Snow...finally!!

...And since we've no place to go, Let it Snow! Let is Snow! Let is Snow!

That's kind of how we felt over Christmas. The snow was beautiful. No wind, falling so gently it was made for a Christmas card. I loved it! And, so did the kids since this was the first pretty big snowfall we have had this winter (I think we got about 7-8 inches).

We played outside both Friday and Saturday, but Sunday the wind was just a little too chilly. Here are some photos of the kids, in heaven, playing in the snow:

I love this picture of my baby girl. I'm in love with her eyes. :)

This photo of Brody sums up winter to me when you're a little one...pink cheeks and a runny nose! :)

No place like home for the holidays...

Due to scheduling conflicts on both sides of our family, we spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at home, in State Center, just the four of us. Although we would always choose our families over being by ourselves, we couldn't have asked for a better two days.

We baked cookies, played in the snow, watched movies, took naps, played with new toys and just RELAXED! It was wonderful!

After church on Christmas Eve we let the kids open their gifts. Some of their favorites:

Jenna got new princess shoes because her previous pairs broke when she was tap dancing on the kitchen floor.

Brody's first real baseball glove! Ok, we took a chance that he really is going to be left-handed. We saw this glove and couldn't resist. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a good leather (not plastic) left-handed glove for a little kid? Not easy!

I was really trying to make everything extra special for the kids because it was Christmas. I bought "kids wine" aka sparkling grape cider and let them drink it in fancy glasses for our Christmas Eve meal. They thought that was pretty fun!

Christmas morning....I planted myself in the room with the stockings to catch their expressions. I love this one of Jenna. She saw Brody's train set and was pretty excited.

Brody loved his wooden train set!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM THE BURDORFS!

If you give my kids...

My containers for my spices, they just might use them as blocks and try to see who can make the biggest tower.

Good use of what they had! :)

Reactions

After our appointment last week, we wanted to pick up the kids a couple of Christmas gifts and then we saw these...

They were too cute to resist in their little newborn sizes and they aren't matching, which I think is a good thing.

We used the onesies to see if the kids could figure out that we were having two babies instead of one. We eventually had to tell them there was two. Brody, only being two, was like whatever. Jenna, at first, was laughing hysterically and seemed excited. Then, Aaron asked the kids what they thought the babies were (two girls, two boys, girl/boy)...

Brody said, "two boys."
Jenna said, "a girl and a boy."
We told them it was two boys and Jenna started crying and crying and crying. I felt so bad! She wanted a sister so much. :( Anyway, we eventually calmed her down by telling her that she got to be the "boss of the boys," and she was excited about that!

Pretty much none of our family believed us when we called them to tell them the news.

Me: Mandy, we just got done with our ultrasound and...
Mandy: You're having twins.
Me: Yep..
Mandy: SERIOUSLY?! Oh my god!

Me: Jess, we're having twins. Twin boys.
Jess: No you're not. I know you're not telling the truth because you don't find out what you're having.
5 minutes later, Jess: Jame, seriously be honest and tell me the truth.
Me: Jess we're having twins.
Jess: Oh no! Are you going to have to get a Kate Gosselin van?

Our parents were pretty laid back, although I think they were in a bit of shock too.

Ornaments

When putting up the tree this year, I realized that the last two years I have made homemade ornaments with the kids for the tree. I (shockingly!) even remembered to put their names and ages on the back, so when they're all grown up we'll know whose is whose.

So, I felt like I better keep with tradition and last week the kids and I and even Daddy sat down and made some ornaments. You give those kids glue and glitter and they are in heaven! :)


Brody's little fingers...I love this picture.


Jenna had to have everything "just right"


Proof that I made Aaron participate in the family fun! ;)


For some (dumb!) reason this picture wants to rotate like this, so I apologize for that. Anyway...the finished products, now sparkly on our tree!

Oh BoyS!!

The day I had been looking forward to for what felt like forever was December 16th, the day of our ultrasound. Even though we weren't going to find out what we were having, I just always like to see the unborn baby doll on the screen, it just gives me a sense of calm.

So, I was up at 5 AM on Thursday, antsy and anxious for our 8:30 AM appointment and it seemed like everything took forever that morning. We got right in about 8:30 AM and the ultrasound began. The gal doing the ultrasound started doing measurements and looking at the head, heart, etc., etc.

The gal doing the ultrasound did say like three times, "wow this baby is moving around a lot." 45 minutes into the ultrasound she stops, looks at Aaron and me and says, "Is this your first ultrasound?"

Us: "Yep."

Her: "Um...there's two babies in there. You're having twins! Congratulations! I'm so sorry, I'm going to need to start all over, so I'll give you two some time while I go reschedule my next appointment."

