catching up

Here are some photos we've had hanging around that I'm getting around to sharing with you. Just a glimpse into the past couple months or so of our lives, and you can see how big my little boy is getting!!

Isabell, James, and Timothy

just some snacks I made for a tea party, I never share my foodie photos, but thought why not? I have a lot of fun doing this type of thing, and probably always will. Something you will find out in later posts, though, is that I'm not eating refined sugar till at least the end of summer now. I'll still eat some things that have small amounts of it (like bread, etc.). So I'm sure this will become a blog in and of itself someday :)

getting ready for baby! little moo shoes! and they were only a dollar!

James sure loves his daddy... first time blowing chocolate milk bubbles!

one of James' favorite activities: helping with dishes...

our new rocking chair off of kijiji! (like craigslist)

drumming, also a favorite past time. We have friends with drums, so it is the thing to do.

helping build beds. first James' new toddler bed, then our new (and first ever!) bed.

Did I mention how much James loves his daddy? :) He loves to be doing whatever Dad is doing...

These days we are keeping quite busy. We have Bible studies on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Additionally, Ron just got the opportunity to take a welding class (with hopefully passing certification in a month) on Tuesday and Thursday nights. Since it's temporary, I can handle it, but we miss Ron during the week! Mondays are Daddy/James dates since it's a ladie's Bible study, though, and they have a ball :) I keep reminding myself that pretty soon several of these commitments will expire and then we'll have a baby! and then we will not go anywhere :)

Today I'm watching some friends' kids, and James has been having fun having them over. I'm doing well, too! We were going to go to the park, but had to stay in because it decided to snow again, after a week or so of beautiful springtime weather!

Got to get going, hope you enjoy the photos...

reason to change

I realize I've been off the radar for awhile now. I was surprised to see that my last blog was actually only a day after we found out we were pregnant with... no, we're not telling you the name ;)

So instead of apologizing like my typical self, I will just say that... it happened. Ok, I will sort of apologize, because even though I've thought of you family and skyped some of you and emailed you occasionally, I certainly don't want you to think that my lack of attention at keeping up with all of you on a more regular basis is because I don't care about you :( because you all know that I do...

I am a mom, and what's more, I am learning about myself and about organizing and about scheduling time (or currently my sad lack thereof) and about what I want to do with my life. Which, fortunately right now is: be a mom.

Ron and I have started a gruelling budget this year, but in so many ways I love it. I love finding deals that I might have overlooked before, I love stretching a dollar (or in our case, a loonie) to it's limits, I love planning menus so I don't waste as much, and I loathe my recent library fines all the more. I feel like this now about my time. I want to be more efficient, more productive. To do the things that I really want to get done. And blogging is something I want to come back to, and really stick with.

Don't get all excited yet. I'm still figuring this out. You'd think it would be easier than it is, time management. Then try time management while watching an almost 2-year-old all day and being tired tired huge tired pregnant, as I know some of you have been there done that. I'm not ashamed that on days where I'm about to drop I will take a nap when James takes his. And I'm certainly happy with spending a half hour here and there in my day reading The Foot Book or How the Grinch Stole Christmas or Sammy the Seal for the who-knows-how-manyieth time.

Sometimes I feel like I know all the answers, it's just hard to connect the dots. For instance, my days start out with increased productivity (of course) when I'm up before James. But I (almost always!) wake up when Ron gets up for work at 4 or 4:30 (and often times before that as I am now required to take a 1am pee break apparently), and my pregnant self will not get up at that time. Sometimes I do and then I crash by 10 or 11, or rather... I want to, but instead find myself sleepily saying "more and more and more and MORE feet!"... The catch 22 is that ever since becoming a mother I have this thing called... insomnia. No, I don't technically have a condition. But it's so much easier for me to stay awake when I don't even want to! I will lay there at 4 thinking, now is the time to be sleeping! sleep! And then make mental lists of all the things I should get done in the day and write letters in my head and even think about how a conversation might go over an issue or non-issue that may or may not occur 6 months from now. Finally I fall asleep unil 8:30 or 9, when James announces he is ready for his day. I wake rested, but still didn't get that earlier morning time to accompish anything! 2-3 days a week we need to be out of the house by 10 to a play group or such (I am so grateful for those, for both James and I).

This sort of spiraled into a desperate cry for help, but I don't mean it to. well, advise and/or sympathy are welcome. And really, I'm not meaning to complain, as I reread this and realized I sound a bit whiney about it. I'm more... wishing I had gotten a routine down pat when I had the time and energy. Sarah, I so admire how dedicated you are to running, for instance. I think perhaps I am a late bloomer about some things, though not to use that as an excuse. Quite the contrary, it's time to catch up on some issues like basic discipline.

