WISHING ALL OF YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Boys, boys, boys...

So what have we been up to in Iowa?

While in upper Iowa we stayed at Keith's grandma Ludwig's house. This was quite a challenge because she collects antiques and has quite a collection of delicate items that attract little boys! Luckily we made it out of there with out breaking anything.

Sunday morning we had a big brunch at Keith's grandpa and grandma Bormann's house with lots of cousins, aunts and uncles, the boys had a lot of fun playing around in their basement.

Monday we took the boys to the mall to find some snow pants and play at the play center. Later that night we went to Ankeny to hang out with Nicole, Ryan, Dave and Lola.

Tuesday Santa Clause came to the house and we celebrated Jennifer's 30th birthday, I will post more later.

Wednesday we went the kid's gym at the Newton YMCA, which was GREAT because we were the only ones there. Later that night a few of my friends came over.

Thursday we worked on food for Christmas dinner, took the boys to my sister's house to play with all of Cade's toys and then went to Christmas Eve service. Afterwards we went to the Allspach's house for a little holiday party

Now we are ready for Christmas! The week has gone by so fast!!! There have been threats of the biggest snowstorm of the year, but in central Iowa we have been just getting poured on (which is super weird in December), while 10 inches of snow has dropped on our home in Minnesota. They are expecting 19-22", so Sunday travels should be interesting.

Two bottles at once...impressive!

So nice of Dylan to give Carter a pacifier.

Best toy ever...

is a LAUNDRY BASKET! Jennifer and I were giving all three boys rides up and down the hallway. However, they were only good for about two trips each. 75+ pounds of boy is a lot to push up and down the hallway.

And a few more...

The boys were their normal, wild selves at the wedding keeping us and Grandpa and Grandma Bormann on the go all night. They danced a lot but tried to make a run for the door several times, tried to help the DJ out at least once each song and just couldn't leave the chairs alone.

wrestling on chairs....not a good idea!

We don't know this girl, but she and another girl took an interest in the boys and had them dancing. They are a great help to us because when they ran away, they would go get them.

Keith trying to keep the boys from going behind the DJ table.

Destionation #1 of our 9 day trip to Iowa...

It has been a busy week! We hit the road for Iowa on Saturday morning with our first big stop in Algona for Keith's cousin's wedding. The boys got to meet lots of their cousins and see all their Bormann aunts and uncles. They love to dance, so they spent the majority of the night on the dance floor.

Wordless Wednesday

The BORMANN Twins

On Saturday we went to Keith's cousin Lindsay's wedding. And it was a great opportunity to get a picture of all those Bormann twins. In the middle are Keith's aunts Corrine and Connie. Then his first cousins Lindsay and Megan. Lindsay and Megan are still pretty hard to tell apart even in their twenties.

A few more...

And the best gift...

was the tent! This tent has a door, window and two little tunnels for each side. I thought maybe they would go in and play, bring some toys in there and hide out. Not so much, they totally destroyed it!!! They were diving in the window, they would flip the entire tent upside down and go in and out through the bottom. They were just nuts with this thing, it was hilarious.

A few more pics...

Keith got me a snuggie!

And our favorite thing about our presents...

Is standing on them!

Family Christmas

Friday we had our family Christmas! The boys were a lot of fun and LOVED all their toys. More pictures to come.

Santa came early this year....

for little Miss Stella. She was up for the challenge and managed to lug that big bone around.

A house with three wild, little boys

Here is a little taste of what has been happening at Grandma's house this week!

We got boots!

It took three different Targets, but I finally found size 5 little boy boots! Now we are ready to build snow forts and go sledding! They are predicting a pretty serious snow storm to hit Iowa Wednesday through Friday, so the boys will be ready!

Remembering Back...

As we have been wrapping up all of our Christmas tasks and prepping to spend a week in Iowa for Christmas, it brings back lots of memories from last Christmas. It was our first trip with the boys and they were about two months old. Outside of our cribs, we pretty much brought every single piece of baby gear that we owned! It was nuts.

I remember it was at Keith's parents house that the boys "slept through the night", which was about 5-6 hours at that time! Of course it probably felt like 12 hours to us.

Our first candy canes....

We let the boys have their first candy canes! Carter thought it was pretty darn good, Dylan thought it was just OK. At least that is what it looked like. Dylan shared a few licks with Stella. I'm guessing we were lucky we didn't have to cut it out of her hair.

One thing I am loving right now....

I'm sure this won't last long, so I thought I would enjoy this as long as possible and am probably jinxing us by sharing.

