Happy Birthday Char!

We had a paint party to celebrate Charlie Kate's fifth birthday! She had a wonderful time is is still worn out From the week and weekend of birthday celebrations. She loves wolves the most, birds second and zebras are a close third or her favorite animals. So we chose to paint birds! Mrs. Lucy did an amazing job of entertaining this sweet bunch. She read The Dot. She gave them step by step directions to paint these little birds.  Then we all painted and decorated our own cupcakes. The girls are all so sweet and were so enthusiastic toward every part of the day. Thank you girls for being great friends to Charlie Kate and for making her birthday so special! You are all such sweet parts of our lives and beautiful little masterpieces from God! Jon and I pray for your friendships to be based on your Christian walk. We are also praying for all of the future friendships that you have, and for us parents as we navigate this new portion of life teaching about friendships.

There you are!  We didn't have a clue how awesome you were gonna be!  We love you more!

 
 

 

Story-time, The Dot 

Thank you grandma, for my awesome paint outfit!

I mean, look at her excitement! 

Sweet Nana! 💙 

 Best Friends! I hope they always love each other like this! #heisherbiggestfan

Love the finished paintings!  Buddies!

Goof Wad 1 and 2 Back to School

2016-2017 school year is here! Collins is in the 2 year old's class with Ms. Sheryl. Charlie Kate is in the 4year old's class with Ms. Emily. They love school so far....phew!! Charlie Kate is learning Days of the Week and Months of the year. Collins is perfecting the toilet training. They are both doing units on family so I will post some of those pictures we are using for our family tree. 

The second day with the panther!!

First Day!! We love Mars Hill!

Collins' teacher, Ms. Sheryl

Charlie Kate's teacher, Ms. Emily.

Family Tree project pictures👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

Some are old and some are new🤗

Nana and Papa (daddy's parents)

Grandma and Grandad (mommy's parents)

Dan, Leann, Ava, Sam, Finn, and Nora Burgess (daddy's brother)

 

Jason, Katy, and Jackson - Haddock Crew.  (Mommy's sister)

Jeremy, Morgan, Alex, and Race Minor (mommy's brother)

Matt, Whitney, Bennie, and Jeb Burgess (daddy's brother)

Yours truly! Jon- Rebecca- Charlie Kate- Collins --- The Burgess's 

a few more pictures

Parents play at Chuck E Cheese's too!

We mad it a whole Year!!

Well, I have to start with an update on the past year...

We lived, well, survived through the renovation of our house. I will post a few pictures below.

Jon had a job change, he now works for Shoals Pharmacy, I went back to teach first grade, and the kids grew and grew and grew.

We have all grown actually🙄

Collins is talking more and more, and is super entertaining. He had tubes at 18 months when we found out he wasn't hearing very well. He is a great communicator just not much of a talker. Collins is in the 98th percentile in height, weight, and size of head. He is our great big cuddle bear.) He is quite rough sometimes, especially with Charlie Kate, but she taught him, so…)

He had a Toy Story party for his 2^nd birthday a few weeks ago.  That’s right; we have a two year old boy and four year old girl!  Crazy, right? So, Collins is attached to Woody for sure. He loves to play outside with the dogs. Since mom and dad have moved back (they live next door) they come give golf cart rides and tours of the growing plants in the garden regularly.  Both of the kids love it. Collins is so attached to mommy! He has had a hard time going to classes at church and clings to me when he thinks I might be heading out when grandma comes to watch the kids. Collins did potty camp this summer and is doing much better than I imagined.  He runs to the bathroom yelling, “PEEEEE”.  He wears big boy underwear.  He has had a few accidents, but usually only when he is in a new setting.  We are getting rid of the paci or “EE” as he calls it. at Christmas, but for now he can have it at bed times.  He LOVES everything that Charlie Kate does. He is her little shadow.

