Loving Spring!

Spring is the best, isn't it?!?!

I love spring because it is a joy to see everything come back to life. Every fall and winter I seriously doubt whether or not our flowers and shrubs and fruits will come back but they do every spring, much to my surprise! This spring our strawberries are so lush and filled with baby berries! Our challenge now is to keep the birds away so we can actually enjoy them.

Yesterday we planted a cherry tree and today Todd planted an apple tree. I have wanted fruit trees in our yard for a very long time and after being in Portland with my friend, Lisa, I got motivated to get it done! We still want a few more but they aren't the cheapest things around so we may have to wait until next year for those.

I love spring because I love seeing my babies' short, fat little legs in shorts. Winter is a long time to have thier little limbs covered with clothes. I love to see them enjoying the warm weather with thier white little legs and arms running around everywhere.

I love spring because I love open windows with the fresh breeze floating through the house.

I love spring because there are birds everywhere sharing their music as they come and go.

Thank you, Jesus, for the seasons. There is a time for every season and a season for every time.

I Should Be....

Tomorrow morning I am hopping on a plane and flying west to visit a dear friend of mine who now lives in Battle Ground, Washington. I should be upstairs packing and putting the final little things in my carry-on but here I am playing around with my silly blog! You know I have been having some big-time blog-envy, not healthy at all! So I humbled myself, admitted my covetousness and asked for help from a friend who's blog is absolutely adorable. She shared some of her tricks and so I have been doing my best to employ them. What do you think?

snowed in!

This is what our house looked like yesterday afternoon. At this point it had rained for almost 24 hours then turned to snow Friday morning. By 11 a.m. the Traeton's school called and said, "Come get your child immediately." So with that we began our comfy, cozy weekend at home drinking hot cocoa with marshmallows, eating Easter candy, reading stories, playing in the snow and having snowball fights and making a snowman. We still have to hit the sledding hill. Because this is a spring snow it is very, very wet and heavy - pretty much slush. Everyone's snow clothes are so wet, dripping actually, it takes a long time for them to dry for the next outing.

This is Todd and the children shoveling the driveway the first time. We have shoveled it several times since.

Elias did his best to help out but he still hasn't figured out how to put his thumbs in the thumb-holes of his gloves. This puts him at an extreme disadvantage, not having thumbs to pick up the shovel.

When school let out we brought home two neighbor friends to hang out with us for the afternoon. We had tons of fun painting rocks, pictures and making mosaics. Good times had by all!

Todd, Traeton, Addison and Elias are itching to hit the hot tub right now. Everyone is suited out except for me. Since it is not Todd's favorite thing to take our three little jack rabbits into the hot tub alone I should sign off to join them.

Rob This Day?

I woke this morning later than I prefer and by our two-year-old, a double whammy. This is not my ideal way to begin the day. I like to be up before our children so I can steal some time to myself with our Lord. It is the only quiet, unruffled time of the day.

I also woke with my head swirling with all the 'stuff' of life. Stuff I am doing and stuff I am not doing. Stuff I am pleased with and stuff with which I am not pleased. Stuff I would rather be doing and coveting others because they are. I am stuck in a worldly mindset this morning.

That mindset is not a good place to be settled ever but especially on the morning of Good Friday! As I poured out my frustrations to the Lord (Elias was happily stationed in front of Sesame Street and Traeton was restlessly reading in his room) the Holy Spirit showed me that this is all spiritual warfare... Satan is distracting me from the most important focus of the day. Satan is trying to rob this day from Jesus Christ who suffered this day for all of us. Satan is doing what he does best as the father of lies and that is tricking me into thinking all the stuff of this life is more important than the stuff of heaven.

So with a refocused perspective and a fresh view of the day I am choosing to ignore Satan and his wiles and instead focus on our Savior.

Let this be a day of clear perspective for you as well.

Antiquated Already?

Greetings friends...

I believe I have figured out my animosity with my blog! For months and months I have been vowing to spend more time blogging, to use our blog as a more consistent way to keep in touch, to go deeper with the content of my posts and to ultimately glorify our Lord through this avenue.

But after months of trying to figure out how to change the look of our blog, to add precious backgrounds and graphics I admit defeat. I just cannot figure out how to change the elements on our page. I view lots of super creative blogs with all kinds of personal touches but how in the world do they add them! I can barely add pictures and I am sure I am doing something wrong there because of all the steps I have to go through to get them up.

I am totally embarrassed to admit that I just don't get it. I am quite worried the technology world sped by me years ago and is travelling so rapidly I may never catch up! This is so humbling but I think I may be antiquated already. Barely in my thirties and clueless on how to add personality to our family blog. Can anyone tell me how to get rid of that silly '565' in the headers of this new template?

Alrighty then, now that I have vented I am feeling like I can move onto stuff you all actually care about.

Our spring / winter breaks were fabulous. Both Addison and Traeton have returned to school. While they were home we packed our days with lots of stuff, some fun and busy and some lazy and without much direction. With each passing break from Stone Mountain Elementary (fall, winter and spring) I find that I am supremely satisfied with our modified traditional schedule. Two weeks for each break allows for one week of travel and one week of recovery/down-time.

That is exactly what our spring break looked like this year. Our first week was spent in Surprise, Arizona with my parents. We drove down which marked our first official family road trip. I had the whole drive built-up in my head as a pending horror film but I was extremely pleased as it turned out to be a lot of fun.

This was also Todd's first time to experience Surprise. I say experience because it is truly an experience. My parent's house is in a retirement community. It is extremely clean, quiet and slow. I find it a place of true refreshment and Traeton sees it as the perfect place to live once he flies the coup. Poor baby will have to someday understand in order to live in this area one must be at least 55 years of age.

I will leave you with some pictures of our time there...

Thanks for visiting.

Burmeister Debrief

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

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.