The Burgess Family Blog

I realize it's been quiet on this ol' blog lately. Hopefully you've been too busy enjoying some good holiday family time to notice ;) We are home again after our Christmas vacation, we had a great time! You'll have to give me a bit to get things in order again before I can come up with much to say about it though. Stay tuned, it's good to be home!

What a year it's been! Merry Christmas!

Soon we will be traveling for Christmas, we are really looking forward to the break! It will be nice to enjoy this season with family. Several months ago, back in September I believe, I mentioned to you all that I had a couple of health concerns I wanted prayer for. I wanted to give a brief update about the situation, things are going well! I am feeling slowly better--without having to undergo much medical treatment, which I am very thankful for! For one of the issues, I did have some very pricey tests run to rule some things out (and yes, all bad things were ruled out, leaving me with some undesireable-but-at-least-not-dangerous symptoms). My prayer request now would be that our "Christian share plan" health care would indeed be able to cover the full price of those tests as planned, and the financial strain on us would be minimal. And that I would continue to heal. Praise God for the bodies He's created for us, they are complex and amazing! The blog might be quiet over ...

*India, to be precise! What's this? What arrived in the mail today? WHAT am I wearing?! It's an authentic outfit from India! My friend Praveen (aka Pastor Kumar) sent it to me as a thank you/Merry Christmas. I was totally shocked and surprised when the mailman rang my bell this afternoon and handed me a thin, wrapped package with strange postmarks on it. What a sweet gesture, THANK YOU! ** Photos taken by Winter, the incredible 5 year old photographer

Well the letters and cards are written and ready to go. The gifts are bought and wrapped. The lights and decorations are up. The cookies are being skipped this year. And the kids are happily parked in front of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (they've mostly given up on Santa already, but doggone it if I'm going to let their childhood slip by without knowing the magic of claymation! And "Rudolph" actually is a pretty good little movie, about following your own drummer and appreciating those who are different than you. The world does need dentists) So.... I finally have time to blog! But..... nothing really to blog about. Probably because I already attempted to say quite a lot in the Christmas letter. I guess it is safe to say that we are really enjoying Christmas this year. Our kids are at a remarkable age, especially little Winter. She is exactly at the level of everyone's fondest childhood Christmas memories, the kind you now question if they were ev...

....Because we have been too busy to blog! What a crazy time of year! Hopefully some of our efforts will show up in your mailboxes soon. Until then, some photos: Hope you are enjoying this season of anticipation!!

I know I told you I wasn't going to ask you to help me with any more fundraising projects til at least after the holidays, but I did want to share with you some ideas of places to give if you might perhaps be in the Christmas giving mood. There are so MANY places to share our resources this time of year. It seems everyone is asking for something to make Christmas brighter for those less fortunate. I understand you may already be drowning in requests, but for what it's worth here are a few of our favorite places to give: Buy a practical gift for a family in need Make a record with Shaun Groves , a music artist who advocates for Compassion International (this "kickstarter" idea is actually pretty cool!) Heck, just go to Compassion International and sponsor a child! It's pretty fun :) Do it now and you get a special Christmas book to enjoy You can give to my friends at Grace Children Ministries Orphanage in India, use the link in my sidebar or go to their blog or th...

Wow, December's here already. Is that hard to believe? I hope you like the new look of the blog. I'd be lying to ya if I said I wasn't a little excited about the holiday season this year. Because frankly, last Christmas sucked (although I didn't fully realize it at the time) and I'm ready for a more normal December this time around. This time last year we were making short, long trips from SW Colo to WY to house hunt, in between packing boxes, saying goodbyes, and all the chaos that comes with moving just 3 days before Christmas. We managed to put a little mini-tree out and fill the kids' stockings finally the actual day of Christmas, but it has been a full 2 years since I have seen any of our other Christmas decorations and enjoyed the luxury of preparing in advance to soak up this advent season. I am getting ready to write our December family newsletter-- the Christmas version. I think it is going to say something about what a healing year 2010 has been for o...

We are busy enjoying some family time and making LOTS of Christmas preparations (it feels good to be getting these things done on time instead of waiting to the last minute!) I wanted to share a couple of links with you. If you enjoyed our last post, you will want to check these out! This woman is going on a missions trip to work at Pastor Kumar's orphanage . She is raising money for her plane ticket, and would also appreciate your prayers. And.... here is Pastor Kumar's new blog ! He's just getting started on it. He's had a webpage for GCM up for a while, but a blog is so much more fun because you can keep adding new stuff and also get feedback. Stop on by if you get a chance! And have a happy holiday!