She left the room and Aaron's response was sort of shocked and sarcastic, "Awesome." And, "You were right Jame. You knew the whole time. You were right." Mine was tears. Lots and lots of tears. Aaron said he figured that's what my reaction would be and asked what the tears meant and I told him they were "holy shit" tears. :)

I'm not sure if I ever wrote this on the blog, but from the start of the pregnancy, I just had a feeling I was having twins. It was so different than Jenna and Brody, I figured twins was the only thing it could be. And, the whole ultrasound I was waiting for her to tell us there was two. I was about two seconds away from just saying, "so there's really only one?!" when she announced there was two.

The gal felt so bad. She said she had never had it happen to her before that a couple as far along as us didn't know they were having twins. We weren't going to find out the sex of the babies, but since it was twins and kind of a crazy situation, we decided to. Baby A...a boy. Baby B...a boy. Oh BoyS!! That was harder for Aaron and me to wrap our heads around than the twins part.

Anyway, since this is a high risk pregnancy (I so hate that term, it sounds scary), we learned we will have a lot of ultrasounds and they will monitor everything very closely to watch for problems and signs of pre-term labor.

The good news is that there are two amniotic sacs and two placentas!! It's a much higher risk pregnancy if the twins are sharing a placenta, so that was good news to hear. Currently, Baby A (on my left side) is head down and Baby B (on my right side) is breach.

Everything looks good with the boys. I'm 21 weeks, but measuring at 23. One of the twins has a slightly dilated kidney which they will look at more at our comprehensive ultrasound in Des Moines in two weeks. The doctor assured us it was nothing to panic about and just something that they and the pediatrician will monitor once the baby is born.

We feel so excited and overwhelmed and I don't know if it will really even hit us until the twins are born! I feel like there's so much to learn, so I'm sure I'll be doing a lot of reading on multiples.

We feel very blessed and this is definitely quite the Christmas present!

Itty Bitty Request...

For all of you that read our blog (and I know there's more than just who's listed as my followers), please know that we love the fact that you read and keep up with our family. We also LOVE comments! We like to hear if you agree, disagree or just think the kiddos look especially cute that day! ;) Anyway, for those of you that leave an "anonymous" comment could you be so kind and type your name in at the end of the comment? That would be super! Thanks!

I'm currently trying to gather and organize my thoughts for my next blog post, which I think I will entitle, "Oh BoyS!" :)

the way I see it...

Lights just seemed brighter...

Do you think everything seems bigger and brighter and just better when you’re a kid? When I was growing up, I just know that there were Christmas lights all over the my hometown. I always looked forward to driving around town with the heater on high and Christmas carols playing on the radio and enjoying all the pretty lights. There was a home about five miles outside of town right along highway 9 that always went a little over the top. That place was always my favorite!

Now that I’m an adult, it seems like people don’t decorate their houses with Christmas lights the way they used to. I realize people string a strand of lights along their gutters, but I’m talking about going a little overboard. Very, very few people do this anymore.

Did things really seem better and bigger because I was a kid? Or, are people just not wanting the hassle of putting everything up and then having the same hassle in taking things down?

You all know my love for snow. Yeah, yeah...I know I’m in the minority on this one. Last weekend was great! Yes, I know it was freezing cold and windier than all get out, but things are white now. White and festive and I just feel more in the Christmas spirit. I’m not going to lie, the brown Christmas thing was really bringing me down.

We made some Christmas cookies, decorated some homemade ornaments and watched Christmas movies at our house. It was just so nice to be all cuddled up under a blanket just relaxing.

The bad news about the storm? I didn’t get any shopping done! Yikes! I’m embarassed to even say how much shopping I have done. I think I have four presents total. Two presents for each of the kiddos. I know. Terrible.

The thing is, I know some of what I want to get, but other things I’m not so sure about. I really like to have my husband there when I’m picking out things for the kids because sometimes he’ll think of a great gift that I haven’t thought of. He’s been busy on the weekends and our schedules just haven’t jived yet, so hopefully we’ll figure out a time (and soon!) as to when we can do pretty much all of our shopping.

In the meantime, I can’t stress out about it. That’s not going to help anything or get my shopping done any faster, so I’ll just continue to enjoy the Christmas season, but that’s just the way I think it.

Keeping busy

Even though Aaron's no longer the assistant girls basketball coach at West Marshall, don't think he's just sitting around enjoying a winter off. He has been keeping very busy with reffing basketball.

Middle school tournaments on the weekends in the Des Moines area and junior varsity and varsity games during the week have filled up his calendar. Since it's not every night, we (the kids and I) like it a lot better than when he was coaching. We get to see him more!

He almost always has a story or two from every game. Aaron will definitely tell you that the middle school tournaments are the WORST! The stories he tells about how out of control 5th and 6th grade parents can be is insane! Seriously, it's 5th grade! He would rather do high school games any day.

