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.