{Old Old Fashioned}

Life is moving at a fast pace for us and it does not seem to have any intentions of slowing down anytime soon :)

This past Sunday we found out that the plans we had for our move at the end of April were not going to work out like we thought.

We felt let down.

Discouraged.

Angry.

Helpless.

We would have to move from the neighborhood we have loved for the past 3 years and we didn't know where we would go.

We still don't know for sure, but things are looking a little brighter.

It's funny how you think you have everything under control, have all your life plans figured out for the near future...and then BAM. You are thrown off course, wondering what the heck you are going to do with this mess you are in.

It is times like this that I have to sit back and remind myself that I am not in control.

God is.

It is in these moments that I am reminded my life is not my own.

And in a lot of ways, that is so reassuring. If God is in control, what do I have to worry about?

Well, if your me, you are a hard nut to crack and you really like to be in control. And you also like to worry.

Stupid.

Well, I am trying to let go. Trying to have faith that God has better plans in store for us.

And it has not been easy.

We have gotten our hopes up and had the door slammed in our face a few times already.

And each time it has pushed me to give up a little more control and hold on to the faith that I know God would never leave us hanging.

Yesterday we found a house.

A place that felt like it could be home.

Everything about it felt so right.

I prayed, "Lord, please let this be it. Let it work out. I want this so much."

But, at the same time I am afraid to get my hopes up too much...

But, why would it feel so right if it were not the house for us?

it is beautiful.

123 yrs old.

full of character.

full of stories.

i can picture our 3 boys growing up and filling the rooms with memories.

i can see us having dinner in the dining room.

climbing the giant willow tree in the back yard.

canning our summer harvest in the kitchen.

Please pray for us as we go through the process of buying a home for the first time. Pray that things go smoothly & quickly. Pray that we would trust that this is God's plan & not ours.

We are so thankful for the blessing of our family who has been helping us every step of the way.

We can not wait to get "Old Old Fashion" and move out of town, start our farm, live in a beautiful old home....and live the dreams God has on our hearts!

{Little Update}

I really want to update this blog more often. Almost every day I think of something I want to put on here & every day time escapes me and I just can not get here to do it! Well, this week I am committing to blogging 3 times. I want to make it a priority as it is a great place to record ideas and memories and also to connect with others who might have the same interests!

The past two weeks we have had an incredible amount of help from our families. My mother in-law was here one full week and then my mom came down the next full week. It was amazing. I got to "sleep in" and catch naps here and there that I would not have otherwise. My mom did tons of laundry and kept our place sparkling clean. Andrew's mom got us yummy take out almost every night and kept Judah entertained almost every second of the day. We also had my aunt & uncle & cousins stop in on Sunday and give us a little break--it was glorious! We got to go grocery shopping alone and have lunch alone. We are so very thankful for our wonderful families!

The twinnies are doing amazing, growing like little weeds. FAT little weeds :) Ryder decided to take the beef cake lead and outgrew Will by a full TWO pounds!!! What?! I am serious. He is sporting the double chin and the 5 ring arm rolls. It's pretty impressive. Ryder is a 12 pound rump roast and Lil Will is coming in at 10 pounds. I don't know how this happened, as they both eat the same amount of times every day....I guess Ryder just knows how to turn his portion into fat cells a little more effectively :)

Big bro as as wild and feisty as ever. he can be such a hand full at times, but then a minute later he can be so still and sweet. Gotta love a good, solid two year old. He is talking up a storm and finding out that he has enough vocabulary to tell Andrew and I what to do :)

"Mama, shhh. It's too loud"

"Daddy, come sit. Sit and watch Judah."

"Mama, GET UP!"

"Daddy, go outside. NOW."

"Mama. NO!!!"

"NO, Daddy!"

"NO NO NO NO!!!"

He is too smart. We are in for a lot of trouble ;) But, really he is unbelievably sweet most of the time. He loves to read and will sit for up to 45 minutes and quietly listen. He loves being outside and would skip every meal (and nap) to be out there non-stop. He has an endless curiosity that is so endearing to be around. We just love him to pieces...

Here are a few of his sweeter quotes:

"Oh, Mama. It's Ok." as he gently pats my cheek

"Daddy, you so silly!"

"Mama, my love you."

"Judah want to KISS THE BABY!"

"My happy!"

And that's just my little update of the past few weeks. In the next few days I have some exciting news about our farm!

{Change}

We are making changes for our family. Some big & some small.

For our health. For our environment. For our future.

After becoming parents we really started to look at the every day things we do, wanting to do the best thing for our child in every way, big & small.

When we had Judah one of the biggest leaps we took in how we would care for him in a simple way was in choosing to use cloth diapers. From there we started to evaluate all the "details" of raising a child...

