The Mountain Martins

Insanity

2012-04-26T08:13:00.000-07:00

That word sends chills up my spine and I question my own sanity, am I insane for doing this? Caleb and I are starting Insanity this week. Yesterday was day one and I'm sore... and it was only the fit test! It's 60 days of high interval training using nothing else but your body... we work out everyday but Sunday!

We're going to get ripped ~~hopefully~~!!!!!

Bear on the Square

2012-04-25T08:50:00.001-07:00

I've been taking an internet sabbatical over the past three months. I don't know if you are like me but I have felt lately like I've been taken over and am easily distracted by the world wide web. My default is to run straight to Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, Etsy, Pinterest, my blog, and other blogs ~~whew!~~ over running to the Lord. So the last three months has been more of an internet detox and it really has showed me that I look to be satisfied by things of this world more so than I find my satisfaction in Christ.

This weekend we went to, what is now my favorite Dahlonega festival, Bear on the Square. A bear is the reason why this wonderful festival exists. It wandered onto the Square years ago and now that sighting has it's very own festival! Bear on the Square is a toned down Gold Rush - less food stands, less vendors, less crowds... I think you've caught on by now. But what makes this festival so fun are the artisans that come to sell their hand made items. Most of them are creating these items in their booths right in front of you!

He had some fun folk art

He handmade all those bowls in the background

Jamming out! Awesome!

I also loved that wherever you walked you would see small groups of musicians picking, plucking, and playing mountain jam music together. Which was awesome! Musicians would hop around to each little group sitting around and would just join in! They also had a big tent that we went in ~~to get a tshirt~~ that had larger headlining bands! There's also craft classes you are sign up for to take and the website even said you could see the bear but I never saw him. http://www.bearonthesquare.org/

It's the little things like this that just make our little town so great and I love that they make any excuse to have a festival!

Find rest.

2012-01-21T09:12:00.000-08:00

“I have hope today not because circumstances are easy or others appreciate me, but because God exists and he is my Father.” Paul Tripp

resolved..

2012-01-16T14:57:00.000-08:00

Today I started my New Years resolution...

Running!!!!

I'm training for a 5k and yes I said a 5k ~~should have lied and said a marathon~~!

I'm training through this great program called couch to 5k. A lot of you reading this are going to say... haven't you tried this before?! Well... yes I have! But this time I'm going to do it...

So this is will be my RLOG/BLOG = running log/blog! ~~I'm nervous to click the submit button~~

I'm resolved to do this.... (anyone catch that Jonathan Edwards humor?)

Time In

2011-12-11T20:29:00.000-08:00

My computer is really sassy. Each time I have come on here to update this thing she keeps kicking me off Blogger and I lose my content for the same post over and over again so once again my apologies for not keeping you updated.

So where did I leave off...

We went to lunch at one of our favorite places in town, The Crimson Moon. Doesn't that smile just melt your heart?

This was on the way to the Moon. I thought it was a sweet picture!

Later that week we went to Burt's Pumpkin Farm! It was my first time going and Micah was in awe of the pumpkins. Half of them were bigger than his soon to be two year old little frame.

Then he saw this...

Micah loves tractors and I think he forgot that we were at a Pumpkin Farm when he laid on eyes on the big green tractor that was going to haul into the farm's pumpkin patches.

Aren't those barrows pretty?!!! Who knew wheelbarrows could be so pretty...

Micah might get his obsession from this beaut..

His grandfather's John Deere. I learned how to drive it the other day.

My instructor.

Caleb's family lives . Rolling hills of pastures. When I'm there I feel my dreams have come true of being a farm girl. They have a some wood shops that are awesome! Here's one of my favorite things about their property... the blue door!!!! This leads into Caleb's dad's personal shop.. It's magical...

I collected this little guy inside Caleb's dad woodshop. I was going to use it as a post for my herb garden. Key word is in this find is that is was FREE!

Check out these treasures I found inside... there's so much history in these things to me... I was like a little kid in a candy store. I kept asking if I could take stuff home!

Above is my sweet father in law, Chris and here's the bottom of the knife that was pictured next to the door - how pretty!

Later that evening Erin and I carved pumpkins!