This is my friend Praveen, a.k.a. Pastor Kumar. He is traveling on one of those busses to go buy blankets and mats for 31 orphans, because of YOU!!! This is Babji and Venkatesh. These are the two boys that inspired the start of Grace Children Ministries over 4 years ago. They are the first two orphans that Pastor Kumar and his family took in. They pose here with the 31 new blankets that YOU bought for them and their friends! Pastor Kumar checks out the sleeping mats at the store. They look a bit different than what we'd use here in the States, eh? Much better than sleeping on a concrete floor though. Just look at all those beautiful blankets! So may pretty patterns and colors. I heard a rumor that some of the children argued a bit the first night they got to use these, who would get which color? ;) The boys demonstrate the sleeping mats: Thank you all SO much for your help with this project ! You have made 31 children very happy and much more comfortable each night. More...

This weekend Luke is in Nashville at another Youth Specialties Convention, working the SROM booth and making contacts. He will be home probably before most of you even read this post, luckily it's just a quick trip this time around (Yay for fast airplanes!) We finally got my camera fixed, so maybe next time Luke can take a real camera with him on his trips instead of having to take pictures with his cell phone. Here's the action at the SROM booth: Co-worker Austin Souto shows off the climbing gear: Luke stopped by the Redcloud booth to catch up! Hopefully in the future SROM will have more staff so Luke doesn't have to go on every.single.trip. But.... While I know he misses his family (and we definately miss him) during these excursions, I think he's enjoyed the chance to travel, meet people and see things. Such experiences are good for any of us during times in our lives and I'm happy for him. Maybe sometime we could all go, though :)

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/november/27.40.html

(that's 5 exclaimation points for 5 years) This was us 5 years ago today: Well actually this would be 5 years ago tomorrow, since Winter was actually born just before midnight on 11/19 I can hardly believe it's been 5 years already since this little girl showed up and changed my life! Our Sarah Winter..... quite possibly the world's easiest and happiest baby, (yes, her shirt says Easiest Baby ) the cutest and most fun toddler, And the sweetest and cheeriest little girl I know! We love this girl!!!!! She has been 110% sheer sunshine and delight, brightening our days for the past 5 years now. Frankly I can't imagine who I would be if had I never met this special person. Thank you God for giving us this wonderful girl! Happy birthday, Sweetie! We pray for many, many more years of you blessing our lives!

Can you find the dog in the laundry pile? I think he enjoys the warmth :p

I recently started attending a Beth Moore study in our town here. I'm excited about it! There's a good variety of ladies attending it and I'm looking forward to the chance to make new friends. I'm also interested in the content of the study; we are doing Moore's newly updated "Breaking Free." As she describes in the introductory video, Christians are supposed to bear much fruit, but... We talk at church about the power available to us as Christians, but.... We go home and keep living in the same old "trash." And we think to ourselves (and others watching probably think also), "Wasn't it supposed to be better than this?" It's a question that's come to my attention more than once lately: Why is this? Why DO people generally not look magically different if they become believers? Boy, not only would that be nice for ourselves but for everyone watching us too, right? Sure, old habits die hard , as the saying goes. And childhood ...

Gosh, I am so sick of painting.... But we finally went from this: To THIS!!!! Yay!!!!!

Pearl is doing just great after her special tooth procedure this morning, thank you for all your prayers. The dentist got the x-rays he needed and confirmed that it was a smart move to remove this tooth at this stage in the game, the health of her future permanent teeth needed this to happen. The procedure itself went quick and easy and Pearl was so charming that the nurses wanted to keep her! The worst part of the whole thing was driving to Cheyenne and back in a snowstorm. Now, because having surgeries and stuff isn't eventful enough for our lives.... Look what's new at the Burgess house! What could it be? Something we're pretty excited about! It's a new gas stove to keep us warm! And it's pretty charming looking too :) We got it installed in the nick of time as the snow started to fall this week And these photos of our new-and-improved heat source were taken by our very talented almost-five-year-old photographer! (Can you guess what we've decided to buy her ...

Do you see this photo? This is a photo of Pearl's " special tooth ." Most children have 20 teeth. Pearl is special because she has 21! But.... she really only needs 20. The extra one is pushing the other teeth around. We also need to get some x-rays done to see if there is a special permanent tooth forming to match the special baby tooth you see here. Or any others. That is why we are requesting special prayer: Tomorrow (Nov 11) Pearl will get this special tooth removed as well as have some thorough x-rays done at the same time. We will travel to Cheyenne to do this, at the hospital because anesthesia will be involved due to her young age. We covet your prayers for our family while our little girl goes through this. We pray that medically all would go well and that Pearl would be kept safe. We pray for a speedy and as-painless-as-possible recovery for Pearl. We pray for our own nerves during this hard thing, and also for Pearl's emotions-- that she woul...