Family Pictures!

Last year my friend Starr decided to have her photography business take a backseat, but thankfully she decided to open up a couple of shoots since she was trying to save money for a trip. Our pictures were taken on Saturday, September 29th at Lake Wilderness in Maple Valley. It's hard to know what the weather is going to do since sometimes the end of September can be quite hot. Thankfully the weather was overcast and a tiny bit cooler so we all weren't melting in our long sleeves shirts and sweaters. 

This was the very first picture that Starr took before I remembered that Owen's glasses have transition lens! 

Look at these beautiful kiddos! 

Owen 11 - Jackson 10 - Ella 8 - Zeke 6 

This is one of my favorite pictures of me and Michael. It's not Michael's normal smile, but there's something about it that I like. Plus I liked my hair and my hand in my pocket! 

Posing on a log! 

Since we were at a park that we hadn't been to before, the kids were all excited to explore and they would get a little annoyed with me when they'd need to come over and sit down for a photo. Thankfully they are all super photogenic and Starr is amazing with them so it usually ended up being quick and painless.

Siblings!!! 

Mommy with my Ella girl! 

Daddy with his Martin boys! 

A week prior to our pictures I just happened to stop at Value Village on the east hill in Kent and I found this awesome red vest. I had been wanting one for a while. My striped shirt I found at Old Navy and I was bummed that they didn't have a flannel shirt that looked good to wear over it. The vest and shirt ended up working perfectly together for these pictures. 

I love this picture! I have it printed in a 16 X 20 canvas and it's over our fireplace! 

7th year of our tradition of getting a Blessings picture! 

And we always like to do some sort of silly picture. This one was a bit of a challenge. The boys were supposed to pretend to fight while Ella was supposed to look super annoyed. Of course in the beginning the boys didn't quite catch the word "pretend" when we told them. 

As usual I absolutely LOVE these pictures. Starr truly has a gift and I love that she hasn't been taking our family pictures every year since Zeke was born. I hope we can continue the tradition for years to come! :) 

Curling My Hair!

Yesterday I posted about my goals and one of them is to curl my hair more. 2 years ago when I decided to start growing my hair out. I knew that I did not want to wear my hair up in a ponytail every day. I wanted to actually do something with my hair! Last year I was working really hard to get my hair healthy and I feel like it really is healthy now. 

Side note...here is what my hair looked like 2 years ago. The back was so short it was actually shaved a bit. 

After Christmas I saw a friends post on FB about a curling iron she got her daughter. It's called the Chi Air Spin & Curl....here's the link. Yes...it is $100, but I had been researching curling irons for awhile and I really loved this design. First off I don't have to wrap my hair around and there is no chance of getting burned!!! I was sold! I went ahead and bought it and said, "Merry Christmas to me"! 

The first thing you have to do is section your hair. The first section is right at the top of my ears. 

Then you take about a 1 inch section of hair and put it through the curling iron as instructed and hit the button. The curling iron spins around curling your hair. Don't worry it can not get stuck and you can take your hair out at anytime. Plus if you try to put in too much hair it will beep at you. 

The curling iron has different settings for temperature and timer. I set the temperature at 370 degrees and had the timer at 15 seconds. Once the 15 seconds are up it beeps and you just pull the iron straight down and there's your curl. 

Here's after doing both sides of the first section. 

Down comes the next section....I section this right at the middle of my forehead. 

Second section done! 

Then lastly I do the top of my head. 

Here it is all curled. The first time I curled my hair Owen was so amazed! He kept going on and on how pretty my hair was. His future wife is going to be one lucky lady!!! :)

Here's after I ran my fingers through the curls to break them up a bit. 

Checking out the back! 

Around noon I was at Kim's house and I took this picture so you can see how much the curls fell out. 

And this was at the end of the day...it's funny because I feel like it's almost curlier at the end of the day that it was at noon. When was done curling my hair I used a little bit of hairspray so I was hoping it would have held better than it did. 

A few days after that I tried something different. I held each curl up to let it cool down instead of just letting it drop. 

This is after combing my fingers through it. I LOVE it! 

