Ebay Queen!!!

LOL! That's what I feel like today...an Ebay Queen! Have been listing my but off the past two days and have a total of 34 items on right now! I have a few scrapbooking items on, like a custom album and a custom layout, but most are clothing items. You can check it out if you want to at my ebay.... http://my.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?MyeBay

Besides Ebaying, Nathan went to his Bible Study tonight and Maddelyn had a friend from church over tonight. They had a blast, but Emma doesn't do well playing 3rd fiddle. I guess we need to work on that one.

Not too much to write about tonight, so I think I'll do some random things that make me smile:

1. Spending time with my hubby!

2. Eating anything with fruit and ice.

3. Sitting back and looking at one of my layout after I just completed it.

4. Knowing that I am raising a little girl who is just as big as a perfectionist as me...Maddelyn!

5. Falling asleep while listening to it raining outside.

6. Seeing the first snow of the season.

7. When the man and women get together at the end of romantic movies.

8. Finding new ribbon to buy or my scrapbooking collection!

9. Seeing our new baby for the first time in the ultrasound.

My very own B&B!

Well yesterday was quite a busy day for us Martins. We spent the entire day moving bedroom furniture and re-organizing. Sounds like fun huh? Well it was for the crazy perfectionist/organazional freaks like me!! See, when we moved from Tn to Oh I got rid of our old matresses. So, when I left my parents house to move here, we had a bed, but no matresses for the new house. My parents said we could just take their guest room bed until we bought our own set. Well with the campaign and now Nathan working on the presidential campaign...we hadn't been shopping yet. So, we finally bought our new matresses...they are sooooo comfy! They were delivered yesterday, but in order to have a place for them we had to set our bed frame up and make a new place for it since the headboard is so tall. The bed itself was given to me as an heirloom. It is a cast iron bed with the big brass knobs on each bed post. The bed was what my great-grandparents set up their household with when they were married. So I now have my beautiful antique bed back with new comfy matresses to match!! The most exciting part is that I finally have my room organized as well. See when Nathan started traveling so much on the campaign trail I said that I wanted his office for my scrap room and he could have the studio area in our bedroom for his desk. It all worked out fine with trading rooms...and I now have a WHOLE ROOM to scrap.....but he ever re-organized the mess of office supplies that came upstairs. He is gone so much that he just never got around to it. Well he finally set up his office yesterday and I love it!!! I took a couple of pictures of our new little B&B room! Isn't so cute! Very "Mandi-ish" huh?

Well we are off on the road again tonight. I am attending a 24 hour crop at the store and Nathan is meeting up with some old college friends for a guy's night out. The girls are headed to their grandparents house to play with the twins, so everyone should have a pretty fun evening.

It was so funny, last night at Dinner Maddelyn was so heart-broken when she discovered she wasn't a twin. She was talking about her daddy being a baby inside her grandma's belly....with baby #3 on the way this is a common subject - who was in whose belly. Anyways she then said "like when me and Emma were twins in Mommy's belly." We of course corrected her saying that they aren't twins and she was so upset and determined that they were! I told her that I only had one baby in my belly at a time and that Aunt Thelma and Aunt Cathy had two babies in their belly and that the girls are both twins because they are the same age. It still did not satisfy her. She wanted to be a twin just like her "friends" - cousins are! Nathan and I thought it was hilarious! Only in a family like ours.....(Maddelyn has 2 sets of twin girl cousins, both a year older than her) can a child be heart-broken when she learns that she isn't a twin! Too funny!

My First CHA!!!

Well we are back form our week in Chicago. We are all a little weary from our travels but the show went well. A2Z did quite well with new orders as well as making an appearance. We had so many new people stopping by and commenting on both the booth itself and our 8 paper lines. You can see some pictures of the booth by visiting Heather's blog at http://heatherpreckel.typepad.com/ My pictures look very similar to these so I figured since hers were already loaded up I'd just direct you there. I did upload pictures of some of the layouts and projects I made up to display in the booth. The altered items are in the new Carefree line from A2Z. The layout of Emma is in the new line Giggle and the layout "cousins" is in the new line Wish. I just love the photo of Lil' Emma Grace on that layout. It captured her true self...silly and full of life! What's so funny is that the color version of the photo shows her with a snotty nose and a big bruise on her forehead, but all of that blended in when I turned it to b&w. Isn't it funny what you can hide in a photo!! LOL!