What would we use for body care for our baby?

What would we feed him?

What would we clothe him in?

What will he play with?

How will we take him places?

It is not always easy to switch from the "conventional" way of doing things. A lot of times it can be cheaper and more convenient to do them the main stream way. And we have not been perfect, even knowing what choices are healthier, but this year we are going to dive in head first and slowly make the changes we have been wanting to implement over the past few years.

I hope to share many of the changes we are making on here as a way to inspire or guide others who might be interested.

Here are some of the areas we will be making changes in:

1. What we eat. We already try to eat locally as much as possible and cook homemade meals. But, as Andrew starts his venture into farming & his first CSA, we are really focusing on what we feed our family even more. I will be learning how to can and preserve all kinds of things this summer :) We are committing to not eating any prepared frozen meals (don't do this often, but if we do it has been from Trader Joe's--no preservatives, ect...but a heck of a lot of salt!) We will eat organic fruits and veggies as much as possible/available and a lot less meat (and when we do, it must be local.) We will not eat out often, but will choose instead to cook from scratch, at home & make it a fun, family activity...we really want Judah to have a love for cooking.

2. What we put on our bodies--shampoos, body washes, toothpastes, deodorants, ect. Our skin is the largest organ in our body and absorbs everything we put on it! I will be trying the "no-poo" regime (more on that later) and researching everything we use & sharing here. It is so scary to think about all the things in body care products and what the possible affects could be on our bodies years down the road...many chemicals in them have been linked to cancers, birth defects, ect.

3. What we buy. We want our kids to not only understand how to wisely spend money, but also to have a respect for the environment & what affects buying new has on it. We are committing to buying used as much as possible, reduce, reuse & recycle! Clothes, furniture, cookware, toys. When we do buy new, we want to buy from environmentally conscious companies, preferably made in the USA. I also want to learn more about sewing and creating things for our family with my own hands.

4. Driving less. It will be tricky now that we have 3 kiddos, but we have never shyed away from a challenge :) Two parents plus two Burleys= transportation for the whole fam!

A lot of times when I talk about this people say their number one reason to not make changes like these is cost. Let me tell you, Andrew and I are some of the most frugal/cheap people you will meet. It PAINS us to spend money, we hate it. I will be sharing about how you can really make it LESS expensive to make a lot of these changes!!

There is SO much more running through my head in ways that we can/need/will make changes...I am so excited to share this journey here!

{Some hopes & dreams}

This is something I have been wanting to blog about for awhile now, but have been afraid to put it out there for fear that it might somehow make it not less of a possibility somehow. My brain works in funny ways sometimes :)

But, I want to record this journey our family is on, so that ten years from now I can look back and see how everything unfolded...how God's hand has been on our lives in every aspect.

Andrew and I got married young, we were 21 and still in college, still trying to figure out who we were. We have never been ones to do things the "usual" way (if there is one). We knew that it would be much more difficult to get married so young, but we just wanted to grow and figure life out together. It HAS been hard, but I wouldn't change a thing. Over the past 4.5 years our hopes and dreams for the future have morphed and grown and now we finally feel like we have a complete picture of where we are headed.

We have never wanted certain milestones in our life to be defined by the "standards" of how things "should" be. For me, that has been something I truly want, but also something that is extremely difficult for me to put into motion. For Andrew, it is effortless. He knows what he wants and stands firm in what he believes, moving forward without fear. I admire him so much for that. He is the one who keeps me focused on the goal, what we really want out of life.

I like stability, predictability. I want to KNOW what is going to happen, I want a plan, I want answers. Andrew is a dreamer. A BIG dreamer, full of passion and determination to see those dreams come true. He has so much faith and confidence in me, something I lack greatly in for myself. It scares the crap out of me to take a leap and not know where we will land or how things will end up...but, I know that I would look back on our life and regret not taking these leaps and just letting life pull me down the river.

We want BIG things for our family. We want to truly LIVE life and live it to the fullest. Andrew and I have had so many conversations about our future. There have been many late nights of talking and dreaming, but in the back of my mind is always that fear...that "what if."

SO, you ask, what ARE we planning?

Well, that's a long answer :) But, in short these are some of our hopes and dreams for the future that I hope to share more about on here later:

-We want to have our kids grow up in the country, to be close to nature, to be free and barefoot like kids should be :)

-We want to be together...to find a way to work from home, to be with our kids, to be with eachother and at the same time provide for our family with the talents we have.

-We want to impact our community and teach people about healthy living

-We want to get back to the "basics"--as we like to say, "we want to get old fashioned."

So, in short that is a glimpse of what our future holds. Keep up with where we are headed by joining my blog and following along in the exciting months and years ahead :)

To close, are the lyrics to what we call "our song"--- a song by Jeffery Foucault that really captures the heart of what we dream of for our life...

