Owen in Mr. Grumpy's Christmas Play

This is Owen's nursery school Christmas production. They must have worked on this for months!

Logan Playing

Logan enjoying a little play time in his home gym. He loves the dangly toys, flashing lights, and music. Owen also likes to watch Logan playing and help him restart the music when it turns off. You can also see Owen's beautiful hand artwork that he did with momma.

Logan

Our dog Max instantly welcomed Logan into our family. Max likes to look out for Logan when he is sleeping to make sure everything is okay. Logan doesn't seem to mind the odd little doggie kiss either.

Logan just chillin with momma as he loves to do. Mindy will be able to get loads of snuggles in over the next year and a half as she will officially be a stay at home mother!

Such a cutie!

Bonding Brothers

Owen just loves spending time with his little brother. He is fascinated by how small everything is, especially his fingers and nose. Owen can't wait until Logan can start crawling and interacting more but he still loves him just the way he is now.

Mommy and the Boys

It's amazing how fast a week can go. Logan has been an awesome baby so far! He really just sleeps and wakes up occasionally to feed. I think the longest he has been awake and alert is about 1 hour. Owen continues to be a very helpful big brother and likes having a new guy around the house (of course he hasn't had to share his toys yet).

Proud Daddy J is loving his paternity leave and only working half days. I go to work around 11 or 12 and return around 3pm! It will be a sad day next week when I must return full time. Mommy is doing fantastic and recovering well. Super Mom has been out walking each morning and is absolutely loving staying home with Logan all day and Owen in the afternoons. It is nice knowing that I don't have to worry about a thing with Mindy staying home with the boys. We also have the added benefit of living across the street from school so we are never far apart and can easily see each other throughout the day.

Little Helper Owen

Owen loves to help out with his little brother Logan whenever he can. Assisting with the diaper change is no problem as long as he doesn't have to touch the dirty ones!

Logan Has Arrived!

Logan Alexander joined the Martin Family on Wednesday, November 12th, 2008. He weighed in at a very average 7.5lbs (3.4kgs) and about 20" (51cm) long. All fingers and toes have been accounted for and so far he has been a very good baby.

Big brother Owen (kooya in the Philippines) has been so excited and eager to help when he can with his baby brother. I suppose we are still in the honeymoon period but Owen has not shown any jealousy or negativety to Logan....yet. Is that a happy grin or an evil little devil smirk??

The happy family. Minutes after the arrival, our first group shot (just missing Owen who was still at home). I'm sporting the latest in hip fashion design as you can see.

Halloween 2008!

Owen/Thomas the Train absolutely loved trick or treating this year!! He was sooooo excited to run around and get all of candy from the neighbors. He went around with Jason and I as well as his best friend Olivia, who is in his class at school. He was a pro at saying trick or treat and then too cute when people gave him candy for his basket. He would give them huge hugs and say thank you. Not to worry though...they were not strangers. Everyone who participates in the Halloween event are teachers from our school. The community that we live in is very multicultural and many of the families do not have this holiday in their home country. However, the neighbors do love to come out and see the kids in their costumes. I think that Jason and I had just as much fun as Owen because we loved seeing the huge smile on his face!

Tiger Who?

Owen loves to hit the driving range with his new clubs he got this summer. On this occasion he hit 5 buckets of balls and only stopped because of the blisters starting to form on his hand!

What you can't see in this picture is the young Filipina girl that is sitting on a small chair beside Owen who replaces the ball on the tee everytime he hits it. Only in the Philippines!!

Just another day at the beach

A month ago we were up in Subic Bay with the x-country running team and we managed to sneak in a little time at the beach. As you can see Owen hates every minute of it!!

The weather wasn't great but it didn't stop us from having a blast. I say not great meaning by Philippines standards of course. It was still a pleasant 25C, just with some clouds and scattered showers. That's one perk to living in the Tropics, it's always warm enough for the beach and there is always one near by.

Owen's 3rd Birthday

Here is Owen at one of his birthday celebrations. We like to confuse our son by celebrating is birthday once in July with friends and family in Canada, and then having another party on his real birthday in August in the Philippines. This birthday featured 6 boys, 3 years old and younger. What were we thinking??

Hong Kong

Here are some of the people we met on our trip to Hong Kong. We stopped for 4 days on our way back to the Philippines this summer. We found out that a few people live there.

Dancing Owen

Who taught him how to move like that?

Smokey Mountain

"Smokey Mountain II" in Tondo is a dump site in Manila and also home to many impoverished Filipinos. The dump is full of people that come to scavenge through the trash to collect anything that they can sell. Recyclable items like plastic, and bottles, and items that can be sold to a "junk shop" like cardboard or metal, are in demand. As you can see in the picture these people work long days to collect on average $3-$5 to live, eat, and support their families. It is also very dangerous as large machinery move very close to the workers. Most of the people actually have shacks built on site from trash that they have salvaged. It is so sad to visit this place and see many small children (starting around age 8 or 9) working and not at school. There are public schools that they can attend but many can't afford the small fee for a school uniform. Those that do go must also work at the dump to help support their family. When the sun goes down there is no electricity for lights to do homework and many can't even afford candles to burn. It makes me realize how lucky I was to be born in Canada. It is easy to things forgranted in life but a little easier to see here that we actually have it very good!

The Jungle Run

Last weekend Mindy, Owen, and I took the X-Country team up to Subic Bay for a weekend training camp. It rained pretty much the entire weekend but it didn't stop us from having fun. All weekend the kids asked if we would do the "Jungle Run", a particularly difficult run through the jungle to a small village and back. The Subic coaches advised against it due to the weather conditions but the team diasagreed and we went for it. The clear pavement soon turned to steep, muddy, clay hills as we turned onto the path. We stopped avoiding puddles very quickly, and gave up trying to stay clean soon after. By the end of the 1 hour run you can see how we returned to the school. It was not all completely innocent as we did have a few mud bath fights along the way. I particularly liked it on the way back while we were still who knows where, in the middle of the unknown jungle, and we passed a local carrying a machetti saying it was a dangerous place. We made it back to tell the tale.

Baby Logan??

Introducing the next addition to the Martin family hopefully around the end of November 2008. The name that has been sticking around the longest is Logan Alexander Martin. Neither of the names have any significance to us other then the fact that we really like them and they don't remind us of any particularly awful students we may have taught in the past. This is Baby Logan at about 30 weeks in utero. Technology is amazing!

Wet Ride

Maid of the Mist boat ride at Niagra Falls (summer 2008). Owen wouldn't wear his own rain coat but gladly shared with Daddy.

The Beginning

I kept hearing about everyone's wonderful blog they have set up to share pics and videos with their friends and family back home. I always figured it was too difficult, or would take too much time to set up, or was just another way of communicating that I would eventually stop using. Finally my desire for action outwayed my laziness and here we are. It actually took one google search, and about 5 mins to get to the point I am at now......who new it was soooo easy! Hopefully this will not be my first and last entry but the beginning of some better communication with family and friends from around the world. Wish me luck!