My first experience at CHA was a blast! There were a total of 6 of us in the A2Z booth including Heather Preckel, Heidi Lacy, their mom Ronda, Judith who is on the design team with me, and Amber who designed two of the paper lines. We had so much fun together while of course selling paper! I was a bit overwhelmed with the whole experience though! LOL! There were 3 different covention floors all filled with craft booths, most of which were scrapbooking. I think I got burnt out on seeing all of the new products! Mandi admitting that she was ever burnt out on anything scrapbooking related??? HaHa! I saw tons of new products that I can't wait to get my fingers on once they arrive in stores! I would have to say that my favorites of the week were (A2Z's new papers of course!!!), the American Craft Rub-ons, Bazzil Flowers, 3 Bugs in a Rug Papers, Lil Davis Flocked Ribbons, EVERYTHING in the Maya Roads Ribbon Booth, Heidi Swaps new Bling circles, Crate Paper's new line...I think I may have not been overwhelmed as I thought! I remembered more scrapbooking products than I thought I would! Good for me...bad for Nathan and my scrap'n budget! LOL!

While in Chicago we did get to do a little sight-seeing as well. We went down town on Monday and did the Michigan Ave. shopping thing. It took a lot of will power to walk out of American Girl empty handed! I think we'll wait until Maddelyn is a little bit older? While in Chicago I did get to meet Sarah Cox...Nathan's boss' wife. We stopped by their condo to meet her and their daughter Julieann....adorable little girl! The amount of hair she had put little Emma Grace to shame! :D Sarah was so sweet welcoming us into her home. She and John have a beautiful view out of thier living room windows. I have always said that the city was not for me, but I understand how one could fall in love with it with a view like that. Sarah said that she is interested in beginning to scrapbook, so maybe I can convince her to become a fellow Pea? Wouldn't be great to have a First Lady on the 2Peas board??? LOL!

Life here is trying to get back on track now that the girls and I are home. Maddelyn and Emma are very excited to see Daddy tomorrow afternoon when he returns from his trip to Iowa. I have spent the day trying ot unpack and relax a bit before another busy weekend. We have the final sessions of our bible study/marriage retreat this Saturday and the store is having a 24 hour crop night on Friday to celebrate Heidi's birthday. So basically by the time Sunday rolls around...I should be a happy camper! LOL! I don't do well without sleep. I'm one of those totally non-morning people who doesn't talk until AFTER my shower!!! Ask Nathan, when I'm tired it's best to just leave me be. I know it's not the most flattering fact, but it's me!

I'll try to get some pics of my ultrasound tomorrow and post those. I keep forgetting. Until the next time.....

Off to CHA!!!

Just a super quick update on the family.....we arrived home safely last night from our week in South Carolina. We all had a blast but the highlights of the trip were swimming for Maddelyn, visiting Boone Hall for me ( where the movie North and South was filmed) and meeting up with my college suite mate Erin Bailey. Sure there was a lot more that went on between all of that but for lack of time that is a sum up of our travels. I posted a few pics of visiting with Erin. It was so nice to see her agian and I can't believe that she is entering into her 3rd year of Medical School!

I leave in the morning for CHA!!! The girls are going ot PA to visit the grandparents and Nathan is off to campaign again. I will be spending a week in Chicago with A2Z Essentials setting up, working the show, and tearing down again. I am so excited as this is my first CHA. I also have 5 altered projects and 2 layouts going up as displays in the booth....so very awesome!!!! I will post pics of them when we get back as well...for lack of time!

We had our first ultrasound today of Martin baby #3! He/She is doing great and posed just perfect for us! I will take some pics of the photos with my NEW DIGITAL CAMERA and post them when I get back. Such a cutie.

Like how I threw in I got a new camera! Yep, hubby spoiled me with my anniv. gift this year! I got a Canon SD450! Woo-hoo!!! So, you'll be seeing many more pics than ever! Remember to thank my hubby for that!

South Carolina

Well we made it to South Carolina safe and sound...well sorta. The safe part for sure, but sound???? We left Mansfield at about 2:00 pm Sunday afternoon. The trip totalled about 11 hours so we arrived in McCormick, South Carlina between 12:30 and 1:00 am. All was going fine. We were quite tired but ready to settle into the lake resort that we had reservations at. One problem...there was NOBODY there? Yes, there were cars around from guests, but there was no one around at the main desk for us to check in at? What were we going to do? We were all exausted and needed to find somewhere to sleep for the few remaining hours that night because Nathan had to be back on the road for his first meeting the next morning at 9:00. So, we decided to go down the road and see what we could find as far as a hotel. McCormick is a VERY tiny town...Willlard has more to it if you can believe that!!! So we find the only hotel in town and decide that since we are in the middle of no where and it's 1am we will just get a room there for a few hours and in the morning go back to the resort. Nathan goes to check in and I think...hmmm...that's wierd he paid for the room at a sliding glass window to the office, maybe it's just a southern thing? Then, I know we are in trouble when he comes walking back with the room key and the TV remote!!! Yep, they keep them in the office! Well we soon found out it was because the remote was pretty much the only thing in the room that was possible for you so steal. There was one queen bed, a sort of night stand, a TV bolted to a TV stand on the wall, One towel and wash cloth, a sink, and a tiny bathroom. That was it, no kidding, it was AWEFUL! As I told my mom, the best way to sum it up on the kinda place we stayed at is that in the bathroom there was a window in the wall...mind you the walls were all concrete blocks painted white. The window's curtain consisted of a pillow case that had a rope strung through the top and was nailed to the wall. I am not joking you!!! I am almost ashamed to tell everyone of our no-tell-motel! The worst part of it was that after we left that morning at 7am...the earliest we could get into the resort....Nathan told me that they charged us by the hour to stay the previous night! UHHHH! That made it even worse! We stayed at a by the hour motel! Nathan said we laugh someday about it???

