End of 2015

August 2015 - December 2015

Martin crawled on hands and knees Sept. 3rd! (9mo)

Martin started shoveling food nonstop this month.

Ugh - this happened. The day I left for the beach.
Mike sort of survived on his own...
Then I came home and struggled to take care
of four human beings.

We have made wonderful new friends through our church.
We'd love to have them over, but it seems like we
don't have much for guests to do!

He is fearless. (Unless we're counting the car's
windshield wipers or jack-in-the boxes.)

Martin's bedtime is six o'clock sharp. By seven o'clock
he passes out, even on the dance floor at a wedding. 

Sometimes we match, okay?

We are getting a lot of use out of this Goodwill find!

 

Mike and I pulled some last minute costumes off. 

 Elaine was so excited when we bought her costume, but not when the time came to put it on on Halloween night!  It took quite a bit of persuasion - she got to see trick-or-treaters at our own door (Elaine:  "I was a little wary at first...") - and then Daddy only managed to get her to one house.  I eventually talked her into going back out and I dragged her to a bunch more, because I loved Halloween.

Elaine turned three!

I am tremendously ashamed that I don't have more pictures of her birthday!  I feel like the worst mom for not making a big deal of it.  We were supposed to have friends over to celebrate the day before, but Mike was sick so we canceled.  We celebrated on Monday at home with a fun day, pizza and cake.

Christmas we spent in Telford for Mammom and Pop-pop :))

Santa and family were very good to us!!

Stockings were fun

Applying chapstick

Eating his cookies

Christmas Mass

Memories from September...

• Elaine:  "We got that from Target."  Randomly, about the kids' shampoo I had bought weeks earlier.
• Martin "ooo"'d through a straw for an entire walk.
• Mike turned 28!  We took him to a good barbecue place.  The food was great - the kids were terrible.  Every time, I ask myself:  why do we try to go out??
• On the phone with Mike:
  Susie:  "Daddy, we made you a surprise."
  Elaine:  "It's a cake!  It's a cake Daddy!"
• Elaine:  "Remember when Mark was here?  It was just me and Mark in my closet.  We were giggling..."  She giggles while telling it.
• Martin was crawling on hands and knees very well.
• Elaine:  "Who gave me this [broom]? Mam mom - it was a gift from Mam mom!" She remembered that from months ago!
• Mike gave a witness talk at a church event called "Unlock My Heart."  When I put Elaine to bed that night, she was asking/worried Daddy was going to forget his keys. She kept repeating it, and I didn't really understand. We're not sure how she knew about the event, because we didn't specifically tell her.
• Elaine shook a banana - "Haha. Look - I taught the banana how to jump."
• When I told Elaine she couldn't have something she dropped to her knees, flung her arms down, and said:  "I just can't live like this anymore!" That is a line from Frozen.

October...

• Mike and I celebrated our four year wedding anniversary! :)  Mam mom and Pop-pop babysat while we went to an old favorite restaurant in Skippack (amazing food, dessert to die for).
• Martin started clapping!  Over the next few weeks he will do it whenever he hears someone clapping or saying "yay."
• We went to the wedding of two friends from Villanova.  It was beautiful!  And so cool to be back at the church where we were married on our anniversary weekend.
• Then I stayed for a week in Philly with the kids at Mam mom and Pop-pop's house.  It was so nice to visit longer.  I did manage my goal of processing my belongings there - I think I had something like six boxes of donation and over five huge garbage bags of trash. Amazing!
• Martin really started to interact more and enjoy hide-and-seek and peek-a-boo.
• We got to visit Kelly and Sean and kids at their Williamsburg vacation spot.  It was so good to get the families together!
  Elaine said something to me about alligators.
  Susie: "Who told you about alligators?"
  Elaine: "Aunt Kelly."
  Susie:  Confused.
  A few days later I went back to visit again and Elaine asks again about taking the "alligator."  Elevator!
• Martin was crawling really fast.
• Elaine hears the timer go off while we're baking biscuits.  "I hear the 'tiscuits!"
• Martin had three top teeth come in over a 7-10 day period.  His sleeping was horrible.  He woke up every hour on some nights.
• We did a weekend trip to Pittsburgh.