Wedding Season

May has come and gone and officially kicked off wedding season in our world. We are so glad to be closer to home and able to attend some, yet we can't make them all. A couple of weekends ago, Brad and I were able to take a long Memorial Day weekend to help celebrate with some friends.

Before leaving we celebrated our FOURTH year of marriage! Has it really been that long? It feels like just yesterday we were picking out colors, flowers and making our guest list. We decided to treat ourselves to a nice steak dinner at Fleming's instead of buying gifts. It was my first time there and we really enjoyed it! A night to ourselves to enjoy each other's company, reflect on the past and dream about our future together... especially now with a baby boy on the way!

Our wedding weekend took us to North Carolina, but it didn't start there! We made our first pitstop in Blacksburg, VA to have lunch with Brad's cousin. It was quite a beautiful day and Oscar loved all the attention he got as we sat on the outdoor patio for lunch. Brad and I had some extra time and used it to walk around the campus of Virginia Tech. If I'd have lived in VA growing up, I would surely have attended college here... the campus is just absolutely gorgeous and I've always loved it. The Hokie stone really makes it.

After Blacksburg, we drove a little further to Bedford to have dinner at Bella Italia with who I would say have come to be our closest long distance friends. We go about three years back I suppose, when the boys were in their 101 training together here in Dayton. Brad and I were stationed in AZ at the time and the Cashen's were and still are in NM at Holloman. We visit each other any and every chance we get and it feels like we haven't ever skipped a beat. We have visited with each other in Ohio, New Mexico, Arizona, North Carolina, Texas, and now Virginia. When we first met we were both newlyweds... just enjoying the beginnings of Air Force life. Now Chris & Christi have two amazing children, Nate and Elaina, and Brad and I have our little boy on joining us in November! I don't think I could say enough about how much we cherish their friendship.

After Bedford, we made our late night trek back west to North Carolina to stay in Boone for the night with B's parents. We truly have impeccable timing, because some other best friends of ours who live in Boone had their baby BOY (!!!) the night of our anniversary and he wasn't quite a day old yet. We of course stopped by the hospital to see Kayla and Nathan and meet baby Cole. I'm sure he and ours will make the best of friends back in Boone. I absolutely can't wait!!

Have I mentioned all of this traveling was done in one day?

Saturday we dropped little man Oscar off with my parents and made our way to Hendersonville to help celebrate with Cory and Amanda! They put all us wedding party people up in such a nice house and bungalow with a peaceful little creek running through it. We LOVED it. (Thank you Shufords!!) There we spent our next two days catching up with my high school/B's college friends. I'm so happy we were asked to be part of this wonderful day for C & A and it couldn't have been more perfect for them. Amazing weather, great venue, and of course a beautiful couple. We didn't want to leave!
(On a side note, it was pretty exciting to know we stayed just a couple of miles from Camp Kanuga that weekend. Mtn. View people, ya feel me?!)

 

Now we're back home, back into the swing of things and fond of the memories from such a wonderful weekend with friends and family. Oh, and we're 18 weeks along now! We get to see little man next week at our checkup. :) yay!

Bows or Bowties?!

So tomorrow marks 13 weeks our baby has been growing!

Brad and I went to have another ultrasound this past Friday on base. It was so much fun to see our little bit wiggling around so much! I can't get over the fact that I have a tiny human growing inside of me.. forming bones and tissue and organs. I loved seeing the tiny spine and fingers and feet and legs and face and hearing the heartbeat. I loved it all. It was amazing. God is amazing.

The lady who helped us has been doing ultrasounds for 20+ years, and told us toward the end of our ultrasound that she could tell us with 99% certainty what the gender of our little one was. She added in that she has only been wrong 4 out of 1500 times. Pretty good odds right? Needless to say, we asked her to write it down and seal it in an envelope for us.

After leaving the hospital, we decided we did not want to wait long at all and wanted to get all of our friends together to reveal the gender of our babe. I had to go back to work, so Brad set out to Babies R Us to pick out some outfits. He picked out one for a girl and one for a boy, took them to the register with the envelope and credit card and asked her to ring up whichever one it was and gift wrap it. He left everything with her and came back 10 minutes later to a mystery gift!

Brad did a great job setting up decorations for our party, even though he told me we weren't going to decorate. I picked out a cake to have, and we had everyone over today for burgers, brats and baby reveal!

