Ephesians 6:1

This is just a short video of Will reciting Ephesians 6:1... however, it ended up being a large file and might not download easily. Sorry. :(

too cute

Anna, sweet Anna. (Who, by the way is 15 months old and stands 27 inches tall- that's in the shortest 1 percentile of her age group- way off the chart... hmmm)
" Eewww... I just tasted some coal... it was kinda yucky and now I'm all dirty. Who keeps coal in the house anyway?!"
Ok, now let's be honest... when they were all dressed up like this to head outside to play, I was pretty sure who I would take more pictures of. As charming as Will is, he doesn't grin for my camera like Annie does, and besides that, Annie is wearing the very same sweater and hat I wore when I was her age, and isn't it precious to get some 'generational clothing' pictures?! And she's stinkin cute these days!

Now when Will spent the entire time outside looking like this (how does he see what he's doing?), I knew there was no hope of getting cute Will pictures, and I resigned myself to taking pictures of our little lady for the rest of the afternoon.

On another note, I am doing quite well. Thanks for all the prayers, notes and love - I feel like God is helping us through these days. I am really enjoying my family - it is healing to be together and to remember all that God has given us. We are so blessed.

for me.

Here I sit, wanting to write something, but having no idea what to write. I admit that this time, I write for myself, because I need to write. We have shared our good news of expecting another baby in October, however we will never meet that baby as it has returned to be with it's Father in Heaven. I always used to wonder how people felt who had shared news of being pregnant only to have to state that they had lost the baby not long afterward. Did they wish they'd never shared the news in the first place? Well now I know how I feel: I feel sad- sad that I am no longer pregnant, sad that we will not be celebrating a new baby in our home in October... sad. However, that is how I always imagined I'd feel in this situation. What surprises me is that I also feel thankful. I am thankful that we decided to tell people before we 'knew' that we would get to meet this baby, because it was a big deal to us, an exciting anticipation that God was going to give us another precious life to keep watch over. With all 3 pregnancies, I imagined that it would help us to have let people know about the coming baby even if we lost it, because we would need to have our friends and family know about the joy and the pain. I believe that truth is a large part of healing and it would be hard to not share what is going on in our lives. So now I know that I don't regret telling people we were expecting a baby only to turn around and tell them that we will never meet that baby. It's ok, and we're ok, and we are confident that God has given this as a gift to us in some way. We are tired from a couple of rough days which concluded with Nate and I at the hospital in the middle of the night. Thankfully neighbors came to stay with our kids and we didn't worry about them at all. We are surrounded by a wonderful community of friends here.

We are just taking this all in- it's a big picture that we can't see completely yet. The song, Blessed Be Your Name has been running through my head almost incessantly, so I will copy it below this. It is a song that we sang at our wedding almost 5 years ago, and through all of our journey so far, it continues to be a song that expresses very well the peace that we have found in what God has given us. "... my heart will choose to say, Lord, blessed be your name!" It rings of praise and trust in a God whose ways are so perfect that we are only able to see their intricate perfection when we look back, but we can never see exactly what He has ahead of us and how He plans to work.

Blessed be your name in the land that is plentiful,
Where your streams of abundance flow,
Blessed be your name
Blessed be your name
when I’m found in the desert place,
though I walk through the wilderness,
Blessed be your name

Evr’y blessing you pour out I’ll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in Lord, still I will say.
Blessed be the name of the lord,
Blessed be your name
Blessed be the name of the lord,
Blessed be your glorious name

Blessed be your name
when the sun’s shining down on me,
when the world’s all as it should be,
Blessed be your name.

Blessed be your name on the road marked with suffering,
Though there’s pain in the offering
Blessed be your name.

You give and take away, you give and take away.
My heart will choose to say, Lord, blessed be your name…

snow pictures from last week

the 4th of October?

I went to the hospital today to see the doctor who only comes once a month, since recently I learned that the third little Burchell is on the way. It was reassuring to see this tiny little one in an ultrasound and to get an approximate due date: maybe October 4th. I think that this will be a very long 7 months of waiting waiting waiting, but mainly I hope it comes before Will's birthday. Only God knows how everything will work out, but His plans are the best. So that's news from here and I imagine that the due date will be adjusted when the baby is bigger and easier to measure. So exciting! I'm hoping for those Burchell brown eyes this time. :)

lest i forget

Not a story or pictures about my kids, nor any helpful deep thoughts this time. I've just stumbled upon some lonely days when all the emails I receive are spam emails, when every phone call I make on skype is frustrating (due to technical problems that make it so I can't hear a single full sentence from the other side) and my real-life interactions with people besides my family are few and far between and usually fairly awkward.
So I sit and wonder what things are like for the people I love and I spend the days feeling far far away and trying to make the days count as I play with the kids and take care of the house. In any case, instead of leaving a silent blog (as I'm sometimes driven to when I have nothing positive or beneficial to say), I thought it'd be helpful to write about some of the things that make me happy these days (in no particular order). Lest I forget...
-putting things into containers
-when I got to build a snowman with my little boy last week
-dancing with Annie and hearing her deep, full laugh of sheer glee
-when Will called to me from his room asking me, "Mamma, is this an H?" - and it was!
-seeing the brightly colored alphabet magnets all over my fridge
-my new couch cushions!! (this should be another blog post)
-our electric blanket and warm bedspread from Sweden
-we received many useful things this week from some friends who are leaving - we will miss them, but the items are a huge blessing.
-brownies
-pumpkin bread!
-oranges- the best ones I've ever had here
-no seizures in about 7 weeks
-my man- a bigger blessing than I could have ever asked God for, or imagined existed
-did I mention my kids and my husband?!

