Chris and Jenni

The other day I was swinging on the swing in the yard (we will be putting it away to the garage soon). Guenna came up to me and gave me a big hug around my neck and whispered to me with a big smile on her face, “I’m so proud of you mommy!” That was a sweet moment. One of those moments that if you could you would capture it in a bottle to relive it again and again. She’s two and a half, we all know how challenging the twos can be at times. But they are equally as sweet as they are challenging. There are so many firsts that happen during the year between two and three. She is discovering so much about herself and about life around her, about how she’s going to be a mommy one day and not a daddy. She’s discovering her boundaries and beginning to enjoy new freedoms, she’s learning how to truly contribute to the household chores and daily tasks. She’s discovering her power to manipulate and to be a blessing. She’s a handful for sure, but I love her, and I love her baby sister and the relationship that is developing between the two of them. Their girliness brings such a different element to the dynamics of the Burns household. We love them so much!

Guess what Guenna, I’m proud of you too! And I’m proud to be your mommy :)

We made these Mexican Wedding Cookies together for a snack for our Homeschool Co-op, they were delicious!

Yesterday I was explaining to the boys that my midwife is going to check tonight to make sure that our baby is head down. Of course they wanted to know why and I explained it to them. Then this morning Aidan was remembering that Charlotte is going to check tonight to see if our baby is upside down (they were very impressed with the fact that he is always upside down). Then Aidan started in on this thought trail about how “what if God made the world one big flat circle…” I didn’t quite follow him, I think he was thinking that some of the people on our earth are upside down. I said, “that’s the cool thing, God made our world in a way that nobody is upside down!” Eamon piped in, “Yeah, nobody except your baby!” The funny thing was that he was serious, he could have been making a witty joke, I love the innocence of children and how they see life so literally.

Cait Drawing and Counting from Chris and Jenni on Vimeo.

She’s starting to talk so much, and lately she wants to color, the hard part is convincing her when it’s time to stop. I think my legs were asleep by the time we left the table, from sitting there with her for so long :) She’s such a cutie!

Cait is feeding the chickens some grass from Chris and Jenni on Vimeo.

One of Cait’s favorite things to do is to feed the chickens. She loves to bring them food but she doesn’t like to stick her hand through the fence so she usually drops it just out of their reach, she’s gotten bit a few times and so I think she likes to pay them back by tormenting them with food they can’t eat :)

Goat doing tricks from Chris and Jenni on Vimeo.

Goat Doing Tricks Again-Pumpkin Patch from Chris and Jenni on Vimeo.

Hay Maze at the Pumpkin Patch from Chris and Jenni on Vimeo.

What a cute bunch of kids! We had so much fun today at the Pumpkin Patch, and the weather was wonderful, and only two kids (boys) bonked their heads on the cement! :) But thankfully they were okay.

They got to feed the farm animals, play in the hay maze, play with a bunch of tractor toys, eat a picnic lunch together, and go out to the pumpkin field. The field was a long walk and it was kind of overgrown so the kids were really tired and hot by the time we finished, but it made for a quiet ride home :)
 

There are always scary things out and about in October, Guenna was determined to go and see this spider but as you can see, Eamon was not going to let his little sister get any closer to this “gimantic” spider! He is putting his arm out and gently stopping her from getting any closer. It was so cute.

Cait was content to sit in the wagon most of the time, unless the animals were not too close around. And if there was a baby close to her, she had to get out to see the baby closer, she LOVES babies! Well, I think that’s about all I’m going to write. There are a bunch more pictures, just click on one of these and you can see the others.

