A new Martin...

Well we've done it... We've gone out (actually she came to us) and got ourselves a brand new Martin. She's about 6 inches talk with about 1 inch legs and she is the cutest little thing you've ever seen!!! Thats right, we got another dog. Partly in hopes that having a friend will help settle Bella down and partly because corgies are the cutest things I have ever seen. OH and the kids love her too!

Awwww a New Year...

Well its 2010 y'all and a whole new year for crazy stuff to happen to the Martin family. We started our new year out in a very young and super hip way... I went to bed at 8:30pm and Ben stayed up to watch Band of Brothers (for the millionth time!). I know what your thinking, how in the world do you top that kinda night of excitement? Well sorry folks but you just dont... lol

But it wasnt all sh**s and giggles, I mean it wasnt all craziness and partying around here. Since the kiddos didnt have to be back to school until Tuesday, I decided that it would be a great chance to head down and visit my mom. She only lives about 5 hours away, but thats if your traveling normal speed... not driving with three kids speed. So it actually took us more like 7 hours after all the stopping and the breaks and the pulling over to beat them and stuff like that. It was a pretty routine drive down there, McDonalds for lunch, stopping at the "cleanest" looking bathroom I could find and the answering the all time favorite travel question: "Are we there yet?" like four million times. But in the end it was all so worth it. The kids got to spend some super quality time with Mom and Aunt Amber, who they absolutely love seeing. They also got brand new scooters, but those are nothing compared to the Bounce house and gigiball that they also got for Christmas from both sets of grandparents. Thats right, you heard me right... The kids got their very own full size bounce house for the backyard. How crazy is that? Those kinda things are for birthday parties and amusement parks. But now we are the proud owners of one huge bounce house and one huge inflated ball (that the kids can actually get inside of) in our very large backyard. Which when you think about it is actually very very cool. I wish we had gotten something so completely cool when we were kids. We were never the ones to get the one thing in the neighborhood that no other kids had! The other cool part is that since the grandparents decided to buy such big gifts this year, we didnt end up with lots of small toys all over the house. Which was a very nice change for this year.

I cant want to take pics of the kids using both of their new super toys to share with all of you.

So after what was actually a pretty relaxing weekend spent at my moms ( I pretty much dont have to do anything down there... can you imagine. they totally do everything that has to do with the kids!!!! can you say AWESOME). We all crawled back in the car to drive and drive and drive back home. The trip home when a bit quicker then the trip down and I discovered that you can rent RedBox movies anywhere and return them ANYWHERE! Is that not the most awesome tid bit of info you've gotten all year? I rented two movies and there was piece and quite for the final 200 miles of the drive...

Well thats how our 2010 has gotten off to a rip roaring start... But at least the kids are back in school, right!!!!

Addictions...

As a stay at home mom I have plenty of addictions. Diet cherry coke, twitter, facebook, email and now blogs...

Of course I have my kids to keep my busy. They are always more then happy to make a huge mess for me to clean two, three and some times five or six times a day. But that doesnt mean that I dont find time to check to see if anyone has bothered to comment on my latest post and I check my email box like a woman in the fifties checked her mail box while her beau was at war. (was there a war in the fifties, I should really look these things up before I say them). Anyways, what I'm really trying to get at is a how embarrassed I would be if I actually had to add up all the time I spend on this computer, when I could really be spending it with my kids. Or doing something productive like Oh I dont know... knitting something. Dont get me wrong I LOVE BLOGS! I love that little peek into someone elses lives. I love getting to make new friends that I have almost no hope of ever meeting in person. I get a huge adrenaline rush when someone who is semi-famous in the blogging world contacts me or comments on my blog. I know its nerdy be I'm being honest her and I really do!!! How silly is that? I guess in the end my blogging and tweeting really arent addictions as much as they are a release. They are a place where I can voice my opinion on just about anything. I place where I can say all the stupid things that I want and people can take them or leave them. I love the friends I've made doing this and I love getting all these jumbled up thoughts out of my head and on to the computer. Thanks for listening, even when it doesnt make any sense. And thanks for allowing me to have just a glimpse at your addictions too...

Sticky Note Tuesday...

Family Dinners... Are they really worth it?