I also really like the outfit that I wore that day. It's this super soft fuzzy dress that I got on clearance at Fred Meyer's about a year ago. Super flattering!

Here's my hair around noon after getting home from church. I was seriously disappointed! All that extra time of holding the curls up didn't do anything different at all. I did use hairspray this time as well. 

I was trying to find out if there is a product I can use that will help my curls hold, but won't weight them down like I think hairspray is doing, but I haven't figured anything out yet. I asked one of my IG friends and she said she doesn't put any products in and it holds just fine. She also suggested turning the temperature up a bit and having it hold for longer. The timer on the curling iron does have 3 settings 15 - 17 -19 seconds. 

A few days after this I had surgery so I've been recovering and haven't taken the time to curl my hair since. I plan to experiment with it more though since I do love how easy the curling iron is to use. I'm also going in to have my hair trimmed in a couple days so I'm going to ask my hair stylist for any tips she can give me as well. 

Goals for 2019

Goals for 2019

Savings Goals: 

Replenish 3-6 months savings 

Save $100 a month towards the Kids' Cars

Save $200 a month towards camping/vacations

Sell the Ford Fusion 

Save up enough money to buy a truck

Home Goals: 

Buy garage doors & install

Rebuild & stain deck

Rebuild fence in some areas & paint

Stain kids playset

Paint Zeke's room

Patch and touch up Ella's room & paint clubhouse

Family Goals: 

Play more games together

Go camping at least 4x

Take older boys fishing

Invite neighbors over for a BBQ

Invite people from church over

Go to Wild Waves @ least 6x (I bought season passes) 

Lyndsay's Goals: 

Organize & purge house

Read the Bible 15 minutes a day

Curl hair more often

Take kids on individual dates

Go on dates with Michael more often

Plant garden & tend to it

Create a weekly, monthly and quarterly cleaning schedule

Sew new curtains for the trailer

Michael's Goals: 

Golf at least once a month during the summer
Have 2 BBQ's with co-workers

Take Jack to a baseball game

Kids Goals: 

Owen:

Get more sleep

Spend more time with Jordan

Jack: 

Get more exercise (Track & Club Victory) 

Stop annoying Owen

Spend more time with Hansi

Ella: 

Keep my room cleaner

Bruch hair more often

See Papa more often

Read more

Go to Kendra & Lily's more often

Zeke: 

Use a big boy voice all the time

Listen the first time

New Years Eve 2018!

This was our 2nd year of being at Ga-Ga & Pa's for NYE. This year I wasn't recovering from Lasik so that was nice! 

We decided to go super easy in regards to dinner...we had a taco bar and it was so good!!! We chatted, we ate yummy food, we played games and just overall enjoyed being together. 

We also did a fun game with the kids. Last year we all were a part of the game and we had to make our best sour face. This year it was just the kids and they had to do their best impersonation of a dog's bark. Oh my it was so hilarious and some of those kids got really into it!!! 

The winners were...Anna 3rd, Caleb 2nd and Jackson 1st. But of course Pa had prizes and goodies for each of the kids. 

Once the game was finished and prizes were handed out it was a mad rush to get the sparkling cider ready for the clock to strike 9pm. 

It was a minute or so after 9pm, but we still counted down! 

The kids love getting to toast with the fizzy drink! 

It was fun ringing in the new year with the people we love!

Come on 2019...Bring It!!! 

Review Goals - 2018

Here is my annual review of our goals for the previous year and how we did. 

Goals for 2018

Saving Goals: 

Continue to save $100 each month towards our 20 Anniversary trip to Hawaii

We did continue to save and I was able to book the trip last August. We actually bumped our savings up to $200 per month just so we will have a nice cushion and won't have to be to mindful of a budget when it comes to eating out. It is a vacation after all! 

Continue to save $100 each month for the kids' future cars

We are still continuing to save for the kids' future cars and I don't imagine this one changing until they all have cars! 

Get the 3-6 months bumped up to where it needs to be

This is one our Goals again for 2019...see below!  

