Christmas Card From the Martins

A note from the Martin family this Christmas:

This year has been fun and exciting!

Charlie (5 years old) has been loving Kindergarten and soaking up all of the knowledge.  He loves math and does it just for fun.

Henry (4 years old) enjoys his time with Elizabeth while Charlie is at school.  He enjoys dinosaurs, wearing his BYU hat, and playing with hair.

Elizabeth (2.5 years old) enjoys having her hair done every morning.  She insists that we call her Yellow Princess.  She loves the color yellow and will carry her princess books around as if they are her text books for life.  Lizzy's other love in life is dogs and is ecstatic to see them.

Charles has been working at his new job that he began at the beginning of the year.  At his job he designs the machines that make product for manufacturing companies.  We had a home built this year and we are loving being in our own home.  Charles built the kitchen in the basement of our home.  We now have renters living there paying a portion of the mortgage.  Annette has been busy unpacking and beautifying the home.

Merry Christmas!

Thankful Thanksgiving

We have much to be thankful for this holiday season with all of our wonderful family and friends.

For the Thanksgiving weekend we went to the BYU Paleontology Museum or how my children refer to every museum on BYU campus, "The Dinosaur Bean Museum of Art."  That is BYU's three main museums combined all into one.  The boys loved the dinosaurs!  Elizabeth was scared out of her mind by the dinosaurs and eventually found a bone to cuddle up on to be safe.

Since it is a small place and with few people there, we let them roar a bit like dinosaurs until they got in trouble from a more responsible parent than myself.

  Elizabeth loved the rock collection, specifically the sulfur that was yellow.  She had to go back and look at it multiple times while there.

We had a great Thanksgiving Dinner with Charles' family on Wednesday evening.  The food was superb!  It was wonderful as always to talk and play games with the family.

Thursday morning we all went out shooting with Annette's cousins.  We shot at soda cans which was a blast, pun intended :)  It was fun to have a few new people to come shooting with us.  We set up the blown up cans on tall weeds so that we could continue to shoot at the cans.

The Hatch-Austin Thanksgiving Dinner was made almost entirely by the Austins (my sister's in-laws) who I think we should invite every year so they can always make it.  It was delicious!

Saturday morning we had a Christmas party with Charles' other side of the family.  It was delicious and very fun.  It was good to see everyone again.

What a great Thanksgiving!  Here is a pretty sunset.

Happy Henry's Fourth Birthday

Henry has turned four years old!  He was very excited to be four and is loving every moment of it.

Henry is such a loving and happy boy.

 He cares about specific things in his life, like BYU and hair.  But couldn't care less about other things like how he dresses himself.  Two pairs of undies, ok.  Pants on backwards, oh well.  Shirt backwards and wrong side out, no biggie.

Henry has a great imagination that never stops to amaze me.  Yes, that is him under the shopping cart.  I guess errands got boring.

He comes up with the craziest stories.  Most of what he states as fact are the farthest things from the truth, but they are grand tales of adventure and intrigue that keep us guessing.

He loves being in front of the camera and always loves to give us great smiles all of the time.

Even when shopping, and I want a photo of something I like, he makes sure to get in the picture.

Henry loves his siblings.  He loves being the middle child.  He gets to have a buddy both older and younger than him.

 Henry loves to compliment everyone on what they are doing.  I often hear, "You are a good sweeper, Mom." or "You are a good cooker, Mom."  He often also tells me how beautiful I am about five times a day, especially after I have just done my makeup and hair in the morning.

Henry has a great personality that exudes through his smile and his constant stories. 

We love having him in our family.  Life wouldn't be the same without him.  Henry brings joy wherever he goes. 

Charlie's Assembly

Charlie had an assembly where his class performed the poem, "Builders" for the school to hear.  He did great!  He has the entire thing memorized.  We have been working on it at home and Henry and Lizzy have it practically memorized, too.

I saw them tearing a building down,

A gang of men in a busy town,

With a yo heave ho and a lusty yell.

They swung a beam and the sidewall fell. 

I asked the foreman if these men were as skilled

As those he would hire if he were to build.

He laughed and said, "Oh, no indeed,

Common labor is all I need, 

For they can wreck in a day or two

What builders have taken years to do."

So I asked myself, as I went my way

Which of these roles am I to play?

Am I the builder, who works with care

Measuring life by the rule and square;

Or am I the wrecker who walks the town

Content in the role of tearing down?

