Can it be, can it really be that March is already half way over? We have had an extremely busy few weeks, so much so that I am going to have to bullet-point to keep this from turning into a novel.
*Tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day! This was never a significant holiday for us Burms but this year it has taken on a whole new meaning with Trae's first grade teacher, Mrs. O'Dougherty! It has been all about leprechauns her at home and at school. Trae and Add have built two traps to catch these little stinkers. They leave notes every night. They've even left snacks for our guest! While they haven't caught a leprechaun they've had a lot of fun playing the game. Our little green friend 'Lep' will be sadly missed after the 17th passes.
*Two weeks ago Elias began climbing out of his crib!! Along with this new found freedom came the realization that the second his eyes pop open he can hit the ground running! Naps are becoming scarce and in the morning he is up and exploring around 4:45-5:15 every day!! We are going crazy! I think the little man sleeps less than I do some days. Yep, we've switched the lock on his bedroom door but he has been able to work is way out the sliding pocket door into his bathroom. One morning after riding his trike around in the dark for a bit he decided to head out back to play and set the house alarm off at 5:30 a.m.!! It was still pitch black outside!!
*Two weekends ago we had the privilege of watching Ryan and Carly again. Their Daddy and Mama took a night away to some well deserved R&R. Ryan and Carly were such a joy to have around. They loved to be outside and probably spent most of their time running circles in our backyard. That is perfectly fine since our three joined in! It was great!
*Traeton has had two field trips within the past few weeks. I joined the whole first grade on the second which was to the Botanical Gardens. Hmmmm.... all I have to say is that it is quite clear why I have all silks in our home and why my thumb is definitely not green! I truly have no interest in botany!
*Addison is still on winter break! I am going to miss her terribly when she goes back to school in just a few weeks. She has been in swimming lessons since being out of school and she absolutely loves it! We go to a swim school that teaches swimming with a current. It is different but she seems to do well with it.
*Traeton is on another kick, robot building and anything electronic. He has disassembles several broken things (small boom box, keyboard, cell phone, and the list goes on) just to figure out how it all works! He has even been picking up extra jobs around the house to earn money to buy robot kits. Poor thing, Todd and I have no knowledge of electronics what-so-ever so he is eternally frustrated with us because we just can't make a robot that does something!!
*A few weeks ago Todd and I, along with our small group, began Growing Kids God's Way. Tomorrow night is night three.... Unfortunately we will have to miss as we are taking Traeton to the Newsboys concert. But even after the first two weeks it is painfully clear that we have a lot of work to do with these three jack rabbits. We have made some big mistakes in letting basic things slide, ie. manners, and now we have to backtrack a very long way to get it all straightened out.
*This weekend I had the pleasure of hosting a baby shower for a dear friend who is expecting a son. It was a very nice party where we served brunch to all the guests. I hope it was a blessing to her and everyone who came.
*Just four more days until we leave for our spring break trip to Arizona. Watch out Surprise, here we come! Get ready to rumble....the Burmeister children will shake things up, that is for sure. The quiet, peaceful retirement community trembles when our three come into town. They've been known to do some pretty outrageous things like steal lemons off the next door neighbor's lemon tree. Oooooo.....
*This will be our longest ever family road trip. I am beginning to freak out! I would like to take the shortest route from home to there and back again to reduce the 'togetherness' in the van but Todd just mentioned tonight that he thinks it would be fun to 'swing by' the Grand Canyon!!!! WHAT?!?!?! I do not recall that being on Map Quest's directions. Hmmmm, probably because it is NOT!
Thanks for hangin' with me... ERB
Monday, March 16, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Blogging World
It is bedtime. I have been catching up on blogs for almost two hours now! My eyes are blurry, my neck is stiff and I have an incredible amount of information flowing through my head. I'm sure I'll subconsciously dump it all sometime in the night. There are some incredible blogs out there. People are so creative, so smart, so interesting. I could read blogs all day long.
I would love to know how to add music to my blog. One blog I visit plays all kinds of amazing music. It makes reading her blog so much more emotional, very powerful.
I would also like to be more bold in my blog, more me. I would like to show my true colors a little more. Many of the blogs I follow are impressive in an opinionated way. I love reading the things people are passionate about. Passion is powerful.
