Chris and Jenni

No, I’m not pregnant. But our chickens have been busy :) You’ll have to go over to my blog, The Joy of Homemaking to see what they’ve been up to…

Well, I have a lot of them but here are just a few…

1. Keep my husband at the top of my priority list, with 4 small kids this can be a challenge at times but I want this year to really focus on this.

2. Go through Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University class with Chris, and begin the process of getting out of debt. I think we can do it in two years. This is the year we are going to make a plan and stick to it.

3. Get back on track with my diet. I’ve lost another 10 pounds since I had Cait but want to get refocused on eating good healthy meals, and lots of fresh produce.

4. Get my daily schedule organized. If I do this I can keep up with the household duties, homeschool, work, and still keep my sanity. I need a good plan and then stick to it. :)

5. Discover joy in all this busyness every day. And teach my children above all to find joy in everything that God has in store for us, every day.

I know there are more, but another one of my New Year’s Resolutions needs to be, go to bed earlier, and get up earlier. So (it’s too late to do that today), I will start that tomorrow :) Good night!

Last night we got back from all the festivities of Christmas and today I spent a day around the house with the kids, cleaning up all the mess from Christmas! I put away all the Christmas decorations and took down the Christmas tree, much to the kids’ dismay. Every time I took something else down they would start begging me to leave it up. I almost caved but was able to hold my ground in spite of the children’s whining begging.  ;)

So tonight we are having a mellow celebration. I made a simple dinner of fried potatoes and a green salad. But we ate it on the new plates I got from Wal-mart’s after Christmas sale. I got a bunch of stuff for about $25! It’s so great to buy when it’s 75% off! After dinner we watched a short movie, Chris lit off a couple fireworks on the front porch for the kids to watch, I read a few chapters in our “Little House on the Prairie” book and then off to bed! It’s the first time the kids have been in bed before 10:00 for over two weeks! I’m amazed, they went down pretty well too! Hoping they sleep in just a little tomorrow :)

We wish you all a blessed New Year, and pray that God will direct your paths this coming year. We are excited and anticipate all that God has in store for us in 2008, who knows, maybe we will have another baby?!  :)  Blessings to all!

“I really love Oliver. I love him when he’s not nice, and when he’s happy to me and when he’s sad to me. And I’m really happy to get to spend time with him. ” - Aidan, this morning at breakfast. We came home for a couple days and are heading back to tomorrow to spend the rest of the week with the family, then everyone has to leave on Monday.

The truth is, that the ones we love the deepest are the ones we get to work out the most “stuff” with. Aidan and Oliver have spent a lot of time together this week and I’m afraid they are both going to be pretty sad to not get to play with one another come next week. We are all going to be sad to see the family go, it will be hard to watch my little niece or nephew growing in my sister’s tummy, from afar. And it will be sad to to see all my sweet nieces and nephews leave, and my dear brothers and dear sisters go back to their lives. I just wish we were all closer. Well, I guess one can hope and pray :)

We’ve had an interesting week, Oliver got the flu, then Ellis, Andrea, San, Jacob, Mom, Dad, Dan, who’s next? As you can imagine, I have a ton of photos to upload but have been pretty busy this week. So busy that I’ve forgotten to clean (I clean an office once a week), and then I was supposed to clean tonight and I left the keys in Orting! Oh well :)

I just had to share some of the cute pictures of the kids playing together and share that cute story of what Aidan said this morning about Oliver, it’s not the first time he’s mentioned how much he loves his cousin (or “friend” as he usually refers to him), it’s been a wonderful time getting acquainted with everyone! We hope it wont be so long between visits.

We are so excited that all the aunties and uncles and cousins arrived in WA late last night. We are all a little tired from the late night last night. Today was a fun day of all the kids getting acquainted, they all played so well together and just love seeing each other. I think the hardest part is saying good night at night, no body wants the visiting to end, including the kids who seem to think that they shouldn’t have to sleep even though they are extremely grouchy and yet still try to maintain that they are indeed “not tired!” Oh well!

I posted a couple pictures and will post more as our/their trip unfolds. I’m going to try to stay updated as we are going to have tons of pictures of their visit. It’s so good to have them all here. It’s been 5 years since we’ve all been together, and most of our children haven’t met. As you can see in this picture, there are 8 children, 5 and under. So we are a rather immature bunch. We are a force when going places, not to be reckoned with. Thankfully they are all absolutely adorable.

I just have to add how terribly cute Guenna and Lily (she’s 3 1/2) are together. They are very close to the same size, and she is at least 4 inches shorter than Eamon (she’s about 4 months older than him) Either we make big babies or they make small ones because our kids are a lot bigger than theirs :) Except for Oliver, he’s really tall. Well, we better get to bed. We have lots of plans for the week, it should be lots of fun!

Guenna feeding baby Cait from Christian Burns on Vimeo.

