The Martin Five!: March 2012

Over a year again? Wow I really am the worst blogger in the world! I've been working on getting our lives better organized and generally getting "more on top of things" and I think that adding time to be blogging and documenting our lives needs to be added to that. I can't believe how much has happened in our lives this last year! Lets do a bit of a re-cap shall we?! This last year we didn't move!! I know that this might not sound like much to most people but we have been in the same place for almost 3 years and guess what?!! That is the longest I have ever lived in one place... EVER... In my whole life. I think it is a bit of an accomplishment for me! We have really liked living here. We love that we have no neighbors above or below us! All three of the kids love being able to slide down the stairs and the boys even do it sitting up... It is really funny to see and I think I might need to get a video of it one of these days! One of the down sides of have lived in the same place for so long is that it is going to be that much harder to leave here. We love our ward! We have made so many friends here so getting ready to leave in the not so distant future is getting hard! As for leaving we are have decided a big thing.... We have put in all the paper work for our family to move up to Canada! We started talking about it a year ago... well to be honest we have talked about it from the time we got married but we really started to look into it for reals last spring. We were going to try to get it all sent out last summer but we decided to take our set aside cash and took a trip out to Utah last June and decided we would get going on the immigration stuff in the fall. Well we got the ball rolling last September and finally got all of our paperwork sent out on February 23rd. We are now waiting to hear back about approval and are hopeful that we will be all approved sometime this summer. It is a really big thing to decided but we know that it is the right and best choice for our family. We are getting excited for this next step in our lives but are also just ready to have it done! But for now we are trying to keep busy and not stress about the when and just be happy in the now. At least having three active toddlers/pre-schoolers helps... a lot!

Sam will be turning 5.. Yes 5!!!CRAZY!! in May. He is excited to be able to go to school when he is 5 and is always packing backpacks so he will be all ready for when he gets to go to school...lol He is a very smart boy and loves to learn! We decide to not send him to pre-school but just to learn at home. He is able to count to 100 and has learned what umbers come before and after each other. He is able to tell all of his letters and their sounds and we are working on the sounding out words right now. He is getting better at writing his letters but still has a ways to go but we still have lots of time before he goes to school to get that all down. He takes after his dad in his love for electronics! in fact all three of our children are getting to be quite the experts at working all the game consoles and both boys love playing games on the computer. Sam really is a funny kid and is so sweet! He will sing to Evie when she is sad and loves to be the big brother and teach and help his younger brother and sister. Calvin turned 3 last month... I can't believe that he is 3 either! He is such a sweetheart! He is our compassionate little man! He seems to be able to just know if someone needs a hug and is quick to run up and give you one. He is quite the little chatter box and definitely reminds me of my sister Katie that way! He loves to follow Sam around but because of that tends to be a bit accident prone! Starting at Christmas in 2010 we had 3 trip to the ER for and nasty toe cut, staples (5 in the back of his head) and glue (for a split-open eyebrow) and he had to have a minor surgery on his man parts last November but we are happy to say that he is doing great and we have now gone almost 5 months without anything major...knock on wood! He is still in Nursery at church but seems to still love it. Now that Evie is 18 months old he is excited to take her with him to nursery and her first week in he grabbed her hand and told her to come one and that Brad should leave. Brad said it was pretty funny! Miss Evalynn is getting to be a crazy little lady! She is now 18 months old and is quite the little spitfire! She just hit the 20lbs mark and is still in 12month clothes so it is still pretty funny to see such a little baby doing all of these big girl things. She for sure knows what she wants and will let you know! She seems to be learning new words every day and loves to garble to herself and LOVES to sing! I'm pretty sure everyone in our ward can hear her singing during sacrament meeting. It's really cute! Like I said she is now in nursery and seems to be doing well there. I'm not the one that drops her off but Brad said she pretty much just goes in and her teachers say she is great! Her hair is getting longer now and I have loved being able to put it up in piggy tails and I have even been french braiding it. She has started to have a bit of an evil laugh... it is really funny! She will do it when she thinks she it getting away with something she shouldn't be doing.

I have been busy taking care of us all and I'm also the 2nd counselor in our ward Primary. I work with a great bunch of ladies and we have fun in our crazy callings! I have really been loving it! Brad also just got a new calling at church and is now the 2nd counselor in the Elders Quorum. I'm still not sure how much that will change how our week of meetings will look but it will be an adventure to say the least!

We are all excited to be seeing the sunshine around here and I can't wait for all the warm summer weather for us to do fun things! As this will most likely our last one living here we are planing to get as much weight seeing in this spring and summer! Brad and I even have a trip alone planed for next month! It will be our first time leaving all three kids overnight seeing as the only other times we have left any of them is to go to the hospital to have a new baby this will be a very long overdue vacation! We are going to drive down to San Francisco for 3 nights and then take the coastal highway home. We will be gone for 6 nights and I can't wait!

I guess that's about it for now.... I will try to get some pics from the last year on here and hopefully I will be better at keeping up on here!