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!

Over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house we go...

The great-grands with Grandma and Grandpa Martin

Celebrating 57 years of marriage

The cake - YUMMY!!

Our family took an extended weekend and traveled to Georgia to visit with Dad and Cindy and the 'grands this past weekend. This was our first visit up since the big move from Grand Junction, and was a much overdue visit considering the (what should be 6, ended up being closer to 7 and 1/2 hour) ride!

When we arrived we found out that it was also grandma and grandpa's 57th wedding anniversary! We felt so lucky to have been able to be there with them to celebrate all those years together. We started the afternoon with them and with Dad and Cindy playing Hand and Foot... one of their favorite card games. It was a lot of fun, even if the boys continued to win, hand after hand :)! We then took the whole family to Golden Corral for dinner - the kids especially enjoyed it because of all the food options... specifically desert! We ended the evening back and grandma and grandpa's house with cake - yes, more desert for the kids.

It was a fantastic visit, one that we will most definitely make more often - even if it is for an extended weekend every now and again! Thanks Dad and Cindy for hosting us on such short notice (I think it was about 48 hours!!), and to Brandon for staying at the house to take care of Jackson while we were away.

As seasons change...

As we move from summer to fall the Martin household is getting busy! October always brings with it finally getting into the routine of back to school, beautiful FL weather, and birthdays, birthdays, birthdays!!

October 4th... Brandon's birthday is today! Another milestone in his life, he has reached 18! It is very hard for me to believe that my first born son is this old :). He has been through many changes and ups and downs this past year, and I am so happy that at this point, on this special occasion, he is doing very well! When I asked Brandon what he wanted to do for his special day he said that he wanted to celebrate at home with our friends. So, we invited our "Florida family" over on Saturday night and did what we always do best ~ food, drinks and board games!! We had such a good time just hanging out and enjoying each other's company. On Sunday morning he wanted to go out for breakfast, so we packed up the family and headed to Mimi's Cafe for some yummy french toast and pancakes!! Karol, Brandon's sweetie, also joined us. Brandon had country fried steak and eggs... AND a chocolate chip pancake! Check out the link to pics from his party and b-day breakfast!

October 15th... Kenny's birthday! No sooner will Brandon's birthday end that we must begin to plan for Kenny's 13th. We will officially have 2 teenagers in our household ~ YIKES!! Kenny hasn't yet decided exactly what he wants to do, however he DOES know that he wants to celebrate with his friend Gerald and I think that bowling and McDonald's will also be involved.



October 24th... Stacie's birthday! Turning 34 this year, still not sure what we'll do for my day - Hopefully Chad has something up his sleeve :)



Hopefully I can start to be regular again with my blogging... with so much going on, there will certainly be stories to tell!

Summertime!

I've been so terrible about posting any new news that even my dad in GA is prompting me to get with the program :) - love ya dad!!... so I am going to try my best to do justice to all the happenings in our household!

Starting with most recent - our little bug just turned 5! I can hardly believe that our littlest one will be entering kindergarten in a week. She certianly is acting her age, probably even more like 15 than 5, but what a riot she is. We celebrated her birthday this year with two parties - one with just the family, and today with her and our bestest friends. On Monday, which was her birthday, me, Chad, Brandon, Kenny, Tylar and Brandon's girlfriend Karol took the kids to Adventure Landing. This is a local waterpark/arcade/mini-golf place that the kids LOVE! We did the waterpark, and it was perfect because it was near 100 degrees this past Monday. I think the best part was that all the kids, with the exception of Caitlynn, are finally old enough to scatter to the winds and enjoy the day "doing thier own thing". AND, they were all old enough to ride every waterslide! Today we celebrated with her and our friends. When I asked Caitlynn what she wanted to do for her birthday party with her friends, she said she wanted to go to the "nail place" with the big girls and little girls! So, that is just what we did... and it was SO MUCH FUN!! She invited Olive and Kylie (two of her best friends from church.... who also happen to have birthdays in August, and are all turning 5). We also had Monica and her niece Anna come with us, so between Mo and I and the little girl chatter, we had quite a fun girls afternoon out!! Check out the pics to view the fun. After the "nail place" we headed to the house to meet up with all the boys and open presents, eat some pizza and ofcourse the cake!

Summer Vaca - schools out...and almost back in again! School was out in the beginining of June, and since that time Brandon has been watching all the kiddos to earn some summer cash! They've spent many afternoons at the pool, it's been a pretty hot summer. Tylar did have to do a few weeks of Summer School, but is heading into 6th grade as a result! School starts again on August 24th, and this year everyone is in school! Caitlynn will start kindergarten, Tylar and Kenny are in middle school, and Brandon is planning to finish his GED and hopefully get enrolled for some courses at the local community college.

Other summer highlights -

...Kenny was ordained a Deacon a few weeks ago! We are so proud of our little man, he so loves the church and is so excited that he finally gets to "pass the sacrament". We call him our little missionary, as everyone he meets he has to tell that he is able to do this, and asks them if they'd like to come to church with him to see. It is awesome!! :)

...We were able to host Dad and Cindy over Cindy's birthday which was really fun! We had a long weekend together and did a ton of local stuff.

...We had every intention of getting out to Colo this summer, especially with little Davis joining the Martin clan, but unfortunately were not able to make it work. However, Brandon will be coming out next week, for about a week, to visit his old friends and to get his Drivers Licence. He's held his permit for a full year now, and he's super excited to get the real thing!

I suppose we have been quite busy, and have had a really great summer!