 We took votes, everyone wore pink or blue and one of our good friends got some games together for everyone to play! Thank you to everyone who came out to celebrate with us! Here's the video of our reveal below!!

We're having a baby BOY! Holy cow! I thought for sure I was right that we were having a girl, and even Brad had a feeling it might be a girl... BUT we are absolutely thrilled and can't wait to meet our sweet little man!!

(Special thanks to Chris who was so confident in his boy prediction that he got THE largest balloon to proclaim it!)

Bowties it is! :)

And if for some reason we get a different result at a later ultrasound, we'll have another party! ;)

Sunday News

Ohio has brought us many new friends and adventures. We're so grateful for our move here and to take on a different pace of life. Brad's back into the swing of school and I am semi taking some time off from teaching.

It is with our greatest joy on this beautiful Easter Sunday to share what we have now been celebrating for weeks in our home.

We're PREGNANT!! [WAHOOO!!!]

 

God has been answering our prayers all along, and we're so glad to see evidence of that now. It's been hard to see as He was preparing our hearts and our marriage to bring a little one into the world.. actually quite frustrating at times. We always knew He was being faithful and hearing us as we prayed, plead, nagged, etc. for a child... we just didn't know when it might actually become a reality.

We're so thankful and excited to start this new chapter of our lives and bring a baby into our home this November. Oscar is very excited to be a big brother too! (Or so it seems as he tilts his head when we tell him!) Thank you to all of our friends and family who have been praying for when this time would come for us since we got married in 2011.

The Lord's timing is perfect and good.

The Heart of it All

Since Brad has been at training at Wright-Patt since mid-April, we were able to fly me up to stay for a couple weeks to break up our time apart and be able to spend our anniversary together (thank goodness!).

Brad's rental car :) 

back together!

Wright-Patt

We were able to go to visit Young's Dairy for ice cream and putt-putt, watch all of Harper's with everyone, go to Cheesecake Factory for our anniversary dinner (!!), and go to a couple Braves vs. Reds games at The Great American Ball Park! If you guys/ladies from 101 are reading this, I had such a fun time getting to know you and spending time with you while I was up there! I know Brad values the friendships he's made, and I do as well!

Young's Dairy

WORST hole on the putt-putt course! haha

Fountain on the course 

Wine and flowers Brad brought me on our Anniversary!

Reds vs. Braves at The Great American Ballpark!

I was fortunate to have another AF Wife to spend time with during the days when the boys were in class. It was good company and gave us something to do after sleeping in most mornings. :) Thank goodness Christi that you and Chris aren't too far away from us and hopefully we'll both be able to make trips to visit!

For Memorial Day weekend, Brad and I drove up to Findlay so we could spend some time with my mom, grandparents and see my other family in the area as well. Brad was able to help my grandparents out with some work outside and I was able to get my grandma out of the house some for errands. It was refreshing to be around some more familiar faces!

George House Coffee... a local coffee shop in Findlay that is fantastic!

My Uncle Bob's restaurant, Oler's Bar & Grill

Fuzzy from the camera phone, but this is my cousin Andy, Me, Brad, Aunt Jane, Uncle Tom and my cousin Layne at Oler's Bar and Grill (Uncle Bob's restaurant.. who is taking the picture!)

The past two weeks were so great and I can't wait to have hubby back home! :)

An Erie Week

The Martin side of my family has a reunion every year in Marblehead, OH up at Lake Erie. This year Brad and I went up with my dad* in his car. We were really excited to be able to attend before we leave for Arizona. Brad also hadn't met some of my family who weren't able to make it to our wedding, including my Pepaw, so that was really nice.

*Riding with dad means leaving at 12am to drive through the night.

So we got to Marblehead mid-morning Saturday and went out to a beach spot with my Uncle Tom to ride around on his jet skis and play bocce ball on the sand bar. The water was rough and Brad kept teasing me going fast over all the waves.. ugh! haha When we were taking the jet skis in, he let me off and went out to have a little more fun. That involved zooming through a pile of seagulls sitting on the water. (Don't worry, no birds were hurt during his escapade!)

Brad and I getting back on from the sand bar. We stopped to pose for a picture in front of Cedar Point!