*These pictures came from our friend Jay, who went to a game at Colo-NESCO and snapped them. Doesn't Aaron look so professional and stuff? :)

5QF

1. Do you open presents on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day?

Christmas Eve

2. What is your favorite Christmas cookie (or candy)?

By far...Star Cookies. Just typing that makes me want to make a batch!

3. What's the worst Christmas gift you've ever received?

I would rather not mention it, I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings!

4. Christmas song that you love?

Blue Christmas by Elvis, but I love about 99% of Christmas songs. Love this time of year!

5. How many trees do you put up?

One is all I can handle.

Just me and the tree...

Due to the fact that I am home a couple days a week with the kids, my husband had this wonderful (Please note my sarcasm) idea that I could put up the tree. By myself. An artificial one. That's kind of old and not very well marked.

Now, even though I haven't had a real tree since I have been married, in my mind, I'm still a real tree girl. I have never, ever, ever put up a fake tree by myself.

Anyway, I did it! Not quickly. I had to re-arrange branches twice since they weren't very well marked. But, I did it. I would call it a Christmas miracle. :)

The kids had fun decorating the tree. They asked about all the ornaments and I just let them put them wherever they wanted. I'm not the crazy mom who has to have "the perfect tree."

Can you see all the ornaments on the lowest branch? Makes me smile everytime I look at it... :)

The way I see it...

Christmas at Last

Our family had a great, but busy, Thanksgiving weekend and I hope your and your families did as well. When all was said and done we recorded 550 miles on the mini-van. I’m very thankful that the kiddos were good travelers and that we only ran into about 20 miles of bad weather on our way to our destination and drove out of it. Whew!

So now, it’s officially the Christmas season. I always get so excited for this time of year and I think having kids makes it that much more enjoyable. I do always wish I could hit a pause button about December 15th and just keep it that way for a couple of extra weeks because not only is it a wonderful time of year, but it seems to be really busy too.

Although I didn’t get up at 3 AM or anything to go shopping on Black Friday, I ventured out with my mom in Cherokee on Friday afternoon. That’s really the way to go, in the afternoon in a smaller town. I could never go super early because I don’t like that many people around me when I’m shopping and I don’t like people in my way blocking aisles. That might sound bad, but I just can’t deal with all those people! I like to go slowly and really look at things and not be rushed.

Now that it’s officially Christmas at the Burdorf house that means I will have the radio tuned to Lite 104.1 all the time. I also saw on our television they have a few stations that are all Christmas music all the time. I love it!! I never tire of Christmas music. Last night my husband had class, so I turned on Christmas music and the kids and I colored out of these jumbo Christmas coloring books for about an hour. It was kind of peaceful and a nice de-stressing activity after a Monday at the paper.

Looking at my calendar for the week, I’m wondering when I’m going to have time to get the Christmas tree up. Or my fall decorations down. It might have to wait until the weekend, but the tree is always one of my favorite things to put up. I love looking at older ornaments that we’ve gotten over the years. The ones we got before we were married, our “first Christmas together” one, “baby’s first Christmas”, or the ones that the kids and I made together.

That’s the great thing about Christmas,the stories and memories, but that’s just the way I see it.

The way I see it...2 wks ago

Another Blessing on the Way

At this time of Thanksgiving, it makes me realize that I have a lot to be thankful for.

I know that sometimes life gets crazy and I feel (as I’m sure some of you sometimes do) that your life stinks, maybe just due to the fact that you’re having a bad day. I always take a second to look at all the good I have in my life and feel thankful. There are certainly many people in this world who don’t have a roof over their head or food on their table or our struggling with a life-threatening illness. When I think of those things, I realize that I don’t have things too bad.

One of the biggest blessings I would like to share with you all is that the Burdorf family is going to be expanding. We have a third baby on the way, due at the end of April, and couldn’t be more excited! I’ve endured a lot of sickness this time around, but I keep it in the back of my mind that it’s all for a good cause - a fifth member of our family. I’m sure I will have much more to say on this topic as the months progress.

I also need to retract a little of what I said last week. My mom read my article and was not a happy camper with me. I should have pointed out the fact that my mom is what I would call a “color-themed” tree decorator. This means, every few years she changes up the decorations on her tree for a color-scheme of choice. Currently, she has an amber/rust colored theme going on.

After she read the article she was quick to point out that this is indeed fall colors and she put up her tree, with only the amber-colored lights (no decorations!) because of the fall and Thanksgiving. Mom, you have my deepest apologies. I also have to say that your tree is gorgeous and I love it.

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving and can get to where you need to go (or your relatives can get to you). Hopefully the snow stays away and makes for good travel weather. We’ll keep our fingers crossed! Enjoy your families, eat some turkey, watch some football and relax. Count your blessings and have a very Happy Thanksgiving, but that’s just the way I see it.