But right now I am going to bed. I will tackle this tomorrow in between speech therapy, piano and AWANA.
I would love to know how to add music to my blog. One blog I visit plays all kinds of amazing music. It makes reading her blog so much more emotional, very powerful.
I would also like to be more bold in my blog, more me. I would like to show my true colors a little more. Many of the blogs I follow are impressive in an opinionated way. I love reading the things people are passionate about. Passion is powerful.
But right now I am going to bed. I will tackle this tomorrow in between speech therapy, piano and AWANA.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Over A Mountain and IN the Woods...
If you keep up with this sluggish blog you might remember my last post about our fabulously, fantastic weekend in Winter Park. So much about that weekend was amazing but there was a fraction of it that was absolutely rotten! I could go on and on about the great memories we made but it would take only a second to explain what was the sour part.
This leads me to the point of this post. That weekend pushed Todd and I to our parenting limit. At one point during that weekend I seriously questioned if I was properly hired to raise our three vibrant blessings. Surely God overestimated me and my abilities. I truly felt that all my efforts of the past 7.5 years were for not. Not a single thing I had taught my children worked or presented itself that last night. Okay, maybe the lesson on how to dress themselves properly but it ended there. Manners, respect, boundaries, all of it out the window!
Upon returning to town I quickly made an appointment with one of the popular family counselors in our area. Today was my first visit. She diagnosed the problem in about 2.2 minutes and spent the rest of our visit giving me a plethora of ideas on how to work with our strong willed child a.k.a. Traeton Burmeister.
One piece of advice she had was to talk to everyone I could about their strong willed child and what tricks have worked for them. So, if you have any experience with a strong willed child or are one yourself will you please reply to this post with a trick or two or ten about what has worked for you. She said the longer list I can compile the better because as we all know things only work with these children a day or two before they've mastered it and moved on to the next challenge.
Deepest thanks from this mama who has made it 'over a few mountains but is still IN the woods'.
This leads me to the point of this post. That weekend pushed Todd and I to our parenting limit. At one point during that weekend I seriously questioned if I was properly hired to raise our three vibrant blessings. Surely God overestimated me and my abilities. I truly felt that all my efforts of the past 7.5 years were for not. Not a single thing I had taught my children worked or presented itself that last night. Okay, maybe the lesson on how to dress themselves properly but it ended there. Manners, respect, boundaries, all of it out the window!
Upon returning to town I quickly made an appointment with one of the popular family counselors in our area. Today was my first visit. She diagnosed the problem in about 2.2 minutes and spent the rest of our visit giving me a plethora of ideas on how to work with our strong willed child a.k.a. Traeton Burmeister.
One piece of advice she had was to talk to everyone I could about their strong willed child and what tricks have worked for them. So, if you have any experience with a strong willed child or are one yourself will you please reply to this post with a trick or two or ten about what has worked for you. She said the longer list I can compile the better because as we all know things only work with these children a day or two before they've mastered it and moved on to the next challenge.
Deepest thanks from this mama who has made it 'over a few mountains but is still IN the woods'.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Over the Mountains and Through the Woods!
Over the mountains and through the woods is how our family spent this past weekend. We were blessed to be able to stay at the Burms condo for several days this past Friday through Tuesday. We spent our weekend with dear friends who have two little boys which brought our grand total to nine people in a small two-bedroom condo. We shared some fun, fun moments but we also shared some stressful, chaotic moments. It is a weekend that I will treasure for years to come as we did some pretty cool stuff.
Our first day in Winter Park we headed to the tubing hill in Frasher. Total BLAST!!! If you have never been put this on your 'must do' list for the near future. The amount of speed one reaches while flying down the hill has to be illegal!! Traeton had his own tube but Addison and Elias had to ride in our laps because they were too young to fly by themselves.
The next two days the children spent in ski/snowboard school. Traeton has been asking to learn how to snowboard so we thought, 'hey, why not' and signed him up. He took to it very well which should be no surprise since he is a great skateboarder. Addison didn't fare so well, she made it very clear to all of us that she does NOT like skiing and had no interest in hitting the slopes again. She spent the next day in the condo with the baby boys. Hopefully someday she'll learn to like it because I am certain as soon as Elias is old enough to put some boards on his feet he'll never look back. She might be pretty lonely in the lodge all by herself.