I have made my decision, I'll start today

I'll be a builder in every way!

Charlie has a phenomenal school!  It was just great to see all of the school's awesomeness in action.  They played a song for the kids to dance to and then they sat perfectly still.  They had them stand for the pledge perfectly (they had to stand twice since it wasn't perfect the first time) did the Pledge and then sang the first two verses of The Star Spangled Banner.

Charlie's Kindergarten class performed their poem.  Almost at the end the class started to not be in sync and so his teacher had them start all the way over.  The 2nd grade class recited the preamble to the Constitution.

(This is just a cool painting on one of the school walls)

It was great to see all of the kids in their uniforms; nice and neat.  The assembly was the first thing of the day and so all of their backpacks were next to them all on their left not being played with.  They made a great announcement near the beginning of the rules of the assembly so that the kids knew that the rules were to be followed.  The kids sat still and quiet very well throughout without correction from the teachers.

In perfect unison they would do a specific cheer right on cue.  They had about 10 different types of cheers memorized.  They also did a silent applause during all of the student of the month awards for each class.  The student of the month was chosen on the specific Builders theme for the month.  This month it was enthusiasm.  They then reviewed the month's other theme of honesty and what it meant to be perfectly honest.  At the end of the assembly they did a school cheer.  And then they played a song for the kids to dance to before going to class perfectly quietly.

Charles' Cake

I made Charles a birthday cake.  Yes, I know I am supposed to do this every year, but this year I really made a real cake.  This will probably be the first and last time that I make a really cool cake.  Here was the grueling process.

I tried making white cake.  The first one was flat and heavy.

The second was too light and sunk.

After calling Jan for help she suggested using a box cake.  It was BEAUTIFUL!

I made delicious frosting and frosted the four layer cake.

I made a beautiful mirror glaze using gelatin, white chocolate, and sweetened condensed milk.

I glazed the cake and froze it.  The glaze wasn't as thick as it should have been unfortunately.

Previously I had made tons of sugar crystals with the help of mom.  And made some piping gel.

I chopped out a section of the cake and used the piping gel to add the rock candy.  The piping gel cooled quickly against a frozen cake and I had to work quickly and keep reheating the gel.

I ended up putting too much decor on the cake; oh well.  It was fun though!

The End of Summer

This is going to be long since I am so behind.  We had a great rest of the summer, here are the highlights.

Elizabeth loves high heels, surprise, surprise.

Henry looks like he is popping out of the grass.

We loved the rain when it came.

And the hail when that came.  Collecting and then eating it was the best part.

The boys grew some wicked, awesome muscles during the summer from all of their "working out".

Charlie started school!  The first day of Kindergarten was way harder than I ever thought it would be.

Henry and Lizzy always love to hear about his day.

We have enjoyed swimming in the backyard.

Eliza is just starting to get into dolls.

We went to the Payson Onion Days Carnival

And then their parade the next day.  Annette's cousin Kassie and Annette's brother Evan were a lot of fun.

The kids thoroughly enjoyed seeing all of the cool cars while eating a free snowcone.

And then Charlie went down the slip and slide a ton.

Charlie is well behaved so much at school that he gets to go to the treasure box often.  He loves to show his siblings what he got.  After he got the blue mask and shared with them he told him that he would get them some masks to next time he got to go to the treasure box.

We visited the park that will be right next to our new home.

When out shopping with Mommy and grandma Sandra, Henry gets bored and entertains himself.

Lizzy likes to follow suite in whatever the endeavor.

One Sunday Henry thought that we all looked so nice we should take some photos.

Charles continued that same idea after church.  Annette found some photos of herself on her phone later.

When Lizzy can't wait for dinner she doesn't really complain.  She swipes food off of the counter when Annette is not looking and starts chowing down.

The kids have loved having Annette's Playmobile "Sets" out. 

We have some very intelligent meals ;)

We spent a Saturday at BYU exploring at Charlie's request.  Campus is a lot bigger when you have three children with short legs.  We didn't even see half of the main highlights.

We have been rooting for the BYU football team even though they are struggling this year.

We are trying out ideas for Halloween costumes.

When we go out shopping and Annette wants to take a photo of something that she likes, Henry enjoys inserting himself into the photo.

We have had a great summer and are ready for fall and winter to come.  We are enjoying Charlie in school.  And we are excited to move into our new home in a few weeks.