Start saving towards a tent trailer

We didn't just save for a trailer we made an executive decision to go ahead and buy a trailer. We only have our kids at home with us for a few short years and we want to get out and enjoy life with them and make lots of memories. Last year we used the trailer 4 different times....The First Camping Trip, staying at my parents house over 4th of July, Jenning's Family Reunion and then our trip to Oregon camping trip here and here. 

House Goals: 

We had a seriously interesting year in regards to our house and it's still not finished. Long story short....wind claim, new siding, new sheeting, new windows and bringing the house up to code...all covered by the insurance PTL!!! The claim has been open for almost a year now. There is still work to be done so stay tuned. To read about the craziness click here and here. Needless to say with all of that going on NONE of the home goals got tackled! 

Replace rails and bad boards on the deck and stain it.

Build patio furniture & buy cushions

Take out big bush by the play structures

Build planter to go where the bush was

Plant fruit tree

Family Goals: 

Family - Make reading & Bible time a priority & play more games together

I feel like we did better in regards to reading the Bible (or a kids devotional of some kind). It gets tricky in the summer with all the busyness. I did start doing a devotional book with the kids in the van prior to them getting on the bus, but then I changed it to where we do it at home and also have prayer time. It's really a great way to start the day. 

As for playing more games I feel like we go through ups and downs of this as well. I think right around birthdays and Christmas we play lots since we've just received new games and then when we are camping we play lots of games as well. We did have a Family Game Night group at our house last winter so that was fun to get introduced to a bunch of new games. 

Kids Goals: 

 Get in the habit of bathing on a regular schedule (just being real people) - have kids use their shower instead of ours

The kids have been consistently using their own shower now. Ella and Zeke still need help figuring out how to get it to the correct temperature since it's two knobs. I can't tell you how happy I will be when they figure this out. There are certain things that my kids learn to do on their own that I'm not sad about and this will be one of them. As for actually having a schedule we started it and then it tapered off. Every week is so different and it's just tough to be stuck to a schedule. I will say I have been better at reminding them to go jump in the shower more, but there are still times where my kids go over a week without showering. Again keeping it real! 

Lyndsay's Goals

 Try not to be so hard on myself 

This one cracks me up. I'm so hard on myself! I try not to be, but I put unrealistic expectations on myself. I will say that I am not so hard on myself when it comes to the kids birthday parties anymore. I used to spend months and months getting ready and now that's just not the case and I'm not going to freak out about it. 

Stay organized 

I really slacked on the whole organization thing, but over Christmas break I watched Tidying up with Marie (as well as a million other people) and now I'm in a super organization mode. Michael and I are in the process of completely redoing the garage. I've went through everything in the house with the exception of the Kitchen and all the closets. The closets are what I'm tackling in February and I know it's going to feel so good once those are done! 

Plan ahead

I feel like I'm a super planner! I mean I've been planning our trip to Hawaii for 5 years. I have camping trips planned months ahead. I plan our monthly menu and try to only do big shopping once a month. So yeah I feel like I nailed this one. 

 Get better at my job

When I wrote this it was for my job at church, but I do feel like I accomplished this one because I did get better at my true job which is being a homemaker. Working at the church was such a growing experience and I love that I got to do that, but I'm loving staying home and I'm so blessed that I can do so! To read about my decision to quit my job and stay home click here. 

Michael's Goals

Okay let me just say my man was a total overachiever!!! He had all these goals completed by February 16th!!! 

 Get CDL - check

 Pass test for WD Manager 3 - Check

Work towards eventually becoming the District Manager

He didn't just work towards becoming the District Manager he IS the District Manager. Click HERE to read that amazing God written story! 

Family Adventures: 

Snow activities @ Rainier

Yes we were able to go up and spend a day at Black Diamond Camps enjoying the snow. So fun! 

Family Reunion in Oregon

Yes, we went to the family reunion and had a blast. Link is above in the section about the tent trailer. 

Great Wolf Lodge

Yes, we got to go to Great Wolf Lodge and had the best time ever!!! We are hoping that we might get to go again this year as well. 

North Cascade Hwy

Michael has been wanting to do this one for years and so do I, but we really need a truck in order to take the trailer over the mountains. So I bet you can imagine what's going to be one of the goals for 2019!