Ok, none of you live with me, so you must now wonder if you should stage an intervention and just how bad can i be? Let me tell you, I want to improve myself, to live fully for God and be the best wife and mother I can be. To that I end I want to kick some bad habits (lack of serious time management and/or discipline to accomplish the things I desire). That said, I do keep a happy home :) oh, you know all that. I'm not here to brag about the apple puff pancakes that Ron requests on Sunday mornings, or how I've been consciously keeping a cleaner house, or how smart James is from all that book reading, or even how I actually hung pictures on my walls before we have to move again ;)

This is just where I am right now, I suppose. A part of it. If I blogged more you could see the other parts of my life. So I will try. This blog is for you, my dear family, and I do so want you to feel a taste of daily life with the Goodmans. I know that for me, looking at your blogs brings me closer. I can't believe how much Will has grown, for instance! I love that you post all those pictures, Joie and tell us about your days. And I never tire of Sarah's insights or Nate's stories (though I want more!). And so, I also want to give more. Because this is one thing I really want to do. I really want to share our lives with you, family.

So, expect to hear more from me. I sure love you all. And still, on days when nothing seemed to get done, I will be immensely happy that I took the time to tickle my James, to read and laugh with him, to open his markers and hear is his little "Thank you!", to turn from doing dishes and say "Hey you! I love you..." and then hear my little boy say the same thing. I want to be the best I can for him. The best God has in mind for me, and that's what this all boils down to.

since we've been home.

James is gnawing on a cucumber. 

finding out climbing can be fun!

the look.

trying on daddy's shirt!

this face is worn most of the time by James. 

He knows he's a cool dude. If we weren't outside, 

he'd be asking to see the mirror...

We were invited to join some friends and their family at a swimming hole, tucked back in the Canadian countryside. It was a relaxing and fun day... and yes, we are making friends finally!

Enjoying these last beautiful and perfect days of summer. Enjoying each other and our Saturday morning walks to the farmer's market. Enjoying the silly new things James comes up with...

Home.

Home again. Home is where Ron is :) James I just follow. This summer we are happy to be in the beautiful Canadian sun, which doesn't beat as hotly as in Texas. We enjoyed the past weekend, soaking up family time. We spent time at the lake just north of us, and took a walk through our little town. Ron also had Monday off since it was Saskatchewan Day (who knew?), and it was a pleasant surprise to me! 

Also, for all of those Burchell kids at home, yes, I have successfully hooked Ron to farkel, too :) Right now Bean and I are just settling into routine, getting the house back in order (while listening to some borrowed Odysseys!). 

I'll work on getting photos done and up. I take so many, and need to share. Please share yours with me, too, if you have some from this summer in Wisconsin. 

We sure will miss our Wisconsin family. Also we're missing those Texans these days...

settling in.

for the second time now. 

Canada has been an adventure so far, though one I would rather not repeat. From now on I would like to take trips to the mountains, enjoy our backyard, and bask in the beautiful weather... vs. extended hotel stays, boxes to unpack (still), and a rattlesnake scare. 

God has been good to us, however (as He always is.), and we are safely back in our house. An expert told us he was completely certain that there was never a snake in this house. We feel good about how he searched the place. He had a solid system and looked in the obscurest of places. And, just to cover human error we did a couple extra things. One, snake guy Dave told us to do just to ease our minds: heated the house up and covered the floors with flour and moldy beer cans, since we don't drink soda and couldn't find any used soda cans in a pinch! Secondly, we prayed over the house, which does more than anything, I believe. I felt peace in our house as we prayed. 

Story goes... Somehow we dragged a rattlesnake tail with us from Texas, potentially on a piece of used furniture we bought there. Imagining, however, that there was a rattlesnake in our house at all was both frightening and something we never thought we'd have to worry about in Canada. And did I mention the tail belonged to an Eastern Diamondback, the largest of all rattlesnakes? Snake guy Dave was looking for a 6 foot couple inch around snake, based on the tail. It's possible that we never had a a rattlesnake in any of our houses at all, it's also possible that it came to visit our old full-of-holes house in the country and decided to then leave. We really weren't thinking when we moved there :) but it was a good little house. Anyway, whatever happened, God protected us. Sometimes not knowing is hard, though, and has been an interesting test of our faith. We did the best we knew how, and must trust God for the rest. By the way, do you know how hard it is to find a snake expert in Canada? Especially rattlesnakes? Even though the Prairie Rattler is said to be in southern Saskatchewan, we could not find anyone in the province qualified to come help us remove a potential snake. Snake guy Dave drove about 8 hours from near Calgary, and works at a place called Reptile World, so we were happy with his experience :) He came in with long poles of various sorts and a net, and there was nothing we wanted more than to bag us a snake! But it's over now, and even though we don't have any cool pictures to show you, Ron and I won't be forgetting the things we've learned along the way... 

This week it is my mission to get/sort/post photos for you all. I have many blog entries worth, so hopefully you will enjoy them at your leisure. It is also my mission to harvest the rhubarb, get close to done unpacking, and take some long walks with James.

Why don't we get to eat cake like that anymore!?

Well, Sarah, in answer to your question I thought I would show you some pictures from our friend James' birthday. We made him eat cake like that. Or else he didn't get his present, which was in the cake. :) This is the fun way to do a gift card.

James turns one!

Ron actually had to change the bath water once :)