At the Ball

Well, here they are. The 4 dancing princesses. This was such an artistic and breathtaking performance, that I thought I would share it with their fans. Enjoy!

Muscle Man

I was getting ready for church on Sunday morning and I realized that things were way too quiet. So I went searching for Rusty and this is where I found him. Diligently working on his muscles with the 'perfect pushup'. I don't think I have ever smiled like that while doing pushups. He must know a secret.

The Conspiracy of toddlers and vacuuming

What is it that my children have against clean carpets. I remember when it was just Blynn in our lives, that if I was vacuuming, she wanted to be held. Vacuuming is already a workout in and of itself, much less holding a toddler. No wonder why my left arm is stronger than my right.

This is Rusty's take on me vacuuming. He thinks it is a time of bumper cars and likes to ram into the vacuum cleaner with whatever wheeled device he can find. Some day, vacuuming will seem so boring when the kids are at school and I am vacuuming without a gauntlet of hurdles to cross.

Ariel and Peter Pan

Our church had their annual pumpkin party tonight. It was a lot of fun and very successful for the Martin family. The kids both won prizes in their costume age divisions. We also do a 'Trunk or Treat' where people decorate their trunks and the kids trick or treat out of them. It sounds weird but it actually is the best part of the whole night and people go all out on their trunks. But our trunk won a prize. This is where Todd's daddying skills were really tested, as he got to choose between 3 prizes. Two of which he would of liked and would have lasted one time, and the prize which he wisely chose was the newly released from the Disney vault (I just like saying that because it sounds very mysterious) Sleeping Beauty. If it was me who had to prove my mommying skills, I most definitely would have failed, because one of the prizes was to my favortie ice cream shop. We did lose two contests though. The pumpkin carving contest and the apple eating contest. Todd is doing his best Mr. Peepers (SNL) impersonation and this has to be the most disgusting picture ever of him. By the end of the night we had won 3 prizes, eaten way too much candy, and were on major meltdown mode. Sounds like a successful Halloween to me.

Advanced Raisin Harvesting 101

I'm sure this is going to be captivating blogging for some of you, but I personally love this part of living on the farm and I think it is amazing. I had actually planned on doing a series on the raisin harvest, but I didn't get my act together in time. I know you're upset. So, we will be reviewing the advanced or newer way of picking raisins. Grapevines are trained on two different levels, the high stuff that is still green is called the crown and does grow some grapes which get picked the old way and laid on paper trays (picture of kids doing this with Papa on first blog entry). But this year's crop of raisins will come from the vines that are trained onto the lower level which is the brown leaves. The grapes were cut from the plant so they would dry on the vine (DOV) into raisins.

This is the harvesting machine that goes down the rows and shakes the raisins off the vine. They took this method from the way they were harvesting berries and made it work for raisins too. The machine does all the sorting out of twigs and old vines, so shaking on the shaker isn't necessary. Those long tubes act like fingers that go in between all of the dried raisins and shake them onto the platform below, then they go up a tower on a conveyor belt and dropped into raisin bins being pulled on a trailer by a tractor in the next row.

"I have hidden your word in my heart"

This is Blynn's current memory verse at our midweek Bible study. It's a portion of Matt. 28:20 "I will be with you always." Some of you may remember the story of two years ago when we started this Bible study, the memory verse was Luke 1:37. Blynn was not happy that her cousin, Luke, had a book of the Bible so she changed it to "Nothing is impossible with God." -Blynn 1:37. She is yet to be told that her cousin Samuel has 2 books of the Bible.

Martin Look-alike Meter

It is official. Blynn is a perfect blend of Todd and I, which I have been saying for a long time. And Rusty looks most like me. One feature I remember noticing in the hospital that Blynn has of Todd's is his eye brows. You ladies should really check out Todd's brows because you would never need to pluck them. They are perfect. I checked this as soon as Rusty was born, and he most definitely had mine. They were already all over the place.

MyHeritage: Family tree - Genealogy - Celeb - Collage - Morph

Martin Look-alike Meter

MyHeritage: Family trees - Genealogy - Celebrities - Collage - Morph

28 years later

I asked my dad to dig out these pictures from June of 1980, over 28 years ago. When we would go camping, Stacey and I loved playing in this tent that our aunt made us. Blynn had fun playing in it this summer.