The other day I went and picked some carrots from our garden, we like to snack on them while the kids are playing outside. This was one, or should I say two, of the carrots that I picked. One fun thing about having your own garden as opposed to getting produce from the store is that when you buy stuff from the store you miss out on all these “imperfections” that truly bring so much joy in life. The kids of course fought over who got the curly carrot! Carrots that are picked fresh from the ground are so crammed with flavor and they are so crispy, we have really enjoyed eating them, just give them a little rinse and the kids eat them up! They like feeding the tops to the chickens, and the chickens do too :)

Well, we had a fun time at the pumpkin patch today but it was a pretty long walk to the patch and my hips and back are paying for it now, Chris is taking me and the kids to get a cheap Costco pizza, thank the Lord for Costco! Hope to have pictures of our visit to the patch up later. We didn’t buy any pumpkins, we have three of our own and I think we will wait and go again later with daddy.

This is Mario, our baby’s daddy. We got some fertile eggs from our neighbor who has a rooster, and let our Mama Chicken set on some fertile eggs which she hatched and raised but if you remember, only one hatched.

Not the best picture, but this is Wilson, our chick’s biological mommy. She has feathers that go all the way down her legs and cover her feet. That is where our chick gets them. And other than those feathers on the feet, the chick turned out looking exactly like the daddy. We named the chicken Rose, thinking that she was a hen because of her placid and non-aggressive personality (unlike Snoopy). Well, we were wrong. The last week or so I have been hearing a rooster crowing at about 6:00am, but had dismissed it as the neighbor chickens until yesterday when I saw HIM crowing! So we’ve named him Thomas. The kids wanted to name the baby Thomas (after Thomas the Tank Engine) but I thought that a rooster would be a little more appropriate to name after a toy train ;) He’s a cute rooster and we will be happy to keep him if he can mind his own business and leave my babies alone. Aidan was asking me who Thomas would “breed?” Yeah, not sure about that. He’s a banty so the other hens are probably too big, I just think it was funny that Aidan was wondering about it :)

We are going to the pumpkin patch today with our Homeschool Co-op, the kids are very excited!

We had a fun weekend! Saturday morning we started out the day at the “Pumpkin Pitch” watching these amazing machines flinging pumpkins across the field.

Then we dropped the girls off for a few hours at Nana and Papa’s while we took the boys on the Deception Pass Tour, kind of an early birthday present for Eamon. It was an absolute blast! We saw about 10 harbor porpoises and quite a few harbor seals, it was so fun! Lots of pictures, but I need to play with my girl so I’m cutting this post short.

Today, in honor of having only six weeks left of this pregnancy, I’m going to do a contest and giveaway. Here’s how it will work:

You guess the date the baby will be born and include a time of day. The closest one to the right time gets the prize! How fun, and you might guess that we have access to some really tasty coffee for the winner! So everybody guess, not just friends but family too!

Here’s a little hint for the guessers…Aidan was born three days late, Eamon was two days early, Guenna was 5 days late and Cait was six days late. One more thing, all the babies were born between 1:45am and 7:00am. I really can’t say which pregnancy this resembles the most, they are all pretty similar, but I might say that I’m carrying him more like I did the girls not that that matters. Although he is bigger like the boys :) My due date is October 31st and I will except entries on this contest until October 17th (Eamon’s Birthday!) after that I will close the comments. Happy Guessing! And for those of you who might want to be funny and guess two weeks late, you will be immediately disqualified! ;)

If you want to guess names you can, but we aren’t telling his name until he’s born. And yes, we have finally picked a name for the little chap, if he really is a “he”! If not, we have a problem :)

