Brandon & Karol wedding pics

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Brandon gets MARRIED!!

Yep, keep reading... Brandon is hitched :)!!

He married Karol Herrera on March 20th, 2010 in a beautiful ceremony in Jacksonville, FL surrounded by a ton of family and their very best friends.

Where it all went down...

The Martin family, before adding our beautiful daughter in-law

Our very handsome boys - GOSH they clean up good!

The happy couple right after the ceremony

This wedding didn't go down without a ton of happy events preceding it, a ton of hard work and planning, and a ton of patience as we tried to make the event as memorable and as special as we could for our kids! If I think back to a year ago, I never, ever would have guessed that our Brandon would find the love of his life and marry her! As a matter of fact, at this time last year he was still living in Denver, and had just made the decision to move back to Florida. Brandon had known Karol since middle school - before we even left on our Rhode Island journey, but who would have guessed they'd reconnect and get married. Within the year of Brandon coming back to Florida, they started dating, fell in love, moved in together and announced their engagement around Thanksgiving last year!

We absolutely adore Karol... she is a sweet girl who has quickly fit in with our quirky family! Next to Brandon, Caitlynn especially enjoys her being in our lives. We knew she was a keeper when she started coming over and without even thinking twice jumped in to help with dinners, homework, and just seemed to enjoy the craziness that comes with our household!

We had a ton of events to precede the big day, I'll try to summarize as best I can...

• The first being a co-ed Wedding Shower the weekend before the wedding. Celebrating with our best friends, the kids were showered with gifts and good wishes as they prepared to enter the hectic pre-wedding week!
• On the Friday before the wedding the girls and guys had separate, yet equally fun days doing what we enjoyed most. The girls enjoyed the morning at the nail salon getting pedicures and manicures and then had a nice lunch together. The guys enjoyed the day golfing! It was a beautiful Florida day... perfect for golfing and perfect to show off our naked toes!!
• Also on the Friday before the wedding we had the rehearsal dinner at our house. We bbq'd hot dogs, chicken and burgers and had a pretty laid back evening with a ton of family and friends. The "Georgia Martin's", G-ma Rolayne, Nana, Papa and Uncle Mike, Patrick his daughter Andrea, his sister Trish and her kiddos Tre and Tailer, Karol's dad and brother rounded out the family attendees! It was so fantastic to have so much of our family here at one time!
• Then Saturday, the big day, started off with a yummy breakfast at the Original Pancake House with just our family and Rolayne. We sure needed it as from the moment we ended breakfast it was nonstop getting ready for the event that was to start at 6 o'clock that evening! We had to set up centerpieces, ensure the tables were set how we wanted, meet the DJ, meet the caterer, meet the photographer, and of course start to get ready!

Then the moment finally came! It was a short and beautiful ceremony that was performed by a friend of Karol's family - who did the ceremony in both English and Spanish! Papa also had a special part of the ceremony, as he prepared a poem titled "Dr's Orders" for the kids. Was so sweet, as my dad's poems always are - was just what the kids and just about anyone else married in the room needed to hear! I have so many favorite memories from this day, it was simply perfect to see my kids so happy and to be able to be surrounded with so much love from family and friends.

This blog would not be complete without expressing my sincere gratitude to our "Florida Family". You all, as you always have over the 10 years we've been in this state together, are amazing! You've watched our kids grow up, we've celebrated birthdays, holidays, we've seen each other through good times and bad - and yet the support has never been as strong! Thank you for the help planning, thank you for your willingness to capture the day in pictures, and thank you for celebrating every moment with us!! We LOVE you and thank you for being there yet again for us through this milestone in our life!

There are way too many pictures to post to this blog, we've uploaded a TON to Kodak. Hope you enjoy the collage of pictures taken from our camera, from Papa's camera, and from G-ma Rolayne's camera!

Tylar's 12th!!

Celebrating Tylar's 12th Birthday

Stacie & Tylar @ Wasabi for dinner

Tylar LOVES the Japanese Steakhouse, and has become a birthday tradition for dinner - this year, we got to celebrate with more family than we ever could have hoped for!! Martin 'grands and Rosendale 'grands were all with us!

After dinner we all headed back to our place for a little ice cream cake

And sang... Happy Birthday to our Tylar Jo!

Had to take the opportunity to snap a shot of all my kiddos... rare, rare occasion :)

Birthday Events...

The month of March was quite busy in getting ready for Brandon and Karol's wedding, but we made sure to take the time to celebrate our Tylar's birthday just how he wanted. Tylar's birthday started out being able to take the day off of school... I know, I know... not the best choice I could have made as a parent - BUT - we did have quite a few things going on that Wednesday and was nice for him to be at the center of it all!

Our day started off with shopping. Chad, me, Tylar and Nana and Papa all headed to the St. John's Towncenter (a huge local strip mall that has just about everything from a Target to a Marine World shop, and just about every restaurant you can imagine). Tylar had $50 burning a hole in his pocket from Nana and Papa that he was itching to spend. Our first stop was going to be Toys R Us, but he was quickly sidetracked with a little boutique type golf store. THAT WAS IT... Tylar got to take a few practice swings with a set of clubs, and that was exactly what he wanted!! Music to Chad's ear as he will tell you, GOLF is one of the main reasons he was so excited to move to Florida over 10 years ago. While the clubs at the first store were a little out of our price range, we did find a nice junior set at Dicks Sporting goods just 30 minutes later! Tylar has since gone golfing 2 times since he's gotten his clubs, not to mention the many times he's practiced like a driving range out in the open trails by our house. He is definitely hooked!

Next on the agenda was to pick up Grandma Rolayne and Uncle Mike from the airport. We headed to get her at about 1'ish. Once we were able to grab grandma from the airport we knew we had about 2 hours to kill before picking up Uncle Mike... so being lunchtime the three of us headed to Panera Bread for a yummy lunch. The lunch order for the birthday boy, ppj and chips :). We knew we needed to have a light lunch as dinner that night was going to be at the Japanese Steakhouse! Of course, that didn't stop us from heading to Cold Stone Creamery for an ice cream desert (for Tylar only!!). He chose the cotton candy flavored ice cream with gumball filling... SUGAR in a cup! We also stopped in at Michael's to find a picture frame (one of the things on my "to-do list"), and while there Tylar spotted one of his favorite series of books "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" and quickly put one of the books he hadn't yet read on the birthday list. Grandma granted his wish and bought the book for him! Between lunch, desert and a quick stop at Michael's, brought us to the time when we needed to grab Mike... so we did and headed back to the ranch to meet up with the rest of the family, including Papa Ken and Grandma Cindy who had just arrived from GA.

For the Birthday Finale we took the entire family, all grandmas, grandpas, brothers, sister, uncle and a few friends to the Wasabi, a new Japanese Steakhouse by our house. We had so many of us that they had to split us across two tables!! We had a blast, good food, good company - who could ask for more! They even sang happy birthday to Tylar and brought him a special cake and made him wear a chef hat while everyone sang. Was a lot of fun! Once dinner was over we all headed back to our house for ice cream cake and presents. Tylar got a few cool new t-shirts from g-ma Rolayne and a Georgia Bulldogs had and driver cover from g-ma and g-pa Martin.

All in all was a great celebration that lasted all day for our boy! ...and was just the tip of the iceberg for the activities yet to come that week!