The boys are doing awesome right now on naps and night time (except it seems like at least 4 days a week one wakes up around 5:00 am). They take a nap in the morning afternoon and are in bed by 8:30. For the last couple of months we have been reading their cues when they are getting sleepy and then will bring them to their cribs and they usually will fall asleep on their own. Then this week, we have been say "lets go night night" or "it's nap time" and they have been grabbing their blankets and walking back to their room. AWESOME!!!!! And it is really funny because they can't really "run", but when we say it, they get excited and pretty much run to their cribs. Now sometimes they get there and they kinda look around for a second and I think they are thinking oops, they tricked us, now we have to go to bed. So I doubt this will last long and I'm sure we have many night time struggles ahead of this, but I am enjoying this one while it lasts!!!

We were busy tonight!

The boys were in pretty good moods tonight!

Carter taking a quick break to snuggle with his blanket on the kitchen floor.

Dylan thinking about doing some stunts.

This doesn't look good! Hope it takes them a while to figure out how to get behind the couch!

They didn't know I was watching them!

And our crib chewer is....

CARTER!!

Carter's crib is by the door that looks into our room, so when ever he wakes up he stands at the end of his crib waiting for somebody to walk into the room. Dylan doesn't chew on his crib at all!

Wordless Wednesday

A few pictures of Santa's helper

Another great annual JT Mega Holiday Party

Friday night we had our annual JT Mega holiday party. This was the fourth party we have attended and I must say this year's candy themed party topped the list! I had a phenomenal time, probably doing a little too much dancing and I think I even got a hold of the microphone by the end of the night. (that is usually when I sound best!)

This year we had a hypnotist. They say being hypnotized for one hour is equivalent to eight hours of sleep. So Keith and I looked at each other and thought, why not? It started to work on me, but then I came out of it. As for Keith, he was one of the stars of the show. VERY FUNNY! I have a couple crappy videos, I will try to post one.

This is a picture of my team at the end of the night, our team was the only one that stayed until the DJ quit.

Enjoy this image, because it is probably the last time I should dance to Thriller. Of course there is always next year, I rarely pass up dancing to a good 80's tune!

A Bormann Holiday Tradition

For our first Christmas together, we started a fun little holiday tradition. Each year we buy a tree ornament with the year and hang a picture of the years most significant event. I think in 10-20-30 years it will be a lot of fun for us and our children to look back on as we decorate the tree.

2005, Our wedding

2006, our first house

2007, our lives changed forever with Little Miss Stella

2008, the arrival of Dylan and Carter

I did two this year. One for my grandpa, he passed away in January. He would have been 90 years old on the 17th of this month. It is still hard to believe he is no longer with us.

Keith put in a lot of hard work and sacrificed many hours away from the boys to complete his MBA, so I thought he deserved a 2009 ornament as well! Cheers to no school in 2010!

Cans of formula for Comments... UPDATE!!!

In November we did a post that stated for each comment we received, we promised to donate two ounces of baby formula, which is equivalent to two 6 oz bottle. We received a little over 100 comments! So many nice comments and lots of people who were doing similar donations. A lot of the comments came from bloggers who added the post to their pages. So a BIG THANKS to:

The Dillinger Family

Redhead Ranting

Gabby She Wrote

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beer Holder

Andrea Worley

Sorry if I missed anyone else!

We ended up donating 271 ounces of formula, which equals out to 271, 6 fluid oz bottles!

Surprisingly, I had a hard time finding a convenient place to donate the formula to. Keith's mom was here this weekend and there is a food shelter in their home town, Sibley, Iowa. So she took the formula to that location for us.

We had a couple of great helpers! These cans of formula entertained them for about a week!

Surgery on Wednesday

Carter will be having surgery on Wednesday to have his tear ducts opened up! His eye was extremely goopy last week and was looking a lot like pink eye, so I dug through our bin of medicine and was surprised to find so many different types of eye drops we have given them over the past year. The sad thing is, each one of those bottles represents a trip to the doctor's office! (No wonder why I hate going there.)

We are really disappointed though and wish we had discovered that his tear ducts were clogged when we did the tubes so he wouldn't have had to go under again. Hopefully all will go well. Unfortunately, he isn't scheduled until 9:30, so I'm thinking we will have a rough morning with no bottle!

Stunt Men!

I might have a couple of fearless boys on my hands! Also, don't judge me, but I mixed up the boys in this video. It is Dylan doing the stunts, not Carter!

Sorry blogger freinds!

I know I have been a really bad blogger these past couple weeks! We had a busy weekend and almost every night for the past two weeks after the boys go to bed I have been hitting the mall, target, etc trying to put a dent in our Christmas shopping! Getting so close!!! I promise lots of posts will be coming soon.

Wordless Wednesday