UPDATE:
Here are the votes so far…

October 27, 5:00am - Amy Kelley
October 27, 9:30pm - Mother Hen
October 28, 8:05am - My Boaz’s Ruth
October 28, 10:15am - Andrea Nash
October 29, 2:22am - Suzi Searles
October 30, 3:08am - Sara Halloran
October 30, 8:00pm - Jennie Powell
October 31, 4:00am - Kelly Gross
October 31, 12:00pm - Kim Cunningham
November 1, 1:00am - Robin Webberly
November 1, 4:30am - Uncle Sanford
November 1, 2:16pm - Rachel McAskill
November 2, 2:00am - Ellen Evans
November 2, 3:10am - Nana Joan
November 2, 6:30am - Christine
November 2, 8:19am - Auntie Carrie
November 2, 4:32pm - Nicole Stol
November 2, 6:00pm - Liz Kirkman
November 2, 8:45pm - Sherri Alexander
November 3, 2:20am - Auntie Tamara
November 3, 2:30am - Roberta Staigle
November 3, 5:37am - Catherine Edwards
November 4, 3:30am - Jenna White
November 4, 9:23am - Carol Easterly
November 4, 12:30pm - Adele Aguilar
November 5, 3:14am - Alecia Silva
November 6, 6:30am - Kim C
November 6, 5:36pm - Shannon Smith
November 7, 1:33am - Nana Judi
November 8, 8:00am - John Aguilar

Thanks for all your votes, this is fun! You can still vote in the comments until MIDNIGHT October 17 so keep ‘em coming! It will be fun to see who wins :) And I might add, for those of you who are lurking who might not know us personally, please feel free to vote. It’s open to ANYONE so don’t be shy, the more the merrier!

Yes Adele, the picture of the stripes up there is my stomach! :)

My life has changed dramatically in the past couple years. Guenevere just turned 2 1/2 years old, and boy does she give Chris and I a run for our money. She’s a smart one and VERY persistent. When the boys were her age they didn’t really have much interest in drawing, in fact, Eamon still doesn’t express very much interest in drawing or coloring. Guenna on the other hand, there is not a day that goes by that she doesn’t spend at least an hour drawing, writing, coloring, cutting, pasting, not to mention the hours spent reading and looking at books. The complicated part about her abilities is that she is just not satisfied with “her” abilities, she knows that I am much better at all those things that she would love to see on paper. She will ask for a pen or crayon (pink, thank you very much), and a piece of paper (or one of our bills from the desk will work just fine). She will say that she wants to draw and as soon as she’s drawn one baby, she asks me to draw a pink girl, and a boy, and a letter A, and J, and M, and then draw a blue boy, and now a blue baby, with a hat. Now I want you to draw another baby, crying, and a letter T, and a little letter t, and now a…you get the picture. I could literally draw pictures and letters for her for hours. I’ve taught her how to draw her letter A, H, j, J, i and I. She knows how to draw a girl, a boy and a baby and a few other things but they are just not enough! She doesn’t have enough hand control to be really satisfied with the outcome and so she begs me to draw for her!

Yesterday I worked on a project, drawing a tree for literally two hours and she sat right next to me watching me the entire time. She was fascinated. I’m glad that she is content to watch me, but I will also be very pleased when she is capable of drawing for herself. Sometimes it would be nice to sit her down to color without hearing her exclaim anxiously, “draw a pink girl mommy!” And at the same time, I’m amazed at her love for anything to do with academics and art. She may be a tough one to understand (just ask Chris, he gets really confused at times), but she is so sweet too. She loves being a big sister and cant wait to see her new baby brother, she has tried to convince me a few times that there is a girl in my tummy though. She’s both nurturing and defiant, a sweet little lady and an active little tom-boy at times. She cracks us up because she calls the boys, “Kids” or “Guys” or “Boys” when she’s trying to get their attention, and she says it in a really high-pitched, sweet voice. “Come on kids!” or “Hi guys!”

Sometimes I wonder what she will be like when she’s a teenager. I hope that some things don’t change, and of course many things will change. But there is a special sweetness to her personality that we’ve learned to love so much. She loves to sing and pray and she loves to talk about God. She wants us to “pretend we are God(!)” or she will say something random “looks like God”. It’s hard to imagine life without our little Guenevere, she’s a joy and a challenge, but so well worth the challenge. She makes me want to be a better example of a mother and wife because I know that she looks up to me, she reminds me often that “we are girls,” and will often count how many girls and how many boys are at the table or in the car. I know that she sees me as her hero, as her role model and as her confidant, what a huge responsibility for such a weak vessel. But I love my job, and I love my girls, they bring beauty and flowers into our male-dominated family ;) Chris would disagree with that last statement, he claims they were outnumbered even before Guenna was born! He may have a point. I’ve asked Chris many times where she gets her tanacity, he just smiles and says nothing. Isn’t he sweet?

