Pre Birthday Celebration

Wow...I cant believe Nathan is going to be 9 in just 2 days! We did a little celebrating today. I took him and his brothers out to Boomers where they played video games and drove go carts. Then we went out to lunch at Taxi's at the Modesto Mall and got to see Santa! Yes thats right Santa is already at the Mall! CRAZY! They would not allow me to take pics and I wasnt about to pay their outrageous prices for some cheap knock off pics that I could take better with my phone! LOL!!! Then we went to see Megamind to wrap up our day. We met up with our good friends the Coreys for that part of it so now Jake has gone to sleep over there and Brea has been gone all day with her girlfriends. Daddy is still out of town on business, so now it is just me and the littles! They are playing football on my couches as I type. They always get along pretty good! We will probably have cake and icecream for Nate on his actual birthday and give him his presents at that time. Next weekend we are finally going to be able to look at homes in Sanger which will lead to a move hopefully by Christmas. The original goal was mid November but that didnt happen. I hope to find something soon. Jakes getting real tired of commuting! Cant blame him for that! I am very tired but had a great time with the boys today! Happy Birthday Nate! I love you!!!!!

Halloween etc...

Ok...so I am going to apologize in advance. I cannot find my adapter for my camera, so I cannot download the Halloween pics! I am so bummed. There are a couple on FB from my phone camera. Dylan was Iron Man, Nate was a Jedi Knight, and Brea was Alice Cullen from Twilight. Jake didnt dress up this year on account that his football game ran long and he was too tired. Halloween was celebrated early this year. We had a ward trunk or treat on Saturday October 30. The kids really had a good time! So much so that they didnt want to trunk or treat, they wanted to keep playing at all the activities and eating all the cotton candy and other goodies provided. So we didnt bring home alot of candy this year....(YES!)
On Sunday we had a get together with some friends and family to celebrate Big Jakes 39th birthday!!!! Yes thats right he is almost 40!!! It was a nice quiet afternoon which was exactly what Jake wanted.
Status of the lice....they seem to be gone!!! Brea was cleared to go back to school on Monday! She is happy to be back! Lots of make up work though....
Thats about it for now!!!

OYE!

I have been doing ALOT of cleaning. Ok so I decided after much debate in my head that I will post about my past few days. Saturday was going to be relaxing since our trip to look at homes in Fresno was rained out. So I got Brea and Jake around for their trip to the temple. Brea had been complaining about her head itching for awhile and I had ruled out bugs, thinking it was a rash of somekind or skin problems since they run in our families and she has sensitive skin. On the way to the church she pulled out not one but two bugs!!!!! So needless to say she did NOT go on the temple trip but came home and was treated for head lice!!!! I have been cleaning her and the house since saturday....thought we were over the worst of it when last night Dylan starts to scratch....we had done a home treatment on everyone on Saturday and found no bugs on anyone else, but he was scratching non the less. So I did another home treatment when low and behold....a bug!!!!! I wanted to CRY!!!! So dad shaved them all and we gave them all medicinal treatments and I have rewashed all the bedding and recleaned all the couches and floors!!!! Brea is out of school all week and we are getting a handle on the situation. FINALLY!!! I just keep thinking..."wow...we lived in Hawaii, where these things run rampant on kids hair and not ONCE did I have to deal with them there!!! So I am TIRED TIRED TIRED!!!! No pictures today! :(

Pictures of the first day of school 8/11/2010

I have been taking lots of pictures this year so I think I will post some of the kids first day of school!

Sad News

I have some sad news to report.  Our dog Ranger has disappeared! We lost our other dog Pnut less than a month ago and gave away Qtip to an elderly lady right before Pnut died. It has been very difficult on the kids to lose so many animals so quickly! I feel terrible for them. We havent given up hope on Ranger....we are going to post some pics around our town and hopefully someone will have some good news for us.

Summer 2010

   This past summer was jam packed with all kinds of fun!  Breanna went to her 3rd year of girls camp and Jacob was able to attend his 1st year of scout camp and Nate went to his 1st year of cub scout day camp! They all absolutely loved it! For Dylans 6th birthday we took the kids to the waterslides in Sacramento. We enjoyed time on Yosemite lake with my brother Jason and his family, went to Napa for the Indy 500 at the Infineon Raceway and Nate and Jake started another year of football for the Waterford Sabercats in July. This season was especially fun since their cousins signed up to play as well! We had Burden boys representing 3 of the 4 age levels! Nate and cousin Luke played the Rookie level. They were nicknamed Nate-Dawg and Tank! Cousin Will was a Pee Wee level and Jake was Junior Varsity.......
  
