Valentine's Day 2011

Happy Valentine's Day 2011!  We hope that your day was filled with as much love, laughter and heart-shaped food as ours was.  It actually seemed as if Valentine's Day was about a week-long holiday in our house.  From the task of supervising Benjamin as he signed his classroom valentines to the preparation for "Cupid's" arrival for the kids to the valentines we received in the mail from grandparents and aunts, it was a full week of celebrating red, pink, hearts and kisses.  And we loved every minute of it!  Below are our photos from the day and mainly from the Valentine's lunch we had with our group of friends after school that day.  So, XOXO and here you go...

Our three little valentines waiting around for their friends to arrive for lunch, looking through some of their valentines that arrived in the mail.

Let the party begin....and we started with lunch.  Ta-da, our heart-shaped spread: heart sandwiches, pasta salad with heart-shaped cheese chunks, spinach salad, and fruit hearts.  We also had pink Love Potion punch.

Cupid shot his orange arrows right through these strawberries!

Favors for our guests: heart-shaped Krispie Treat pops with a pink chocolate drizzle for the kiddos and Dove chocolate for the mommies.  Something has to help us survive the day with kids who are strung out on sugar, right? 

 Heart-shaped brownies...

After lunch we did a little craft before handing out our valentines.  Everyone in this group knows each other well so it was fun to make valentines for all of our friends and hand them out.  Our craft was a little mailbox in which to collect our valentines.

All set up and waiting for the kids...

Nate, concentrating on his decorating.  These boys of mine just love their crafts!

Real men decorate pink crafts with heart foamies.  These three are secure enough in their masculinity to take decorating with pink polka-dot foamies and heart-shaped bling seriously!  What can I say?  A Valentine's craft loses that Valentine's appeal when it's blue and green instead of pink and red...

Miss Abby's first real craft.  She and her buddy Adriana sat at their own table and decorated.  Abby did prefer ripping the stickers off once they were on, but we are working on this :).

Adriana and below her Gabby!

The whole gang (l-r): Brianna, Luca, Samantha, Nate, Abby, Ben, Tyler, Adriana, Alyssa, Tommy, Gabby and Hannah.

Handing our valentines.  Abby liked to hand ours out to everyone...

What a fun, fun day we had celebrating Valentine's with our friends.  So from all of us here in the Martin family:

Rose are red,

Violets are blue,

Hugs and kisses,

From us to you!

XOXOXO, Happy Valentine's Day 2011!

Little Helper

What a little helper I have on my hands now that Abby is 15 months old!  She has started to want to do things on her own and listens to directions so well.  Here, she is helping me make lunch by getting some pretzels for the side.  Of course she couldn't get the bag of pretzels without taking out all of the other snacks on that shelf (as witnessed in the background of the photo).  But doesn't she just look so pleased with herself for being a little Mommy's Helper?

Birdhouse

Last weekend Andrew took the kids out to buy a birdhouse kit and also a bird feeder for us to hang on our porch.  We have so many different birds in our yard and the boys have been really interested in the wildlife lately that we thought it would be a fun thing for them to observe daily. 

Andrew and the boys assembled the birdhouse together.  The assembly took place in our basement which is (1) dark and scary, being 160 years old; (2) where all of the tools are kept; (3) a place the kids are rarely allowed to go; and (4) dark and scary, being 160 years old. Oh sorry, I already said that!  While the assembly was in progress, I heard Ben proclaim from the depths of down-under as he and Nate explored the real tools in Daddy's workshop, that "This is the best room in our whole house!" Alrighty then.  Think of all of the extra time I will have if I aspire to maintain the rest of the house in the same, eh, laissez-faire manner as our dear 'ole cellar :).  It makes me smile when I hear what really makes the kids happy, especially the boys in all of their adventurous, rock-collecting, dirt-excavating glory.

Anyway, back at the bird house... 

After it was assembled it needed to be painted.  Andrew was going to hang it up au natural but I insisted that a decent daddy-son birdhouse needed to be painted.  By a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old.  With none of those washable paints, but instead with the *real* stuff that stains and makes a total mess.  Acrylics. 

So we donned some old tee shirts as smocks and embarked on our journey.  I must say that the boys did an excellent job.  They were cautious about painting only on the birdhouse and not on the table (much) and were excited to use all of their favorite colors.  Ben seemed to keep this mindset throughout the course of the task whereas Nate determined that he could mix all of the colors together to form a beautiful new color....greyish brown.  But he was just as proud of his side as Ben was!

Andrew is in the process of sealing the paint and then we will hang up our masterpiece.  I will post some pictures of it once we get it outdoors for our feathery friends.

Escaped!