Untitled from Chris and Jenni on Vimeo.

And another video of the preschoolers at their gymnastics class.

Homeschool Gymnastics-preschoolers from Chris and Jenni on Vimeo.

As of today we have 42 days until our “due date,” six more weeks! I have one more appointment with my midwife in two weeks and then I start seeing her every week. Yeah! I’m getting so close!

Every time we have a new baby I like to make some kind of count down to the due date. I’ve mostly done paper chains to count down the days, but this time I decided to do something different. Since it is fall I decided to make a big tree and fall leaves. Each day one of the kids gets to take a leaf off the tree and put it on the ground below. By the time all the leaves are off the tree, the baby will be here (or a couple days after, but I did give a few extra leaves just in case). And the neat thing is that by the time the leaves are off of our baby tree, the leaves will probably be gone from our tree in our front yard so the kids will get to see the leaves falling at the same time.

Here’s a close-up of the little owl that I drew, isn’t he cute?! I found him by searching for how to draw an owl online. I love it when the things I envision turn out close to how I envisioned them :)

And this picture is for all those perfectionists out there. Guenna was so good, she sat and watched me for literally two hours while I drew and colored the tree. She never complained, she was happy and content to just watch. Then the next day I was drawing the owl and the temptation was greater than she could bear, she found a pen and drew her own art (it’s a sideways person). She’s quite the artist isn’t she? :)

So, we are all getting excited around here for the coming of a new family member. Eamon’s birthday is in four weeks so we are gearing up for celebrating his birthday too, which helps to have something between now and then to look forward to. It should be a busy month. The last two days I’ve been having tons of contractions, my midwife asked if I was dehydrated, probably. Okay, no I am. Then today just about an hour ago they started in again, only this time they are painful. So I guess I will take her seriously and start drinking more water! I don’t need to spend the next few weeks in the hospital with a premie, that would not be on my list of things to do in October ;) There’s another contraction, I better go get a glass of water right now.

Today we had our second homeschool co-op, it went great. I think we are starting to work out the bugs. I’m pretty sure that Aidan’s favorite part is gymnastics, although he really seems to enjoy his Mexican class where they are learning some Spanish as well as several different cultural things and then they end the day with a snack and a story about a missionary family who still live and minister in Mexico.

When we got home tonight we were asking Aidan about his gymnastics class and he was excitedly telling us about all the new things he learned today including a headstand! I said, “why don’t you show us how you do it!” He said, “I have to have something to hold up my feet.” To which I replied, “oh, I can hold up your feet.” He kind of stared at me for a second and then half smiled and replied very gingerly but honestly, “Are you strong enough?” “What?! Of course I’m strong enough!!” Ok, listen here buddy, I may be 8 months pregnant, and I may not EVER pick you up, and I know that you never see me run, but that doesn’t mean I can’t hold your legs in the air! Does Mrs. Engleson look THAT much stronger than me? ;) I just had to laugh, especially in light of my post earlier today. I remember Aidan asking me once, probably about a year ago, “Can you run mommy?” Totally an honest question, he’d just never seen me run. So there you have it, running is not my thing, I’ve been pregnant for the past six years! That’s my excuse and I think it’s a pretty good one, I do happen to know though that Mrs. Engleson went running the day that she gave birth to her last child, yeah, she’s pretty amazing! :)