   But the highlight of this summer was a trip to the Oregon Coast for a Burden family reunion/60th birthday celebration for my mother in law, Earlene, and her twin sister Elaine. There were close to 70 people in attendance for this long weekend of craziness. Any time you get my husbands family together something is bound to happen that will make you laugh so hard your belly aches! We spent the weekend "camping" (we all had trailers/cabins) up in Oregon near the dunes of south jetty. I cant remember the darn name! Maybe one of my family members will be so kind as to comment on here and remind me? Anyway...the highlight of of the trip was on saturday when we held a birthday party for Earlene and Elaine. Earlene (always the trouble maker...hehe) decided it would be funny to smear her sister in the face with some cake! Things got messy really fast and my mother in law ended up reaping what she sowed and getting the worst of it! Every one was laughing so hard it hurt!!!

Our Story.....

Our story begins in April of 1994. Jake was just returning from a church mission in the Philippines and I was returning from Dixie College for spring break.  There was a dance for the young single adults in Modesto, Ca. This was our first meeting. My friend introduced me to Jake and his friend, Richard Ward. I of course was instantly drawn to Jake, but did not let on how I felt. I hoped he would ask me to dance which he did. We danced once, but that was it. At our next meeting in June I was even more attracted to him. I tried to get his attention by playing volleyball with the group he was with, but to my discouragement, he didnt seem to notice. FINALLY in July, we met up again, at another youth dance. This time I wasnt going to play coy....I asked him if he was ever going to ask me out. This took him by surprise, but I guess he liked my directness and we made plans to go out the next night. We have been together ever since. We were married in the Oakland Temple on December 17, 1994 and worked some odd jobs around the Clovis and Oakdale Ca. areas until Jake got accepted at Ricks College (now BYU IDAHO) and we set out for Idaho in the late spring/early summer of 1995. I was pregnant when we left, but soon miscarried after settling into our first apartment. It was a devestating blow, but to our delight it didnt take long to discover we were expecting again. I was working but started having complications and finally ended up quitting. I was the main money maker at the time and this affected our income drastically. So we moved into some cheaper apartments and awaited the arrival of our first child. Jake was bringing in a whopping $400.00 a month at the time and trying to go to school full time with a wife and a baby on the way was starting to become overwhelming. One day there was a knock at the door and I opened it up to find an army recruiter on the other side! I almost slammed the door shut right in his face, but then he asked for Jake and I assumed my husband had invited him over so I didnt slam the door in his face but politely invited him in. Jake had been looking into joining the service as a way to help with our finances and help pay for his schooling. He enlisted into active service around the same time our oldest child, a daughter entered our lives. This was in May of 1996.  We named our daughter Breanna Maye. Her middle name is a combination of my mom's middle name spelled May and my mother in laws middle name spelled Mae. I liked that I could incorporate both Jake's mom and mine....and am even more glad today since she was to be our only girl! Since then we have moved many times.....we have lived in New York, California, Idaho, Washington State, and Hawaii. Can you guess where our favorite place was? LOL! We have also had three more children, all of which are boys. Jacob Leroy Burden Jr. came to us next  in March of 1998. Nathanael Henry Kali Burden arrived in November of 2001 and Dylan Ray Kealoha Burden came in August of 2004. While we have to this day never fully settled, we have had lots of fun raising our children and watching them grow into fine young adults. They have experienced more in their short lives and have a broad understanding and tolerance of different cultures that they couldnt have received any other way. I am thankful to have been blessed with such a wonderful husband who loves me unconditionally and four beautiful stalwart children! I pray they may continue to stay strong in the faith of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I pray that I may be able to teach them all the things they need to know to stay strong and faithful.

This is all so new....

Hey family and friends! I have been wanting to start a blog for some time but never really knew how. This is all new to me so please be paitient. I plan to use this blog as a type of journal for my family and our adventures together. I hope you enjoy it.