Fire trucks

Our fire department does an open house every year, and we went this year. At first Blynn didn't want to shoot the hose, but then she saw how fun it looked after we turned her attitude around with a bag of cheetos. We were really impressed with everything that was available for us to look at: Police Mobile Command Center, HazMat Fire Truck, regular fire trucks, and even some of the old trucks. We got to go inside too.

Rusty's shoe obsession

A little known fact about Rusty is he is obsessed with shoes. Not in the sense where he is a shoe afficianado, but that he likes to have shoes on at all times. And everyone else must follow suit. He will frequently ask to have shoes put on as soon as he wakes up in the morning. This is his response today when I told him I didn't want to wear my shoes right now.

What we did on our summer vacation!

I have not been good at all with recording the kids events and milestones in their baby books, but I have noticed that I'm good at keeping people updated by email. So I thought this might be a good way to create a record for Blynn and Rusty, and keep friends and family updated. This is going to be a long entry as I just downloaded the summers pictures onto the computer. Here we go:















We started the summer by going to the coast and seeing the elephant seals. Rusty does a great impression.
Blynn and Rusty both got tattoos this summer at Vacation Bible School. Just another way of showing God's love.

We went camping at Hume Lake with family and friends. I love this picture of Papa Russ telling a story to all of the kids while they are on his lap.

The last picture taken with this tent was 25 years ago.

Then we got to go berry picking at a local farm here. Kai referred to himself as a booberry picker.

Eating with chopsticks at one of our favorite places in Palmdale. We made a lot of trips to Palmdale to help Russ.

First train ride. Blynn and I took the train home from Palmdale.

Let the record say that the boys love this activity and usually ask for certain fairies or princesses when they come over.










































Blynn started writing her name. For those of you who haven't been to our farmhouse yet, this is wallpaper on our wall in the kitchen. If you are going for a similar look, eat your heart out because this is vintage wallpaper. I bet you could have never guessed.

This is the official day of the merger between the Walling and Martin tribes. I haven't heard when we are going to our first tribal council, but I'm pretty sure my alliance with Todd is tight.










This is one of my projects and obsessions this summer. Composting. Blynn and Rusty have gotten into it too. We take a trip out to the bin every night and dump our food waste for the day. I even stalk Starbucks for their used coffee grounds. It is the best smelling compost bin ever. I like to refer to our harvest as "black gold".














Todd's grandparents and uncle moved away from Bakersfield to go to Arizona. The kids and Todd went to help with packing. I'm sure Rusty and Blynn weren't a distraction at all.












Papa and the kids are harvesting the grapes for drying into raisins. It is so fun for me to see Blynn and Rusty experiencing the same things I did with my grandpa when I was their age.
















We love every part of living in the country and I can't ever imagine living in town again. Even Todd likes it. Although he does still try to work in the field with his flip flops (slippers) on, my dad is good about keeping his comments to himself.

Click on this pic to see how dirty their faces are.












We went back down to San Diego in September to see Papa Russ and Grandma.














Went to the San Diego Zoo with some of my good friends from college and their kids. Finally, Blynn has a group of girls to hang out with.











One of Todd's favorite parts of this trip was taking Blynn to her first ballgame, which she refers to as the old ballgame and insisits it is not called baseball. I have had many years to get over the fact that these children will be Giants fans, although I have not given up the fight. As you can see Blynn is wearing a Giants dress which still hurts my heart, but it also helped that this game had nothing riding on it and the Dodgers were and are still killing. It also helped that I didn't go to this game as Rusty was getting all 4 of his molars, so I didn't have to see her in the dress. She made it through til the 9th inning and couldn't last any longer. I called her after the 7th inning stretch and she was so excited to tell me that everyone at the ballpark knew the same song we sing to her before bed at night.

I had to put this picture up because it cracks me up to see her sitting at a laptop. She loves this "quiet time" activity. I can't wait til she can help me with my computer problems. Probably next year.











Another picture I couldn't resist posting. This is the cheesy smile Rusty does whenever he is in the vicinity of a camera. Even if it is still in the case, he says "cheese" and puts on this smile.











Blynn's CBS lesson this week was when Moses asked God to provide food for his people. So this is Blynn and Rusty gathering up the manna that God had provided.










I promise that future entries will be much shorter, I just felt like I had to catch up on a summer's worth of experiences and milestones. Other than our obsession with the Tour de France and the Olympics, I think I covered our summer.