Charlie Kate is so grown up y'all!! She is all about all animals and bugs. She calls herself “Wolf”.  She crawls and shakes her booty as if to wag her tale.  It’s amusing. She has gotten a little nervous when going outside to play since she just recently got her first wasp sting.  She talks about it often. The dark is beginning to be a little noticeable fear of hers too.  We just took swimming lesson for her for the third year. She is almost swimming on her own. Collins did well too, but wasn't as much of a fan as Charlie Kate. They are both just so brave and I'm so proud. Charlie Kate had started memorizing our address, memory verses, my phone number and how to spell her name. She is also an amazing impromptu song writer and singer. She is so thoughtful! She wants to sing “Happy Birthday” to anyone who has one, and is especially insistent when it's a cousin of grandparent's birthday. She sings about God and His creation, she makes up the sweetest words and sings without hesitation.  I adore this about her and hope that she is always shouting Glory to God.  Her prayers are so thoughtful and genuinely what is on her mind.  She is also extremely passionate about her “plans”.  She gets “frustrated” with me often over her plans not being what our plans are at the time.  FUN Times!

We have two amazing kids who have been super awesome through the whole year of new things. We had to move out of our house for a while in order to put in our floors and finish up the kitchen. We moved in with Travis and Debbie. The kids were both sick a few times during that time frame but they just did so good. Of course during this whole process we have had so much support from our parents. They have allowed us into their home, met people to get estimates, met people to unlock doors, and even gotten their hands dirty doing work on it themselves. We appreciate all of it so much. We Love our home and all of the love that was put into it. It's also really special to me that my kids get to grow up where I did.😊😊

Now that things have slowed down with the house we have taken on a few of our dream projects. More about those in the future posts, but we are also just contemplating the next steps in our family and the kid’s lives. Our prayers lately have been that they adapt to the changes and truly learn life lessons from any adventure that we might embark on. We hope that they apply the things they learn to their lives in the future.

Dear Charlie Kate and Collins,

We hope that you remain secure in yourselves, but with the understanding that Christ in you is the only way to truly be yourself. We hope that you are glad in your weakness because it will secure your reliance on God. If you are struggling in life we pray that you lift your cares and speak His name KNOWING that He is there listening to hear your hearts desires.  He loves you!  We hope that we have encouraged prayer so much in your life that you don’t know how else to address a joyous event, problem, pain, loss, gain, or an insight into God’s love for you other than praying to Him over them. We pray also, that you see the sacrifices we make as they are, and that you understand the meaning behind things that we choose for you-- in time. We know that now is the time in your lives that we are making all of your big choices and we pray that those choices are what God wants for you. We desire for you to know Jesus and Gods love for you. We pray that you grow with Faith that makes life here on earth clear. You two are already vibrant with joy! You illuminate with innocents and excitement. We can't wait to see how you change lives and can't wait to help you understand daily what we're living for. We are proud that you're ours!!

Love,

Mommy and Daddy

Charlie Kate's first memory verse:

"Follow me," said Jesus, "and I will teach you to fish for men."

Matthew 4:19

Collins would not go for the picture...  he knew they weren't the real deal

Potty Camp

 

The house remodel

He loves his super heroes

 

Loves

       LIFE IS GOOD!  

     
I just saw a car tag that said this earlier this morning and it got me to thinking… LIFE. IS. GOOD!!!  Our family, friends, jobs, and even our crazy home is GOOD! So here is the deal…

       Collins, my sweet darling boy, is no longer a “baby”.  He has sprinted through infancy and is now walking, eating textured foods (well trying to), growing, cutting teeth like crazy (has four on top 3 on bottom), laughing insanely, and babbling like it his job.  He steals sighs of insane love from me all of the time.  I look at him and I am IN LOVE!!!!  He is the happiest baby, but not only that, he is just bursting with joy. 

       Charlie Kate is such a big girl, saying her own prayers at night, brushing her own teeth (in the ‘morning), picking out clothes for herself, agh!  I’m so proud of her and just love her funny personality!  She is obsessed with snakes now and tells me how to kill them every day.  “Mommy, if you want to kill a snake, you go get daddy!”  “We run really fast”.!!  HA! She makes me crazy with her ‘threeness’, if that could be a word.  She is learning all about play time, quiet time, calm down time, and Time-Out!