Okay, so I am at my wits end. Food has always been an issue around here when it comes to George. He is just not an eater. Actually thats not true, he loves to eat... sandwiches, crackers, muffins, pancakes, french toast and pretty much any other breakfast food you can think off. Plus he will pretty much eat with no questions asked at any point in the day... Any point in the day that is except dinner time. Nope dinner time is a complete nightmare around here and has been since about the time George started to talk. That was right about the time that we started expecting him to eat whatever we were eating and right about the time he realized that he didnt have to if he didnt want to and that there was pretty much nothing we could do to make him. We have tried many different approaches to his picking eating habits. I've made him take a "thank you" bite of foods, I've given him smaller portions, tried cooking only things I know he likes (that got old really fast) and just given in at times and given him something that he will eat instead... I am losing it. At this point I have no idea what to do anymore. Part of me just wants to believe that he wont spend the rest of his life eating pb&j and part of me wants to think, "well maybe he will" I just dont want him growing up remembering family dinners as a battle zone. I want him to cherish the memories that we make by making a point to always sit down as a family to eat. I want him to look forward to dinner, not dread it all day long. What is it about dinner that makes him act this way. I dont have this problem with any other meal. Granted breakfast and lunch are always pretty much stuff that he really likes, but he gets up to the table eats it all and then goes and plays. I'm in crisis mode here people. At this point I'm willing to try anything and I'm about to give up... HELP

To quote a smart man...

One of my fav blogs is Stuff Christians Like. It is hugely popular and Jon is a genius. Today he wrote a post that I just had to share with everyone. I am posting part of it here, but please check out his blog, it is amazing to read on a daily basis. He is a blogging rock star.

So here is my shout out to Jonathan Acuff:

I pretended I had boxes.

I tricked myself into believing that sin can be placed neatly inside one part of my life. That it won’t trickle out of the box and spill into every area of my heart and mind. I pretended that I possessed the fortitude to compartmentalize. Surely what I do in my personal life won’t impact my professional life. I can act out in this sector of my mind, but keep things together in these other three.

But I couldn’t and neither can you and neither could Tiger Woods.

I don’t want to go into details of what’s been alleged about his extramarital affairs. There are far smarter people than me that have already covered it.

But what I do want to address is what my friends keep asking me about Tiger Woods:

“How could he have done that?”

“How could he have been so stupid to leave hundreds of text messages and voice mails?”

“Did he think he was going to be the first celebrity who didn’t get caught? Bill Clinton, David Letterman, Frank Gifford, Kobe Bryant, they all got caught. Was he expecting to break the mold and never get found out? What was he thinking?”

What kills me about those questions is the idea that in the middle of an affair you could make smart decisions. As if, in the middle of cheating on someone you would have the intelligence and rational to make wise decisions about how many text messages you should send. As if only part of you would be broken and wounded, but the rest of your life would continue moving along perfectly.

But sin doesn’t work that way.

There’s no such thing as a “smart affair.” Or a smart burglary or a smart lie. Every decision made in that moment is dumb on some level. I think it’s because sin is like a drop of poison in water. You wouldn’t put a little cyanide in a water bottle and then say, “Only the top is poisoned, I’ll drink from the bottom.” Not at all. You’d put the bottle down because the whole thing was poisoned.

I used to think I could hide. I used to think that I could keep secrets like my lies and my porn problems and my other issues in a box under my bed. And maybe if I kept the lid on tight enough, they’d never impact any other issue of my life. But that was a lie. Ask my family. Ask the people that told me to go home from work.

They’ll tell you.

But the good news, the wild truth that proves the point of how corrosive sin is, is also the same hope we can trust in. Simply put, God makes us new. This verse has been rocking me lately and I’ve already written about it, but it’s too big to just cover once or twice.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 2 Corinthians 5:17

I’m convinced that God doesn’t make us better, because better wouldn’t be enough. Improved wouldn’t cut it. There’s poison in the water. New is the only way to get fresh and that’s what he offers.

To me. To you. To Tiger Woods.

Because we can’t box up sin. And when we pretend we can, things get really messy, really quickly.

Milk... a random thought

Today I want to talk about milk.... I know this is a totally random post, but milk seems to be one of our major issues still to this day. Some of you may know this already, but our youngest, Laney, will be 3 years old in February and she is still on Allimentum. Milk has always been a thorn in our side with Laney. She cant have cows milk, soy milk, rice milk or any other kind of formula. She gets crazy sick and has numerous nasty diapers all day long. Which as a Mom (or dad) you will know always leads to horrible bouts of diaper rash. That's right I am willing to admit that we havent even started the potty training process with Laney, but thats a whole nother post.

On top of not being able to drink the stuff, she wont even try most stuff. She loves her stinky, nasty, way to expensive formula and has for the past 2.5 years. But today we are trying something different (again)... I found hemp milk at the store and its even vanilla flavored. I figured now was the best time to try it, since we have a full stock of formula and the rule of thumb of course is when you dont need it to work, it will. But back to what I was going to say in the first place (stupid ADD)... There are so many milks out there!!!! None of which sound very good to me, but somebody loves them because they're out there. I mean really.... who knew you could milk an almond? And is it just me or does giving Laney "Hemp" milk sound a tiny bit illegal to you? So for now... if you talk to me, dont even bother to ask if shes potty trained lol we cant even get her off formula.