Christmas in PA 2009

We'll be traveling to New Jersey on Wednesday to spend Christmas with my family and then leaving on the 26th for about a week in Florida to see Grandpa G, CC, all the aunts, uncles, and cousins and especially Maggie and Billy for their wedding! So, we'll be away for Christmas this year and it will be such fun to see everyone and spend time with family and friends.

So, as usual for those years we travel over the actual holiday, we had an early Christmas in PA this weekend with just our little family of five. Honestly, we could not have picked a better day. We had our first BIG snowstorm on Saturday so it was nice to be trapped inside celebrating the Christmas season with a winter wonderland happening outside. And, of course, it was so much fun this year having three little ones to celebrate with. Christmas through a child's eyes is always so joyful and magical!

Here is our decorated tree, laden with gifts from Mommy and Daddy, each other, Grandpa G and CC (since we'll be in FL after Christmas day) and Aunt Catherine. So do you think we are spoiled yet since we get to open gifts from so many people a week early?!?! :)

We have the Elf on a Shelf set, which, if you are not familiar with it, is a story about one of Santa's elves who comes to live with his new family over the Christmas season to make sure the kids are being nice and not naughty. Each night, the elf - which comes with the book - returns to Santa to give his report and then comes back the next day to the house, hidden in a new location. So, our elf - Thomas - "hides" in a new location every night and the kids run around each morning looking for him. It's a lot of fun...go and get your Elf on a Shelf if you don't have one yet :).

Here's Thomas. On Saturday, he "hid" on the mantle to watch the festivities. None of our gifts were from Santa since we tell the kids that he will know where they will be on Christmas morning and will leave all of their things there instead of at our house early. So, Thomas sent a report to Santa of what the kids received so that there are no duplicates in a few days :)

Here's Nate opening up something....what could it be?

It's Legos...his favorite!

Wow, it's a remote controlled airplane!! Nate's our little pilot. He loves anything that flies.

And box #3 contains....matching personalized pajamas from G and CC! So cute! OK, so not the best picture in the world...but the best one we got. Ben is still in his "I will not smile on cue" phase and Nate is starting to enter it, too, unfortunately. Poor Abby was stuck in the middle of the two Grinches :)

So after the frustrating experience of trying to get the boys to take a nice Christmas photo with their sister, I decided to move on to more smiley subjects :)

Miss Abigail in her Abby pj's.







Nate is a bit revived and decided to take a break to streak through the house in his new jammies. Here he is, back to his usual silly self.



And here he is using the new lacing beads. Yes, we bought beads for our boys. They love to string things!

And what would a photoshoot be without some cheesy smiles from the almost 4-year-old! Here's Ben in a series of his best cheesy smile. These ones are for you, G and CC, since he is opening and playing with your gifts. Looks like he is enjoying the gifts. He couldn't be bothered with smiling for a photo when there are fun things to play with instead!

Wow, it's a chainsaw....just like Daddy has!

And a power sander and flashlight, just like Dad, too!

Lemme try these things on and get to work. And so the Mad Chainsaw Operator is born. Our coffee table was "sawed in half" and, of course, Nate was also "sawed in half" a few times!! At least he is wearing his safety goggles, right? :)

Wow, this calls for a really cheesy smile when interrupted - 2 sets of "real" Lego construction vehicles! (now go away, Mom, and let me look at my new toys!!)

So now that Abby is cranky and up for a nap, the two boys decided that they'd sit for a Christmas photo in their jammies. Still a bit serious, but not as Scrooge-like as earlier! :)
Aww, Nate and his two new puppet friends. He just loves our puppet show and thinks it's hysterical when I make them talk to him. The newest members of our cast: a chef and a fireman!

The boys and their Santa sacks!

Whatd'ya got in there, Nate?


We had a wonderful and festive start to our Christmas week and will have many more pictures to post when we return from our travels to NJ and FL. So stay tuned :). Until then, may all of you have a healthy, happy and peaceful Christmas celebrating Christ's birth and a joyous New Year. We will see you in 2010!

Christmas Dinner 2009

This past Saturday night Andrew and I hosted our very first formal Christmas dinner party. We have had many parties in the past around the holidays, but usually they are more of an appetizer and dessert theme instead of a formal dinner, and are typically fairly large. But, with just having had Abigail I didn't think I could handle such a large party this year so we instead opted to do a fancier dinner with just our closest friends. So, we broke out the Christmas china, the good wine glasses and invited the six couples we are closest to for a formal evening.

What a wonderful night we had! It was so nice to sit down and really chat over dinner and it was even more fun to dress the evening up with details here and there that we would not be able to do for a larger or less formal party. Here are a few pictures from the evening that our friend Barbara took:

Our formal table for 14. Luckily we have a very long dining room so we can accommodate a full table!


I had the table all set, restaurant-style and even printed out menus of what we'd be eating that night for our guests :)


Le Menu du jour...

Heather helping me to serve the prime rib...I realized that I hardly had my apron off all evening so unfortunately most pictures show me wearing it! At least it's a cute one, right?

The majority of our group, less Heather (and I think Randy too?).

My Chocolate Citrus Cake with homemade candied oranges and cranberries on top. Delicious and very festive! We also put out two platters of Christmas cookies and candies we've made but many of those were leftover since everyone was quite full by that point in the evening!

Corey and Angie...

Barbara always thinks of everything and remembered to take couples pictures in front of our tree. We're so glad that everyone was able to see our house decorated for Christmas since it is our first Christmas here and we'll be away for the actual holiday. So, I'm happy our tree could be a backdrop in everyone's formal photos :)

Steve and Amy...

Julie looking so fancy and festive in her pretty black dress...