He finally did his headstand for me, and I was very proud to be strong enough to hold up his little scrawny legs! He did mention to me though that he was a little embarrassed because during his gymnastics class his shirt came up when he was doing his headstand. So I showed him how to tuck in his shirt. He’s become pretty modest as of late, in fact the other day he realized his shorts were on backwards so he went to hide behind the door to hide from me while he removed his shorts to put them back on properly, only he was hiding behind the front door (he was out side on our front porch) with his bottom facing the passing traffic! Chris set him straight before he removed his shorts and told him to go change in the bathroom. I don’t think he had quite thought that one through. Cute boy, becoming a wonderful young man. I love him :) 

As if I needed any “encouragement” at this season in my life. This morning Guenna noticed that Cait has a little nose, “you have a little nose Cait!” The kids began comparing nose sizes. Eamon, politely instructing his sister, stretched his arm out and pointed at mommy, “she has the biggest nose.” Though I wanted to protest, I had to laugh! I mean, it’s true, my nose IS the biggest in the house right now, but do you have to point it out?! Then Aidan mentioned that daddy’s is bigger than mommy’s, that made me feel a little better.

This conversation reminded me of a conversation between Aidan and I the other day. He had just finished a painting he had been working on and was excitedly showing me what all the marks were. “This is me, and I have my coat wrapped around my waist and those are the sleeves sticking out. This is all the colors…” Then I asked him what the long pink line with the circle at the top was.”  He responded, “oh, that’s you. Because you are big. Every time I draw a picture, you are the BIGGEST one…you ARE so  big mommy, you’re HUGE!”

Oh thank you son. I’m so glad you are so impressed with my hugeness. I’m not exactly sure how to go about telling the boys that they need not point out how large women are, or how big their nose or mouth are. And though I do need to explain it to them, it is nice to hear their innocent exclamations from time to time :) Eamon told me today, “You’re baby is getting really big mommy!” Now, that’s nice to hear, the baby, not necessarily the mommy ;)  And he is right, this baby is getting big, I’m quickly running out of space on my lap, running out of space in my stomach to eat very large portions, running out of space in my bladder! Six more weeks and I will get to hold my sweet little boy, and my body will go to work trying to get back to it’s “normal” size :)

We are a little bummed that we wont be attending church tomorrow, because our little Cait had Hand Foot and Mouth this week and we are not wanting to expose anyone if she is still contagious, but I do want to say that she is doing MUCH better, it’s so nice to have our happy little sassy girl back! Tonight I was thinking about not attending, and I remembered something Aidan said last week when we were preparing to receive the Lord’s Supper. Pastor Dean was speaking right before communion about how we are “transformed” through the cross. Aidan leaned over to me and whispered excitedly, “he said ‘transformed!!’”  Chris has let the boys watch a few episodes of “Transformers” and I think Aidan was impressed that pastor Dean knew about them too ;)

If only we could always view life through their eyes, I’m sure we would see life in a much more easy going, positive light. I love my children. Often at night when they are asleep I wish I could wipe away any anger I might have felt towards them during the day, they are so precious. Have you ever wanted to just go in and pick up your sleeping babies and hold them and show them how much you love them in spite of their disobedience that day? I do. Sometimes I really wish that I loved them with a perfect, unconditional love, but I know that though Jesus has transformed me through the cross, I’m a work in progress. I’m so thankful that His grace covers me, and my children, as we learn together to be more like Him.

For those of you who have taught your children at home, or really anyone whom might have had experience in this area. I’ve started Aidan these past few weeks with some more consistent letter writing practice and have noticed that he is really wanting to be left-handed. I may be old school but I really would like to encourage him to be right-handed. So if you were in my shoes, how would you go about encouraging him to write with his right hand? He writes much better with his right hand, but will complain often that his left hand is the hand that “gets all the big stuff” or that his “right hand is dizzy.” :) I usually let him move to his left hand without making too big of a deal about it. Any thoughts? I’m not against him being left-handed but I think it would be easier for us if he was right-handed, (don’t get your feelings hurt, all you lefties:). Anyway, just an odd question from a new homeschooling mama, thought it might be a fun topic!