Birthdays

It's been awhile since we've had a new post (we hope to do a better job in 2012), but we have two special things to celebrate as of late.

1) Andrew turned 3! It's amazing how much he's grown up in the past year. He is so inquisitive and talks a mile a minute - he definitely keeps us on our toes. He's still our sweet and happy little boy, but we do see a temper tantrum from time to time. So far, he is very cute with his little sister (see update #2 below) and has some hilarious things to say about her (i.e. 'She is quite a sleeper!). We've posted his 3 year chair pics at the following link.

2) We welcomed Mary Ellen Martin to our family on 12/21/11. She weighed 6 pounds 15 ounces and was 19 3/4 inches long. She came a few days early, but was a wonderful early Christmas present. We will have many more Mary related posts to come, but for now, we wanted to go ahead and post the start of her chair pictures - 1 week old pics are here.
We hope everyone had a great Christmas and warm wishes for 2012!

Piano Man

We realize we don't post much any more - apologies for that. We do update the Picasa picture pages fairly often so check there.

However, did want to provide the video clip below of our little piano man. He had a weekend at Ga-Ga's and Grandpa Fred's and decided to learn a new skill.

Watch Me Grow

So we've finally downloaded and posted updates to the 2 year Watch Me Grow pictures of Andrew in his red chair.

A few of the best shots can be found here. It's hard to keep a 2 year old still for a picture.

To see the full progression over the past 2 years, click on the Watch Me Grow album. What an amazing transformation from a little peanut to a little man!

Gentlemen's Day Out

The men and little boys of the Martin and Rook families recently spent a Saturday together enjoying parts of uptown Charlotte. Since the mothers were away, Steve and Jason took Jack and Andrew on their first train ride on the light rail to uptown Charlotte to visit Discovery Place.

The little guys loved the train. While it is not exactly the same thing, they enjoyed singing the "Chuggington" theme song on the train and looking out the window.

Discovery Place was pretty impressive. The boys enjoyed the fish (all of them were Nemos), looking at the snakes and the turtles, and playing in the kids area. The kids area was a real hit once they discovered the water table and how much fun it is to dump water on themselves and each other.

The day was capped with a lunch at Brixx (Jack ate everything while Andrew ate nothing) and then the boys discovered the parking lot uptown with panels that make noise.

Pictures are found here.

Andrew's 2nd Birthday

We celebrated Andrew's 2nd birthday the day after Christmas in Rocky Mount. It was a wintery day with about 12 inches of snow so we stayed inside for most of the day. Shawn and Melissa came in on Christmas day so Andrew was able to celebrate with his little cousin who, someday, may go from being "baby Grant" to just "Grant".

One highlight of Andrew's birthday was an incredible train cake made by Bridget (Jason's writing this blog entry). For someone who claims she doesn't like to bake, it was very tasty and looked great. Andrew loved it and enjoyed being a train conductor. This worked well with the big train set he received from Santa.

Another highlight was a remote control car (I don't remember getting one of these until I was about 10 yrs old) that he figured out pretty quick.

Pictures from his birthday are here.

We are slow on posting pictures so will eventually post those from Christmas.

2 year photo shoot

We had our family pictures taken shortly before Andrew's 2nd birthday and they turned out great. They were taken by Jamie Carney (http://www.oasis-photography.com/), who has done all of our family portraits so far. This year's pictures have a few more action shots compared to last year since Andrew wasn't walking at the time of the last shoot. It was hard to get all of us still and smiling at once for a picture, but click here to check out some of the best shots.