pretty darn cute too!

Scooping up the hail from Chris and Jenni on Vimeo.