On Sunday we spent time at Pepaw's house playing Euchre, Phase 10, Palace and other card games. We went back out to the beach spot with a little bit bigger crowd. We had a good time throwing the frisbee around out in the water and got a light lunch at the restaurant right off the beach. Dad took out a jet ski and lost his hat in the process. While leaning over to pick his hat up from the water, the jet ski went with him and the top half was completely submerged. Long story short, the engine flooded and we didn't jet ski the rest of our time there. :) 

Monday was our big fishing day! (And here come more pictures!) We always charter a boat from Tibbels Marina in Marblehead. This year we actually had the whole boat to ourselves! Usually there are a couple of other people put into our mix and forced to deal with our antics out on the water, but this year we didn't have to worry about that! Our boat was the Harbor Queen with Captain Cooper, or "Coop".

Harbor Queen

Layne, Andy & Uncle Tom

Brad, Dad and I

Cloudy sunrise over the Marina

Natalie, John & Uncle Joe

Sandwich & baiting his hooks!

John & Natalie baiting up!

Dad & Brad baiting their hooks.

Every year my dad starts off the fishing, or breaks the lull, by eating a live minnow (which is the bait we use for the perch). Not sure why it got started, but he always does! A few years ago he got Andy to partake and it made him sick later that night. Brad was christened into the family when he decided to was pressured into eating one as well. My husband always likes to go big or go home.. so he chose one of the larger ones! It was Layne's first year eating a minnow as well, and Andy decided to give it another go, so I got some action shots of the guys eating their minnows. (Click to enlarge)

Eating the minnows. Take note of how proud Dad looks in the background of the middle picture.

We saw a water spout in the distance when we were out fishing! There were many storm clouds, but fortunately they just provided us with some shade for a while.

Coming back in to the Marina

 We had an amazing day fishing! Coop made us come back in once we reached our limit (as a boat) of 390 Perch. Below is a picture of them in a cooler on the boat. I usually don't contribute much to the count, but this year was able to catch 28 of my limit of 30! Yay! Brad caught 21. We did catch many other fish as well, but they were either white bass or sheepshead (quite the fighters). Dad caught a little over 20 perch too. Needless to say I was very proud to beat the men! Oh, and I baited my own hooks and took a lot of my fish off the hooks for the first time!

390 Perch on ice! :)

After we fish all day, we have a fish fry at night with uncle joe's homemade tartar sauce and corn on the cob cooked in a cooler. Yum!

Tuesday we got to sleep in and went over to Put-In-Bay (South Bass Island) right after lunch. It's a small ..I want to say 2mi by 4mi island located in Lake Erie. It was also played a significant role in the War of 1812.

Anyway, we rode out there with John & Natalie and rented a golf cart to tour the island in. The main strip has lots of little shops, restaurants, bars etc. We made a stop at the Chocolate Factory, Winery (briefly) and then decided to go for a game of putt-putt. We chose to put a 5-stroke limit on each hole, and I think I reached that limit on about half the holes. I never claim to be good with the putt-putt.

I Love Lucy Photo Opp 

Willy Wonka Photo Opp! 

During our game at the Putt-Putt course! It must be a Martin thing to look directly into the camera. The outsiders like to ponder and stare off into the distance.

These kids were playing a lightening round of putt-putt, taking all their shots at the same time! We let them go on ahead of us.

He spotted a cannon on the course.

Inside the cave you had to putt through on one hole!

My ball stopped mid-way under the bridge so I had to take my next shot like this.

Masquerade! Paper faces on parade!

Hanging out at Roundhouse for some live music and Rook-playing!

On our way to catch the Jet Express back home, Brad held the Perry Monument! Without flash, Brad did not show up in this picture. With flash, Perry's Monument did not show up in this picture. I took John's advice, cropped one and fit them together!!

Wednesday-Friday were spent away from the lake in my hometown of Findlay, OH. Brad and I spent the night with my grandparents. Brad got to have some good military talk with my Grandpa, who is a WWII Vet. He was part of the Army and fought in Okinawa, Japan. Some other places we went to that you should check out if ever in the area: Dietsch Brothers (ORDER SOME CHOCOLATE ONLINE!), Oler's Bar and Grill & Darkhorse (One of my Uncle's Restaurants), Wilson's Hamburgers (Here's how to order!), George House, and Riverside Park.

That's about all for our trip. We really enjoyed spending time with family, and from what I gathered, Brad was well received!

-D