This is what happens when I turn my back for a few seconds at snack time, now that Abby sits up to the table instead of using her tray on her high chair.  How quickly she makes her escape!  I guess I will have to strap her in every time going forward.  Freshie!!

American Museum of Natural History

Last weekend while Andrew was away on a Habitat for Humanity trip with our church, I took the kids to visit my parents in New Jersey.  On Saturday, we took the kids into New York to the American Museum of Natural History to see the dinosaur bones.  The boys just love dinosaurs all of a sudden and have been talking about going to see the bones for weeks.  What a great time we had, especially Ben who literally looked at and observed every exhibit in the dinosaur rooms.  He was amazed!


Big 'ole T-Rex....makes me think of Night at the Museum .  I just wanted to throw him a rib bone :).

A big skull....

This is Ben with the Velociraptor.  His Show and Tell this week was the letter V so we took this photo and combined it with a mini plastic Velociraptor that he got in the souvenir shop and he had his homework all ready to go!

Stegosaurus...

The boys loved feeling the hands-on exhibits, especially the Stegosaurus scale...

Tricerotops...

Miss Abby at Nana and Pop's house before we had set out on our outing.  What a fun day!  Thanks, Pop and Nana, for taking us there!

Icicle

Wow, isn't this icicle crazy?  The kids had noticed some huge icicles hanging outside of our bedroom window and were busy looking at them from inside when Dad came over, opened the window and brought one into the house.  They thought it was so neat!

Snow Day!

We've had A LOT of snow this winter in PA, at least it seems that way.  This past week we were hit with part of the noreaster that moved up the east coast and had about 15-18 inches overnight.  Even Andrew was impressed, in all of his Buffalo upbringing!   It was incredibly windy and we even had snowthunder, which was a first for me.  I had never heard it before and it was really neat.

Our kids have never liked playing in the snow too much, especially Ben, but this year they have decided to brave it and we all headed outside.  The boys got snowballers and snow castle block makers for Christmas so they have really enjoyed using them, as well as the kiddie sized shovels that I found for them at the supermarket.  So out we go....

30 minutes getting everyone all bundled up.  This is going to be fun!  A blast!...

Nate loves it...Abby, uh, not so much.   

Ben helps shovel and loves it! 

Abby, uh not so much.  10 minutes later, here's her preferred seat to the snowtube.  Happy and munching on some Goldfish, watching her dad and brothers play outside! "Hi!"

Abigail's 15 Month Pediatrician Appointment

After a good trip to the pediatrician, who informed us that Abby was getting all four 1-year molars at once, and then having her get the two immunizations she was due to get, we had a few cranky days at home with our curly girly.  So, I didn't get a chance to update our blog with her statistics.  Thankfully, the teeth have come through and the after effects of the shots have died down, so we're back to normal around here.  "Normal" nowadys is a smiley, happy, easygoing girl who gets into everything and is finally walking.  She laughs all the time, is fresh much of the time, and is a sweetheart always!

Abby shakes and nods her head at everything, obeys 2 step commands and eats with a spoon and fork more neatly than Ben does!  She is not talking much yet, but clearly understands us and uses gestures in place of words at this point.  She says "Mama," "Dada," "Beh" (Ben), "Nene" (Nate), hi and that's about it and even those are not used all the time.  The doctor didn't seem concerned.  She seemed to think that maybe Abby had two spokesmen representing her at all times through the day, so she didn't have the need to talk much :)...if you get my drift.  We've done the drill with the late talker before with Ben, so we know to keep an eye on this.  The doctor said we'll see how she is doing at 18 months but it didn't seem like a concern.

Here are her statistics.  She is still on the smaller side for weight, but her hearty eating habits have caused this to not be as slight as in other months.  This girl can EAT!! 

Height: 30-1/2 inches (50th)
Weight: 20lbs. 8oz. (20th)
Head circumference: 18 inches (50th)

Flower Headband

Abby's new flower headband from her cousins Maddie and Sophia for Christmas definitely warranted a photoshoot.  I can't believe that she will actually keep it on her head (for the most part) and will hand it back to me and pretend to put it back on when it does fall off.  Definitely a girly girl!  Thanks, Maddie and Sophia, I love my headband :).



Snow Day

Earlier this week we had a snow day when Ben's school was cancelled due to inclement weather.  So, we spent the morning in our play room while the snow came down and had a great time using our imaginations.

Here's Ben, getting some tasks done around the house to help Daddy.  He determined that our door sticks so he would fix it.

Abby loves this rocking zebra!  She is the first of our kids to really play with it a lot and will just climb up onto it by herself and start rocking.

Group pictures! (too bad I was interrupting their play or else maybe I would have gotten a few smiles out of the boys).