Family Pictures

For those of you who are fb friends, I suppose this is quite redundant...but for the sake of our blog journal, I'd like to post a collection of some recent family photos my sister took of us. 

The Martin Family, 2014

 

 Thank you, sister, for all the hassle and work you graciously went through for us! ;)

A GG Visit!

Yay for Thanksgiving break and the chance to be home for 5 whole days !! After a walk to the donut/coffee shop, fort building, and endless rounds of hide-n-go-seek, I'm attacking my laundry list of things to do .... and this here blog is one of them. :)

Gina came out to visit us over a month ago... we didn't know for sure when she would arrive, so we waited to tell Kyle. Rudy drove the boys for a little adventure to "watch airplanes land." Then, he drove through the arrival terminal and played pretend by asking the boys who they should pick up. Kyle went through the list and I wish I could have seen his face when his GG actually appeared!! ;)

GG got to visit our "new" place for the first time and we enjoyed having more space to play in. During the week, I especially appreciated her visit since Gavin could stay with her and I had one less person to drop off early in the morning. I was surprised by what a break that gave me, not to mention how special for Gavie to get quality time with his GG. Here are some pictures she sent from the trip.

GG took them for a wagon ride all over town!! What a story...yet what a highlight.

While playing outside, Gavie got stung by a wasp. He still talks about it, trying to milk it for all it's worth. "I got a bee-sting!" he says while pointing to the wrong hand. :)

 

Watching trains at the train station. This is a Kyle favorite we do quite often and it was special to take GG to see "our" station!

Also on the list, was a newly found treasure of a small town hidden in the hills. While at this cafe, you'd think you were somewhere other than CA. It's got such a nice change of pace and scenery.

We got to celebrate GG's birthday just a few days early.

Happy Birthday, GG!

Thanks for a nice visit!! 

Hello Fall!

November 1st gave us some long-awaited rain!! Really, has it been a year? I don't remember the last rain and we are in a serious drought, so this was amazing for us and for the ground. It took us a while to gather our rain gear from out of the tubs in the garage. We only had one raincoat and one umbrella but we all 3 had boots! We pulled ourselves together and were out the door in time to enjoy about 5 minutes of it before it all went away. Yep, that's rain for us. Still, it was coming down harder than a sprinkle and the boys loved every second of it. :)

Kyle was so cute to make sure Gavie was covered.

The gutters and storm drains were where all the action was.

We went through quite a few changes of clothes as you can see from Gavie's idea of fun. A break in the clouds couldn't damper this boy's spirit!

The entire day was in the 60's!!! Woo hoo for fall! We even got to light a fire in our fireplace both at night and early the next morning.

Amazing. Unfortunately, we were quickly back up into the upper 80's. Still, even just a day or so of cooler weather was so nice.

Then, today we woke up to some real wind, as in once or twice a year kind of wind! The boys went out in their airplane boxes and zoomed around...

...and then Rudy made "balloon kites" for the boys.

The boys squealed and squealed. Both Rudy and I recognize how weather deprived our kids are, so we loved getting this opportunity to watch them enjoy something so rare. 

Happy Halloween!

We had a great time trick-or-treating on our street this year. The evening started out with a block party, potluck style with our amazing neighbors. Then, all the kids went around the cul-de-sac collecting their loot. Kyle really wanted to be Batman again this year, so Gavin just had to be his side-kick again, too. :) 

My precious boys. Growing up way too fast.

Once Gavin saw that he got a sucker, he was all about the trick-or-treating thing. It's really quite magical...you knock on a door and it opens to give you a sucker! Amazing!

Happy Halloween!