Our first day in Winter Park we headed to the tubing hill in Frasher. Total BLAST!!! If you have never been put this on your 'must do' list for the near future. The amount of speed one reaches while flying down the hill has to be illegal!! Traeton had his own tube but Addison and Elias had to ride in our laps because they were too young to fly by themselves.
The next two days the children spent in ski/snowboard school. Traeton has been asking to learn how to snowboard so we thought, 'hey, why not' and signed him up. He took to it very well which should be no surprise since he is a great skateboarder. Addison didn't fare so well, she made it very clear to all of us that she does NOT like skiing and had no interest in hitting the slopes again. She spent the next day in the condo with the baby boys. Hopefully someday she'll learn to like it because I am certain as soon as Elias is old enough to put some boards on his feet he'll never look back. She might be pretty lonely in the lodge all by herself.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
The Whole Day...
It is currently 7:45 a.m. Saturday morning, January 24th. Todd left for work an hour ago and won't be home for another 24 hours. This is the third Saturday he has worked this month. Saturdays that Todd works stink. They stink because Saturdays are family days and without him our family is not complete. We don't usually have much to do on Saturdays because I do our 'chore' shopping during the week and our children are still too young for all the sports that usually fill Saturday schedules. So, right now, at this moment our day is wide open...
All three children have been playing in amazing harmony for over 30 minutes in Elias' room. They are building and rebuilding Geo train tracks. Todd and I agree GeoTrax are the best toy investment we have ever made! We began collecting GeoTrax when Traeton was three years old and now he is 7 1/2 and still loves them. Even Addison is a GeoTrax fan. Traeton is usually the engineer who designs and builds the track while Addison and Elias wait patiently or sometimes not so patiently to run the trains.
Traeton had a teacher-in-service day yesterday, Friday, so we headed down to the National Western Stock Show. BeBee, Great Grandma Schilling, the children and myself spent a large chunk of the day exploring the grounds. We didn't do a rodeo this year, we are on the 'every other year plan' for rodeo attendance. This is because by time we sit through 1.5-2 hours of the rodeo the kids are beat. We wanted to take our time this year to see all the sheep, pigs, cows, horses, mules and donkeys we could!! What a rich experience for them!
We also spent a fair share of our time shopping the booths. Trae and Add had their money burning in their hands for that super special stock show toy. Traeton chose a whole weaponry set complete with rifle, pistols, handcuffs, bandit mask, and much, much more. After we got him outfitted he was feelin' like he could take on any 'Bad Guy' who would dare come his way.
We love the National Western Stock Show. This is the last weekend in case you think you might want to visit!
All three children have been playing in amazing harmony for over 30 minutes in Elias' room. They are building and rebuilding Geo train tracks. Todd and I agree GeoTrax are the best toy investment we have ever made! We began collecting GeoTrax when Traeton was three years old and now he is 7 1/2 and still loves them. Even Addison is a GeoTrax fan. Traeton is usually the engineer who designs and builds the track while Addison and Elias wait patiently or sometimes not so patiently to run the trains.
Traeton had a teacher-in-service day yesterday, Friday, so we headed down to the National Western Stock Show. BeBee, Great Grandma Schilling, the children and myself spent a large chunk of the day exploring the grounds. We didn't do a rodeo this year, we are on the 'every other year plan' for rodeo attendance. This is because by time we sit through 1.5-2 hours of the rodeo the kids are beat. We wanted to take our time this year to see all the sheep, pigs, cows, horses, mules and donkeys we could!! What a rich experience for them!
We also spent a fair share of our time shopping the booths. Trae and Add had their money burning in their hands for that super special stock show toy. Traeton chose a whole weaponry set complete with rifle, pistols, handcuffs, bandit mask, and much, much more. After we got him outfitted he was feelin' like he could take on any 'Bad Guy' who would dare come his way.
We love the National Western Stock Show. This is the last weekend in case you think you might want to visit!
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Hello Friends...
I owe you all a new post. It has been way too long and lots has happened around here in the past week.
I did finish the silly Twilight series, what an experience that was. It has been over a week, Todd and I saw the movie and I have now moved on with life. Interesting affect that had on me but it is now part of my past, whew!