It's ok to be lonely sometimes. I find that when I'm lonely, I am finally still enough to hear some of God's gentle whispers. He's been reminding me to be thankful and full of praise. And I will always wonder why God gave me such a passion for filling containers - give me some leftovers and a pile of various sized containers and I'll go to town! What are the things that make you happy?

Those kids!

Playing with play-doh
Afternoon snack: Aunt Krista's pumpkin bread recipe made by mamma!

SNOW! "That's amazing!" -one of Will's favorite expressions

a poem

I stood a mendicant of God before His royal throne
And begged him for one priceless gift, which I could call my own.
I took the gift from out His hand, but as I would depart
I cried, “But Lord this is a thorn and it has pierced my heart.
This is a strange, a hurtful gift, which Thou hast given me.”
He said, “My child, I give good gifts and gave My best to thee.”
I took it home and though at first the cruel thorn hurt sore,
As long years passed I learned at last to love it more and more.
I learned He never gives a thorn without this added grace,
He takes the thorn to pin aside the veil which hides His face.
- Martha Snell Nicholson

I heard this poem recited several months ago, and now have found the text for it on a stranger's blog. I need the reminder that it offers from time to time.

SNOW!

Yesterday afternoon, the sky grew so dark that although it was only about 3 pm, I turned on the path lights that we turn on at night. It remained dark dark all the way until night time, and thunder shook the sky while lightning flashed around and acorns thumped hard on our tin roof. I told Will it might rain, which would be good because it hasn't rained in months and the land is very dry. Will said maybe it would snow.

Although it's cold and I always feel cold, I thought it didn't feel cold enough for snow. Nate got home from his first day back at school, and not long afterward, lightning struck our house and we heard a big 'pop' from the bathroom. It had blown out the heating element on our hot water heater. No hot water. When we tried to call about it, we found that the lightning had also killed our phone. Everything else was still working fine and neighbors helped us call about getting repairs done. But nothing could be done at that time of night, so we resigned ourselves to cold water and no phone.

This morning we awoke to see the ground covered in white, with snow still coming down. In fact, it is snowing heavily and it is just beautiful. If we get our water heater fixed, I'll take the kids out to play in it. I think it's piled about 6 inches high on the the wall outside our house now, which is especially fun because this might be the only snow of the year, and it's nice to have at least enough to play in. Yay for snow!!

just rambling

It's been too many days since I put something on here, so first off, I'm very happy to say that Annie is getting into the swing of sleeping all night long!!! Thanks for your prayers and encouragement- it has been wonderful for all of us to sleep longer at night. Will is rascally - more so by the day. Today the phone rang, and Will raced to it shouting, "I'll get it, I'll get it", but he's never been allowed to answer the phone before, and so I said, "no, Will- don't answer it- I'll get it", but as soon as the words were out of my mouth, he grabbed the phone and said, very clearly: "Hello, yeah, here you go." and handed me the phone. grrr. He DID do a great job answering the phone, but he did NOT do a good job obeying. Anyway, I guess you choose your battles when you're a mom, and maybe I will start letting him answer the phone. Actually it'd be nice to not have that responsibility... smile.
Will also doesn't eat rice very well. Especially not with dal (lentils), which is unfortunate because this is what we eat for lunch almost every day. I've tried to not pick fights with him about it, but to be firm that he must eat what he's been given... and I've been trying to be loving and understanding and have only been giving him about a teaspoon of rice on his plate each lunch. He manages to make that teaspoon grow as he sits and nibbles at it for an hour - and instead of one bite, it becomes 10 itsy bitsy bites. This has been the most maddening part of any day for me.
Today I got the brilliant idea that we could mix yogurt (his absolute favorite food at the moment) in his rice and dal (this combo is something that Indians eat frequently as the yogurt dulls the spicy dal --however, our dal is not spicy). It worked like a charm. I think we'll continue the combination and I bet I can get him to eat a normal sized portion of food this way. I'm oh SO HAPPY! :)
And Nate is happy because he got to trade his tablet PC for a proper laptop with a built-in CD drive (instead of a detached one)... so the up side is: we've been watching a couple of movies and I can play music on his computer. The down side is: we haven't put software on that computer yet to scale down our pictures... so my blog-writing incentive has been gone for about a week. oh how I love pictures. Maybe we'll install that program soon and I'll get more pictures up on here.
Ok, that's it for now. I'm still tackling my house little by little. I'm finding that vacation has a very long recovery period - there are still stacks of things to sort all over the house. Oh well.

Refreshment

Being with our friends for a few days was incredibly refreshing. It was so nice to be in their home- just a taste of heaven, I think! How wonderful to sit around together, talking and watching the little kids play. Water and containers were a big hit, especially since our weather isn't usually warm enough for such play. And then there were the bean bags to lounge in while watching the Xbox. Will was very funny to watch as he held his dis-connected controller and was sure that he was the one playing the game! All in all, we rested and were refreshed by the wonderful company, meals, and just being together with friends. Thanks for having us!!! :)

tired

I'm tired. For almost 15 months now, Annie has been up every night several times to scream at me and demand to have a clean diaper and a re-filled belly of milk. Now that we're home, I'm not under the pressure to keep her quiet for fear of getting kicked out of a hotel room, so I decided that she will just have to do without me at night. I still nurse her a lot (way too much?!) for her age (4-6 times/day!) and I'm sure she doesn't need a mid-night feeding anymore!!! Last night I managed to just let her scream. and let her scream. and let her scream... I watched the clock go from 1am to 3am, listening to her scream and sob. It was a very long night. I listened to her find her water cup and suck some cold water down. I listened to her flop down in her crib, angry. Eventually she fell asleep, but as tired as we awoke this morning, I wonder if my determination to 'just let her cry' is really going to help my sleep deprivation.