So, then the saga continues at the resort. The front desk lady said that we were not to come in until Monday...great...so they didn't even have our townhouse ready for us yet. She said we could stay in one of the resort hotel rooms until our town house was ready. The maids got there at 8:30 and would start with our house. So...we all marched upstairs to the temporary room and slept a couple of hours since needless to say we didn't sleep to much at the no-tell-motel. So finally we got into our actual townhouse at 10:30 Monday morning. Uhhhh! What an experience. As soon as our bags were in the door Nathan took off for his first meeting. the girls and I started unpacking and then spent the day around the resort checking out things and swimming that afternoon.

Yesterday Nathan had meetings in the afternoon and was back at the resort that evening so we once again took the girls swimming. Maddelyn was as usually apprehensive about swimming and Emma was fearless. She almost worries me because she just jumps in whether you're there or not. We would be climbing down the steps to get into the pool and Emma would just keep on walking down even though she couldn't touch! She isn't afraid of anything compared to Maddelyn who the whole time she is in the water has a death grip on you. After we got out of our suits, we went to the resorts resteraunt and ate outside. It was so nice to sit and look out on the lake during dinner. We finished the day with a drive around the lake community and milkshakes at Hatdee's. Maddelyn said that she had a fun day and that the best part was swimming...even though she wouldn't let you let go of her!

I posted a few pictures of the resort from their website. I hope they turn out. If not you can check out thier site at http://www.savannahlakesresort.us/fishing.html Of course I forgot my digital camera so these will have to do for now. When we got home I will try ot scan in the layouts I have been woking on for CHA. We have some very cute papers out this show from 4 GREAT designers! It's amazing what talent these ladies have! I know that Heather Preckel...the design team coordinator has been posting some sneak peaks on her blog if you want to check them out. http://heatherpreckel.typepad.com/blog/

Happy Late 4th!!!

Hey all, sorry for the late 4th post. We spent the weekend with my Mom's sister...Aunt Donna and Uncle Clyde...for the weekend. We had a great time with my parents and nefew Austin as well. Emma ate up time being spoiled by her grandpa of course and Maddelyn had so much fun playing with Donna's dollhouse and Wizzard of Oz Dolls. Donna told Maddelyn this weekend that when we buy a house the dollhouse would be hers. I don't think she quite understood, but I know that she will love it. My aunt and I spent several summers decorating it with wallpaper, carpet, hardwood floors and furniture and it has always been a favorite of mine. Even now I still sneak upstairs to rearrange the dolls. I wouldn't quite say that I still play with the 3 story white pillar mansion, but I do love to look at all the pieces each time we visit. I just hope that my two girls have as many great memories with it through the years as I did.

I finally got back the pics from my cousin's Kaytie's graduation. I kinda stole these off her blog...thanks Kate....because I have not taken the time to scan mine in the computer yet. The pics are of her and her parents, her with my grandparents, and with Maddelyn and my twin cousins Morgan and Cathern. Doesn't she just look so cute in her cap and gown! Congrats again Katers and have fun at Lee U!! p.s. If you bring home a guy with a ring...make sure he isn't a southerner! LOL! Just Kidding!

Nathan arrived hom form NH last night and we are spending the next few days trying to play catch up around here and pack for SC. We will leave Sunday after church and come back the next Sunday. As I had mentioned before the campaign is getting Nathan a condo/townhouse there instead of several different hotel rooms across the state. This way the girls and I can go with him. It is getting to the point that if we don't go with Daddy, we don't see Daddy. The townhouse sounds really nice though. It is in a resort community, so we will have the normal swimming pool, lake, and such there to entertain us while Nathan travels around the state campaigning for Mr. John Cox.

Once we get back on the 16th, I have my first OB appt. on the 17 (I'm 10 weeks now!!!) and then on the 18th the kids go to PA and I go to Chicago for CHA! While we are gone, Nathan will be in Iowa and NH. So basically we are pretty packed for the month of July!!!

Well I will check in agian soon. Sorry for the delay between posts, I guess that is what summer does to me blogg'n. Off to a BBQ with some church friends!!!