Eleven days ago my grandmother passed away. She was very special to me because she and my Grandpa were the family with whom we spent all our holidays. She has been on the decline for the past year at least so her passing is a good thing. I am not sad, I do not miss her, death is a good thing for those who know Jesus Christ as their savior. I will see her again when my time on this earth is finished.
I am sad for my Grandpa, however, as he is missing her greatly and is broken without her. They were married for 61 years and still best of friends. Last year, for their sixtieth anniversary, we had a huge family reunion. What a blessing to have that time with them to celebrate their lives, their marriage and their legacy. He truly didn't think he'd outlive her so this is an unexpected situation in which he finds himself. Our prayer is that time will dull the pain some and he will find himself a life worth living in his remaining years.
If you believe in prayer please pray for him when thoughts of him cross your mind.
ERB
I owe you all a new post. It has been way too long and lots has happened around here in the past week.
I did finish the silly Twilight series, what an experience that was. It has been over a week, Todd and I saw the movie and I have now moved on with life. Interesting affect that had on me but it is now part of my past, whew!
Eleven days ago my grandmother passed away. She was very special to me because she and my Grandpa were the family with whom we spent all our holidays. She has been on the decline for the past year at least so her passing is a good thing. I am not sad, I do not miss her, death is a good thing for those who know Jesus Christ as their savior. I will see her again when my time on this earth is finished.
I am sad for my Grandpa, however, as he is missing her greatly and is broken without her. They were married for 61 years and still best of friends. Last year, for their sixtieth anniversary, we had a huge family reunion. What a blessing to have that time with them to celebrate their lives, their marriage and their legacy. He truly didn't think he'd outlive her so this is an unexpected situation in which he finds himself. Our prayer is that time will dull the pain some and he will find himself a life worth living in his remaining years.
If you believe in prayer please pray for him when thoughts of him cross your mind.
ERB
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Hiatus...
I truly cannot believe that we just sent out our Christmas letter notifying everyone of our family blog and asked you all to drop by and visit. Then a few days before New Years, completely unaware of what I was about to embark, I began reading the Twilight series.
It is now January 8th and I have read over 1000 pages of an amazing love story. I am completely hooked and cannot wait until the next chance I have to read. I have never experienced addiction but I imagine this is what it'd feel like on an psychological level. I will sit for hours at night after the kids are in bed and read. My eyes never get heavy. The latest I stayed up was 1:30 a.m. and the earliest I've turned off the light after reading was 10:45. I read no less than 2 hours every night and sneak it in during the day when I can. I think about the characters and the storyline all the time. My poor husband has been completely neglected.
So until I can plow through the rest of book three and all of book four I may not be back to post anything. There is plenty to write about though... Yesterday for instance when Elias ate who-knows-how-much toothpaste while I was preparing breakfast. Shortly after I discovered him he began vomiting toothpaste over and over. Then the diarrhea started...I thought he may have rota virus considering he had been exposed and how it presented itself. Next Elias took my brand new cell phone and sent it for a swim. It is completely toasted!!! Thank goodness the diarrhea did not continue today. Todd and I assume it was an ill reaction to the toothpaste snack.
It is now January 8th and I have read over 1000 pages of an amazing love story. I am completely hooked and cannot wait until the next chance I have to read. I have never experienced addiction but I imagine this is what it'd feel like on an psychological level. I will sit for hours at night after the kids are in bed and read. My eyes never get heavy. The latest I stayed up was 1:30 a.m. and the earliest I've turned off the light after reading was 10:45. I read no less than 2 hours every night and sneak it in during the day when I can. I think about the characters and the storyline all the time. My poor husband has been completely neglected.
So until I can plow through the rest of book three and all of book four I may not be back to post anything. There is plenty to write about though... Yesterday for instance when Elias ate who-knows-how-much toothpaste while I was preparing breakfast. Shortly after I discovered him he began vomiting toothpaste over and over. Then the diarrhea started...I thought he may have rota virus considering he had been exposed and how it presented itself. Next Elias took my brand new cell phone and sent it for a swim. It is completely toasted!!! Thank goodness the diarrhea did not continue today. Todd and I assume it was an ill reaction to the toothpaste snack.
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