       We moved from our house to my parent’s old house!  Woo Hoo!  Jon and I had always imagined how we would love to have some land and thought of ways to make that happen.  All of this just happened because it is what God wanted.  We definitely didn’t really help with making it happen very much.  We considered buying their house, but I couldn’t quite get the kitchen to be what I wanted from a kitchen when we were thinking of the renovation.  So we dismissed it for several months.  The house we thought we wanted fell through and we were looking and looking and looking.  Ugh, the looking!!!  Jon got a notification on his app that a house came on the market… it was my parent’s old house.  The relocation company bought it from them and then re- listed it so…. Jon got to thinking again and came up with a pretty cool idea to make that kitchen how we want.  The next thing we know we are moving in to the house I grew up in!!  Oh, and on one of the only snow/ ice days in February!  Ha!  It makes for a good story as does most of our life.

       So Collins and Charlie Kate loved the snow that continued to come down following the days after the move.  We were staying with Katy for a few days and then moved over to Dan and Leann’s for a week while some work was happening to the kid’s rooms.  It all worked out great since Dan and Leann were gone to China to get Finn!!!!  Yes, he is finally ours and it is so right and good!  He is just the perfect addition to our family.  Charlie Kate is all about learning sign language so she can tell Finn “I wuv you”.

       We celebrated Charlie Kate’s 3^rd birthday, but I’m not sure I have accepted it!  I keep telling people she is 2, Ha!  We had a combined party with Sam Medley and it was fantastic!  Charlie Kate was Minnie Mouse and Sam was a little baseball player.  Sam wore his red birthday shoes and Charlie Kate gave it a good 5 minutes for the Minnie mouse ears.  Papa did great on the cake as always.  We even got to celebrate with grandma since she was in town on Charlie Kate’s actual birthday.  We went to Chuck-E- Cheese’s.  I, personally, would feel better if everyone would wipe the bottoms of their shoes before entering my car after going to Chuck-E- Cheese- Florence location… It feels greasy to me, but Charlie Kate loves it, so…

We are still renovating.  It will be a year or two before we get everything done, maybe longer.  Right now we are focusing on the mudroom, laundry, playroom, master bath and master closet.  It feels like we live in chaos!  Oh wait, we do!  The kid’s rooms are done besides flooring and it is nice outside… those two things keep me from going crazy!

We are at the end of training to become foster/adoptive parents, and are becoming more and more aware that it will be some time before we can pass a ‘walk through’ with the crazy that is happening in our home at the moment.  So, I am getting very motivated to come to a halt so we can get certified!!!

I feel like a failure, of course, because I haven’t posted nearly as much for Collins as I did with Charlie Kate.  Then when I really think about it, is it a bad thing? Yes, he won’t have as many things to read of himself later on, and he may read into it that it wasn’t important to me to record every ounce of his beautiful life… BUT I AM PRESENT.  I am present in his life, loving on him and Charlie Kate, playing, hugging, grocery shopping, teaching them to play together, teaching sister not to torture him with tickles or roll on top of him, teaching him to walk and teaching CK not to push him over, feeding him, rocking him, watching him sleep, keeping sister from waking him up, and kissing his delicious face.  So, when guilt sets in, I have to stop and look at what it is that I DO, and the reasons I don’t have a perfect memory book or memory blog for that matter.  I guess I just hope that his memories and his security take over any time he might wonder why we didn’t record as much of his baby years.   

Dear Collins and Charlie Kate,

This time in both of your lives is just so sweet! I wish I could record all of it for you to see how much you love each other now.  I know there will be times in your lives when you don’t enjoy each other very much but this is pure joy to watch when you play together and see each other first thing in the morning.  It breaks Charlie Kate’s heart when she can’t get in bed with you to play right when you wake up, Collins.  Charlie Kate, Collins claws at my legs to get across to you during church.  I hope you enjoy each other this much forever and stay super close always!

Here is our prayer for your relationships with our family:

God, please hold tight the bond of our children.  Keep them together through the tough times in life, and please help us to teach them loyalty to you and each other.  We pray that they go and have adventures and experiences in order to gain wisdom and humility, but that they are drawn back to family throughout their lives.  We hope to instill in them the value of family and overall, the value of your family.  Thank you for these two precious blessings!! It is in Jesus’ name we pray these things.  Amen