ONE FOR SORROW

We'll start out with fancy sheets
And wear them down so thin
I'll get myself a coal black suit
I'll never wear again
Your Mama will give us china
And your Daddy give us hell
And when we make our getaway
They're gonna ring those wedding bells

"One for sorrow, two for joy" they say
I've had my fill of sorrow anyway

I was driving out on County N
With my high-beam headlights on
In the late night FM no man's land
Looking for a Tom Petty song
The Perseids were falling
In that hothouse August night
I saw two come down together
And I thought it looked about right

"One for sorrow, two for joy" they say
I've had my fill of sorrow anyway

And we'll have a hundred babies
And a little house outside of town
With a wood-stove and a claw-foot tub
When we're all done traveling around

"One for sorrow, two for joy" they say
And I've had my fill of sorrow anyway
And it's "one for sorrow, two for joy" I know
And I've been one for sorrow far too long
Far too long

-

{One Month}

I can not believe my babies are one month old...such a cliche thing to say, but I really can not wrap my mind around how this could have happened in what feels like overnight.

The days are melting away and there is nothing I can do to slow them down. It feels like we are caught up in a tornado and I am just trying to hold onto all of these little moments.

With Judah I spent every day just cuddling and savoring every minute, but with two babies AND a toddler around I am lucky to stop & hold onto one moment a day. It makes me sad in a way because I can not enjoy each of my babies the way I did Judah, individually. But there really is something so special about having two babies at once....

Twice the chubby cheeks to kiss

Twice the sweet baby smell

Twice the soft baby skin to touch

Twice the little smiles in their sleep

It is overwhelming at times how much cuteness is packed in one place :)

What I want to remember about the first month:

Learning how to carrying two babies at once

Learning how to carry two babies at once while running after a wild toddler

Seeing Andrew cuddling all three boys at once

Judah yelling, "check the baby!" whenever he hears one of them cry

The way it feels to have two sweet babies quietly gazing up at me at 3am

How incredibly tiny and sweet they are

Will's soft lamb-like cry & chin quiver

Ryder's strong, determined cry

Judah telling Andrew which baby is which & Judah being right & Andrew being wrong :)

Ryder rolling over at TWO weeks old

Will sleeping 23 hours of the day

Judah telling me, "good job mama!" when I feed the babies

Judah watching WAY too many movies

Building train tracks while nursing

Our first time taking all three kids on a road trip (to visit great grandma)

Snowy days trapped inside with my sweet family

Andrew cooking delicious meals at 9pm when we finally had time to eat :)

Changing diapers 40 times a day with my eyes closed

Midnight tinkles & many outfit changes

Loads and loads and loads of laundry

The sweet sound of the babies' gentle breathing in their sleep

Keeping track of every feeding & diaper changing on the iPad

Pizza for dinner 5 nights a week

Doing everything one handed, all the time & getting really good at it :)

Judah tickling the babies' toes

Judah licking the babies' faces and saying, "oh gross," but doing again anyway

Late nights with Andrew, both so tired we can barely talk, but smiling

Andrew never hearing the babies cry at night

Andrew getting up EVERY time to help me in the middle of the night

Being so thankful for a wonderful husband & father

Being so blessed

Both boys are about 8 lbs and 20.5 inches long

They JUST started wearing 0-3 month clothes, but can still squeeze into some newborn

Even though we rarely go anywhere I dress them up every day

Ryder has blue eyes and auburn hair

Will has one brown eye & one blue eye and his hair is dark brown

They look nothing alike.

Will has his great grandma Carol & Aunt Heidi's eyes

Ryder looks so much like his big brother Judah

Both boys have so much of Andrew in them--his hands, his toes, his smile

Will has my nose and Ryder my hair color

They are so precious, so themselves.

I took a bunch of one month pictures, I will post some soon :)

We have received so much support and love this first month...

My sister spent the first two, difficult weeks with us

I don't know how we would have survived with out her!

So many sweet friends came to entertain Judah and hold a crying baby

We have received MANY diapers, special thanks to my sweet parents!

Pizzas were homemade, ordered & baked for us

Neighbors dropped off sweet gifts & took Judah for play dates

Friends volunteered to have Judah play at their house

Others took him on fun trips like the zoo or the children's museum

My parents sent us on a much needed Valentine's dinner

Andrew's parents bought us amazing concert tickets for a great date night

So many sweet cards and gifts were sent

So many prayers on our behalf

Without all of this our first month would not have been so smooth

We made it

We survived our first month with twins and LOVED it!

We look forward to many more and give thanks for all the wonderful people who have been by our side, supporting and loving our little family.

WE LOVE YOU ALL!