A few days ago, Cait decided that she didn’t want to have anything to do with me feeding her “baby” food. This went on for several days, and every time she would see what she was eating she would purse her lips tightly and turn her face away from that spoon of nastiness! She wanted either what we were eating, or to do it herself. I even tried prying her mouth open, squeezing her cheeks to open her mouth so I could shove the food in, tricking her by making her laugh and then sneaking it in, nothing worked. But as you can see in this video, Guenna has the touch! What’s the deal?

I had left the bowl of pear sauce on the table, a little discouraged that my daughter, once again would not eat what I was trying to feed her. I came back to see this, she was eating out of Guenna’s hand “like a baby”!! Oh well, I guess Guenna has a new job. But as you will see, she’s not very good at it yet!

More Cuteness from Christian Burns on Vimeo.

I love how Cait dances with her whole body!

Dancing Children from Christian Burns on Vimeo.

More dancing… from Christian Burns on Vimeo.

Try my Whole Wheat Pumpkin Scones!

They are so yummy!

Try out Grandma Eva’s Peanut Brittle Recipe, it’s so yummy! I’ve added a few more recipes to my recipe blog. And for a little healthier touch to your delectible Chicken Noodle Soup, try out my Whole Wheat Egg Noodles, they are lots of fun! By the way, I don’t know if I mentioned that I have decided not to write for Food Squeeze anymore. I decided that it was just a little too much pressure and I really prefer having my recipes on my own blog. I’ve decided to change the name of my blog to The Joy of Homemaking. So here I go again, I’ve got tons of recipes to share and I have added just a few more tonight! So keep coming back for more!

I just love this little guy, his personality just makes me smile (sometime his personality makes me want to cry but that isn’t what I’m talking about right now;), because he is three now, he is talking really well and sometimes I wish I had a recorder with me all day so I could record all of his cute sayings (some not quite so cute and yet still recordable!)

Take for instance the trip to Wal-Mart. As you probably know, bathroom trips, in any store are quite an undertaking. This trip was no different. We park the cart, secure the smallest children, strip down the older toilet trained children. All the while, trying hard to convince the children not to touch anything nasty. Then I must, redress the children, convince Guenna that she can go potty another time, question Aidan why he would put his coat on the bathroom floor (and now his coat is drenched, yuck!). Okay, I am ready to leave now, backing out of the bathroom, oh there is a nice heavyset Wal-Mart employee washing her hands. I politely ask her if she would kindly help me out by holding the door for me and my four children while I back out our enormous cart out of the bathroom. She kindly agrees and so here we go, and just as Eamon sees her and we are passing her, he says, “She has a fa…” I quickly cupped his mouth and whispered sternly, “SHHHH!!!” But silly me, I removed my hand before we had gotten more than five feet from her, the pause helped him to gather his thoughts and he said directly, “She’s fat mommy.”

Oh Eamon. My face turned red. My head hung down. And she stood there, still holding the door for us. I had to say thank you, but I didn’t want to look at her. I looked up at her and said, “Thank you.” Hoping she would see that I was also sorry for what my son had said, she smiled, “You’re welcome.” Then we had a little teaching opportunity. He didn’t know any better, he was just stating the facts. Well, hopefully Eamon learned his lesson on that one, but who knows, he might just say it again! That’s life with a three year old!

Then the other day, he was so cute. What’s the deal with Eamon in the bathroom? We were in the Costco bathroom and he was wondering why we weren’t going in the “daddy bathroom”? I explained that because I was a lady, and so I needed to go to the lady’s room and daddy’s go in the daddy’s bathroom, he said, “but I’m a LITTLE daddy!” Oh my goodness, you are too cute! “Yes”, I said, “you are a little daddy, and a cute one too!” Then later Chris was trying to explain to Eamon why he was a little man and not really a “daddy,” Eamon said earnestly, “No, I am. I’m a little daddy man!” So there you have it, he’s a little daddy man.

Chris just happened to have his phone and caught Guenna sharing her corn Chex with her horsey. You can see that she is talking to her horse as she is putting the corn Chex in her mouth, there was a little pile of Chex on the floor below the horses mouth. Is she cute or what?!

Then, Cait in the back ground, she is loving being on the floor, especially if the kids leave the little tiny legos out. Isn’t it amazing how you can clean your floor so well and if you leave one little tiny piece on the floor that blends in with the rug, your littlest, almost crawling baby will immediately find it, and put it in her mouth. Cute little sisters, they are so different, and yet love each other soooo much. I know for sure that Guenna’s favorite time of the day is when her baby wakes up, and Cait so dearly loves all the attention that she gets from her big sister.

No chair is too small to get a piece of mama’s lap. Somehow when I am sick, they all want to sit on my lap, maybe because usually I move around so much and they want to take advantage of my “down time” when they can. This picture was taken a couple weeks ago when I was sick.  I love my babies ;)

Snuggling with a chubby thumb sucking little girl while sick, is medicine to one’s soul. She is just the mushiest little thing! I think it worked, I am feeling much better! :)