The Martins: Summer Preview

It has been a while since I've posted anything. We've been busy with summer finally in full swing. Tylor, Chadron, and Hayley arrived on June 19th and will be here until the first part of August. Tylor is 15 (WOW!), so he's working at Three Bears and was so excited to get his first paycheck...even though it was for only 1 shift he was pretty proud of earning his own money. I asked him how it feels to be a working man, and he replied "now I know why parents are so tired when they come home from work and THEN have to cook dinner and do everything around the house." BINGO....if only every kid had that figured out.

Chadron and Hayley are spending time with the YMCA summer program during the week. Hayley loves that she gets to swim every day and they're both meeting a lot of new people. They have next week off, as the YMCA is closed. They are both working on weekly chore charts to earn their allowance and have done pretty well the first week. All of the kids even pitched in for the weekly deep cleaning of the house!

Caitlyn is just excited to have her "kids" to play with (yes, she calls them her kids, or HER Tylor, etc.). She quietly wakes up in the mornings and tells me "shhh...Hayley sleeping." Since the girls share a room Caitlyn is really good about making sure she doens't wake Hayley up...what 7 year old wants to wake up at 5:30 like my 2.5 year old does?!? Our next step....teaching Caitlyn "shhh....Mommy is sleeping so I need to go BACK TO SLEEP!"

We have a lot planned while the kids are here. For those of you who aren't aware, Butte tends to celebrate everything...BIG! On the 3rd there is the big fireworks display in town with live music and vendors, so we'll go to that. On the 4th is a very large parade. Last year we were expecting a parade simlar to Kenai's...WRONG! There were SO many entries and it was a very enjoyable time, especially for Caitlyn.

On the 12th we're celebrating Robert's 40th birthday with a bang. Hopefully some of his family will come over and the guys plan to go golfing. That weekend is the National Folk Festival in Butte with an estimated 150,000 additional people in the are for the event, so it will be a busy weekend and I'd love to go if anyone will venture to town with me.

We're really excited for the last weekend in July. Not only is it our 5th anniversary, but it's the weekend of the Last Chance Stampede in Helena. The kids ar every excited for the rodeo and carnival and are doing extra chores around the house to earn extra money toward their rides.

So, if I don't have a chance to blog for the next month now you know why!

Here are some pictures of the last couple of weeks: