Happy 8th Birthday Connor William

As a teacher, having an early January baby was great.  I didn't return from Christmas break until the middle of March.  As a parent, having an early January baby is a pain!  I barely wrap up all the shopping and activities from Christmas and I'm right back at it again planning a birthday!  However, Connor William was a blessing 8 years ago, and he continues to be one...most of the time!

Happy 8th Birthday!

Connor is our little go-getter.  He loves sports of all kinds, but especially has a love of wrestling, football, and baseball.  I'm pretty sure he enjoys the social aspect of school just as much, if not more than the academics.  According to one report card this year, he is quite chatty, but hopefully that's taken care of now!  He is an excellent reader and is great at solving mental math problems.  Now if we can just get those subtraction facts memorized!

Last year Connor requested breakfast in bed for his birthday, and once again Mason obliged.

Breakfast and presents in bed.  What a way to start your day.

A few friends helped Connor celebrate his birthday with a sleep-over.  Mason and Connor had fun planning the  party and had everything scheduled out nicely...laser tag, hide-n-seek, pizza, movie, xbox, wii, etc.  Basically, anything a group of eight year olds would enjoy!

Birthday fun!

Christmas...in April?

So, what does a girl do when she's four months behind in her blogging?  I guess she attempts to catch up, so here we go!

Christmas continues to be a magical holiday at our house filled with various traditions.  The boys always know they will get pjs from mom and dad and I had to do the cheesey thing this year and buy matching ones.  Who could resist UNI pjs?  I am so NOT a matching clothes kind of mom, but these we love!  I've come to the realization my kids will probably never be wearing shirts in any of their Christmas pictures either, but I'll take that as a favorite memory.

Matching UNI pjs!

Christmas with the Bormann side was celebrated a week early this year.  I hadn't gotten around to decorating our sugar cookies yet, so thankfully Joan allowed the mess to happen at her house.  Actually, it turned out to be very fun and EVERYBODY took a turn!  We also played BINGO again this year and came home with some goodies - I think most of the prizes turned out to be edible!

It's all in the details Marcus!

Grandma Lois and Grandpa Bill did their share of decorating.  Owen must have been taking a break and playing with a necklace.

There was obviously no shortage of frosting and sprinkles.

Plenty of good BINGO prizes...yep, even a couple jars of pickles and Scratch cupcakes.

We are so fortunate to be able to celebrate the holiday (or most of it) at home.  This was the first year we all went to Christmas Eve mass nice and early to get a seat.  In years past, Ron would go early and save a pew, but now everybody is old enough to tough out the extra 45 minutes in church!  We changed up our tradition of soup this year to enjoy some smoked pork, which has quickly turned into one of our favorite meats in the smoker. A tradition my family had growing up was drinking wine with our Christmas Eve meal, and so it is a tradition which has continued...with kid wine! Our gingerbread house turned out much better this year due to the fact that I bought a premade house and all we had to do was decorate it.  I highly recommend this after ours collapsed last year!  Of course we couldn't celebrate without opening a few presents too!

In addition to the tradition gingerbread house we did Rice Krispy houses...much easier.

So much candy, so many decisions.

Ta da!

Love the sweet little hands.

3 happy boys

Christmas morning comes fairly early at our house with Santa's special delivery in the night.  The boys received some highly prioritized gifts on their lists.  

According to Owen, a pillow pet can make your day.

Tebow jersey for Mason

A Phiten necklace for Connor.

We traveled to Mallard later that day to celebrate with the McCartan side and everyone truly had a Merry CHRISTmas.