Corey and Angie...

Jason and Julia...

Julie and Randy...

Barbara and David...

Mark and Heather (aka our adopted wait staff for the evening! :))

And finally, the host and hostess, Andrew and me...

We had a wonderful evening and are already hoping to have another dinner party sooner than next Christmas!

Smiles!

Miss Abigail giving me a little smile after her nap. She is a big smiler nowadays; they are just so difficult to catch on camera! I hope to get one of her broad grins one of these days, but for now, I thought this one was very cute :)

Egg Nog

Nate loves dairy. Milk. Yogurt. Cheese. If it came from a cow, he probably loves it. So, this year we let the boys each try some egg nog. Ben loved it but Nate LOVED it. Here are a few pictures of the littlest character with his first taste of the best milk around (in my opinion, at least!). Of course he had a cinnamon stick to go along with it...and an egg nog mustache afterwards, too. Yum!

Making Christmas Cookies

So, we've been doing a lot of baking lately. I guess it has to do with the fact that there seem to be so many holidays right after the next at this time of the year. And it's doesn't hurt that I love to bake, too! But anyways, this past week has been filled with making Christmas cookies and candies in the Martin household: cutout cookies, gingerbread men, peppermint bark, English toffee, spritz cookies, biscotti. All of our festive favorites, some of them old traditions for me or Andrew and many of them have become new traditions for our family. Of course the boys enjoy sampling all of the treats, which will probably become a tradition for us as well :)

I've written about this in past years, but one of Andrew's traditions has been making the spritz cookies that he always used to make with his mom as a little boy. So, he always spearheads this effort each Christmas and what fun it was this year to have two little guys to assist us!

Here are a few pictures of the boys helping Daddy spritz the cookies onto the trays and then also some of them decorating their green spritz Christmas trees. They each got their own tray this year to put sprinkles on....and man, did we have a lot of sprinkles on those trays when they were done!

Once complete, the two "cookie monsters" liked turning on the oven light and watching their cookies bake.

Finally, Ben has his special "big boy time" each Wednesday afternoon with me when Nate and Abigail are napping and we are waiting for his speech therapist (Kelly) to arrive for his lessons. He looks forward to his special time each week and asks me everyday if today is the day that Kelly comes :). Last week as we waited, I let him assist me cutting out and decorating the gingerbread men. What fun he had putting faces on them and helping to cut them out! Of course he made Kelly try one of his special treats when she did arrive and she had rave reviews for him :)

Christmas Picture 2009

Merry Christmas from the Martins! Our much-awaited favorite pose from the professional pictures taken last week...

Timeless 2009

Our church does a lovely Christmas family celebration each year one of the weekends in December called Timeless. They have horse and carriage rides, a live nativity, carolers, children's plays, crafts for the kids to do, family photos, fresh baked cookies and cider. It's wonderful and such a fun night for everyone who attends!

This year we decided to go the night that we had the first snowstorm of the season. So, with Abigail being so little and the weather being very cold and snowy, we, unfortunately, did not partake in any of the outdoor activities. But, we had a nice time doing all of the indoor ones and it was fun to see some friendly faces throughout the night since many of our friends also attend.


Here is Abby all dressed up in her Christmas footie and handknit sweater for the occasion. She looked like a little red and green gift with all of the ribbon and bows - ha ha!


Ok, so I was a few minutes too late at trying to capture a sibling photo. The baby crashed and Nate decided he was not going to even sit next to his siblings for more than a second or two, let alone give me a smile! Ben has his "I'll say cheese and hope it's over soon" smile on :). Oh well, sometimes these are the funniest pictures to look back on! And at least I got one of all three of them in their Christmas attire.

The boys had a blast at all of the craft-making stations at church. They each made three ornaments to take home and the proud artists hung them all on our tree this morning. Ben just loves arts and crafts lately, especially scissors and glue sticks, so he was in his glory. Nate got some help from his dad while I carried Abby around and snapped photos.

Finally, our family photo of the evening. Merry Christmas from the Martin Family of 5!

Oh, Christmas Tree!

Last weekend we went with Pop and Nana while they were visiting to get our Christmas tree. Since we moved soon after Christmas last year and did not decorate much, we haven't gotten a live tree in two years. So, it was Nate's first time getting a tree and probably the first time that Ben remembers getting one. What fun they had, running through the nursery trying to pick out the perfect tree for us!

The men intently watching the lucky evergreen we chose get wrapped and trimmed for us...of course, the use of any sort of machinery makes any activity exciting for the boys!

Abigail's 1-Month Photos

At just over 5-weeks old, it was time for Abigail to make a visit to the photo studio for her first professional pictures. Ben and Nate also had their photo taken with her in their Christmas outfits, and I included one of those. Our favorite one of all three of them is going on our Christmas cards so I will keep you in suspense for a few more weeks :).

All of the photos came out great - the kids were agreeable and Abigail was calm and content the entire time, even through a costume change :). Apparently she likes to have her photo taken! Here are a sampling of the poses we liked best:

Little Miss Martin in her first piece of cashmere!

And here she is in her little red Christmas dress (and her enormous tights!!). The tights came up to her armpits. Seriously :)

Here is one of all three of them that we liked but not our favorite, which will be on the Christmas cards (coming soon...).

As an update, Abigail is doing really well. She is about 9 lbs now and is much calmer than she had been in disposition. She can still be fussy, but not as much as before. She still has dark hair but it may be getting a little lighter and it looks like she may have blue eyes, possibly, as they are getting lighter. She started to smile this week so I am hoping to capture some more of those in pictures at home, too. You can see the one picture of her smiling above. What a pretty girl!