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.

Fall Football Fun

It's not fall without a LOT of football at our house!  This was Mason's first year of tackle and let's just say practicing for anywhere from 4-8 hours a week was a little adjustment.  There were a few sore muscles and lots of bruises, but mostly enjoyment!  Although their record wasn't the best, the boys learned the essential skills of the game and worked together as a team.

Mason played quarterback and center on offense...not your usual combination!

Ron coached the 5th and 6th grade Panthers this year.

Panthers 2011

 Connor enjoyed another year of flag football.  The game really came together for him this year and his "wheels" came in quite useful on both offense and defense.  He enjoyed scoring several touchdowns and was quite the master at flag pulling.

We were fortunate to have some gorgeous fall days at the beginning of the season.

Connor could get an eye on that flag, dive, and pull!

 You don't have fall football without including the Panthers!  When schedules and weather cooperated we enjoyed tailgating with friends.  We bought an extra season ticket this year so one of the boys got to take a friend to each game.  What is more fun than tailgating and watching football with a friend?

TK and some loyal fans!

TK, Caleb and Connor

#1 Panther Fan - Owen!

Halloween 2011

Once again, time has gotten away from me, but here's a quick update on the McCartan goblins of 2011!  We had a beautiful evening to trick or treat and for the first time, Mason and his buddy Lily hit every street in the neighborhood.  Owen sweetly approached each house with a "Happy Halloween" instead of "Trick or Treat."  Connor and his bud Joe had fun together too.  Between the three kids we ended up with 3 gallon zip lock bags full of candy!  After a couple of weeks I was so tired of finding candy wrappers under furniture and in other random places (to avoid being caught eating it) I emptied the candy bucket and smuggled it into the UNI Dome for a football game and distributed all the sweet treats to family and friends.  Mission accomplished!  No more candy wrappers hidden around the house.

The ultimate Tiger fan, Incredible Hulk, and Skeleton.  Watch out Viking Hills!  Here we come!

Just a small portion of the goods!

Summer in a Nutshell

While I had the best of intentions to blog more this summer, it just didn't seem to happen, so I'll let the pictures do the talking!

We took a trip across town to see Jared at the fire department.

Made it back to West Bend to celebrate the 4th of July...

and saw Grandpa Bill in the parade with his old tractor.

The kids enjoyed a dip in the city pool I spent hours in as a kid. 

We enjoyed the best small town fireworks in the state with Grandpa Bill and Grandma Lois. 

We made the trip to Lost Island a couple of times which is always a favorite of the boys, especially when Uncle Jay lets them drive the pontoon boat! 

I enjoyed visiting with several friends at my class reunion.

The boys had a blast washing a few cars in the neighborhood with friends.

A HUGE highlight of the summer was seeing our good friends who moved to Georgia (or China as Owen would say)!

Obviously, petting a newborn calf at Grandpa Jim and Grandma Mary's tops the list!  Owen even kissed it...yuk! 

We caught up with some of the Bormann cousins at the lake.

We ended our summer with our annual trip to the state fair with Grandpa and Grandma. 

Mason was seeing how many pull-ups he could do at one of the Army booths!

Overall, we had a great summer.  I could also include several pictures of the 50+ baseball games we watched this summer too, but they got posts of their own.  The pool was our home away from home as well, but since they're anti-photo happy (as I've mentioned before) I don't have any photos to share.  Bring on fall now!

Coach Pitch It Is!

I can't even begin to count the times Connor corrected me on this one. I mistakingly told people he played baseball or sometimes even t-ball and Connor was always quick to respond with a "No Mom, it's COACH PITCH." 

 Obviously, he felt this was a big year transitioning out of t-ball and into real baseball! After his initial practice in the rain, which evidently is just fine for 7 year old boys, the season went on without a hitch.

  They practiced the usual fielding, grounders, pop flies, and most importantly hitting. 

 Thanks to lots of baseball games popping up in the backyard, Connor did just fine in this area.

 I guess it doesn't hurt having a big brother to play with too!

Finally

I finally have an avid reader on my hands.  OK, that may be an exaggeration, but compared to the past several years I will go with it anyway!  We spent countless hours reading to Mason as an infant, toddler, and preschooler.  When he learned to read he still enjoyed listening to us read to him, but never really settled into the routine of reading to himself without a LOT of threats prompting from me. 

So, fast forward five years and there's a "reader" in the house, thanks to the world of technology!  We have an iPad and the Kindle App seemed to intrigue him, but it was his cousin Abby's Kindle that really sucked him in.  When I asked Mason which one he preferred he quickly responded with the Kindle because it was more like a "real" book.  Since when did he want to read a real book?  Without hesitation we purchased a Kindle and both Mason and I have read more books in the past month than all of last year.  Mason has even found a series he enjoys (and there are TONS of books in this collection).  As for myself, I didn't realize how much I'd missed reading a book, since most of my time has been spent reading magazines, blogs, and cookbooks for the past several years.  Who would have known?  Hopefully, Kindle will get their library lending program up and going so I don't have to fork out all the money for Mason's downloads (I just read the free ones)!

Now, Mason is still probably more into this.....

but I'll take what I can get!

Apple Pickin' Time

Once again, I'm making up for some lost time on here.  But instead of going back and trying to catch up on all of our summer activities I'm posting more up-to-date happenings.  Who knows if those summer happenings will ever make it on here!

Every fall we take a trip to an apple orchard.  We usually make the trip to Cambridge, but between football games on both Saturday and Sunday this year, I'm not sure if we'll be able to make it happen.  So, we stayed a little closer to home this weekend and found a little orchard about 35 minutes away.  The apple picker poles were nowhere to be found, so Ron hoisted the boys up on his shoulders to pick the juicy apples.  Of course, the boys were more than happy to do this, especially knowing those apples would eventually turn into their favorite homemade applesauce soon!

Needless to say, two batches of applesauce and one pan of apple crisp later.  We still have a TON of apples left.  I wonder how much applesauce will make it to the freezer (and escape the mouths of three hungry boys)?