Erin's ended up looking just like this!

Dahlonega Leaves of Fall

Our CO staff went on a staff retreat to Suches! The leaves and scenery were so pretty too!

Which brings us to Halloween! Our first trick or treaters as a married couple - the tooth fairy and a tooth she had picked up along the way! :)

This Fall, Caleb played in a Parks and Rec softball league! They were really great and I know that Caleb loved being able to participate with his busy schedule! He loves baseball!

Can I bore you with pictures of my cat Missy? She's not mine and Caleb's. She's the Clark family cat. We got her when I was in middle school. She was the younger sister to our dog Lucy and cat Rikki (you might be thinking that sounds like I Love Lucy, you're correct) Anways, I borrowed a 105mm lens from a friend in Dahlonega and was trying to get a picture of anything I could get my hands on. I loved these pictures of Missy and she's wasn't too thrilled that I was chasing her around the garage one afternoon. I just loved how the light hit her... Okay, you can wake up now...

hello again friends!

2011-11-18T13:12:00.000-08:00

Caleb and I are both on the couch. I'm sick and he's propping up his swollen sprained ankle. We're a little pitiful this week at the Martin household. Our couch has become every other room in the house. The office, kitchen, and bedroom as well as the dining room table and ottoman. In a season of thankfulness... I'm thankful for our coffee table.

So now that you know where we are now. Let me catch you up with how we got here.

Erin and Micah came into town! We love when they come to visit because they live in Texas and we don't get to see them very often. They came and stayed with us the Friday before Gold Rush. We had a blast!

Caleb and Micah's favorite thing to do together was wrestling! Micah would run as quick as his little feet would let him and push over Uncle C! I think it happened at least 50 times...

The next morning Erin went and ran the Gold Rush 5k while Caleb and I babysat. Caleb introduced Micah to our Wii, named Sallwii - after my mom (Sally), and we played a morning full of tennis and Backyardigans on Netflix! Best babysitters ever!!!!

Speaking of our little man! I want to give a shout out to our favorite nephew! He's turned TWO yesterday!!!! He's getting so big!

Happy Birthday Micah!

Later Saturday we ventured out to Gold Rush! It was literally in our backyard this year. That's why we love were we live so much because we are walking distance to everything on the square and campus.

Micah checking out our mums before riding in style to Gold Rush

And the best thing about Gold Rush... Oh course... THE FOOD!!!!! Our favorite are the hand dipped corn dogs. These are some pictures I took for my photography class. We had to pick a topic on Gold Rush and I chose the food. Not so original...

My parents and Auntie & EB came up Sunday. Auntie's walking around with one of Emma's Christmas gifts and we stopped by the Farmer's Market on the way back to our place.

Everything was so fresh and colorful there.

Here are a couple of things I ended up with at the end of the day:

My parents got me this print of a barn in Virginia. This artist use draw for the AJC and so many other beautiful pictures from some of our favorite places like Jamaica (where we went on our honeymoon) and Santa Rosa Beach.

Homemade blackberry jam (tried to make it look artsy)

Basil Plant ~~that quickly died~~.

My idea is to potentially have an herb garden on our back porch ~~patch of cement~~ so we can pick fresh herbs whenever we need them.

So I know I promised to get to you back to where Caleb and I are pitiful on the couch but it's just not going to happen. I will fill you in on the rest hopefully later today or today. Need to take a breather. So just consider this a timeout.

Be back soon!

Lately..

2011-10-16T15:51:00.000-07:00

We went to the Cumming Fair. We went with friends. We had a blast. We ate lots of food. My brain is fried....

Botanical, the beautiful

2011-10-04T11:51:00.000-07:00

Caleb and I recently visited the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. Here's some pictures from our trip. We had a great time!

Caleb playing biologist and inspecting the cactus.

Wildflowers and Atlanta Skyline

Caleb loved the Skyline pictures

Afterwards, we went to the yummy Greek place called, Athens pizza. This is one of those places that I wish I could take credit for finding on my own because it's so good but I can't. My best friend Dianna is the ultimate lover of all things Greek and anything she recommends is going to be AWESOME! We had the best pizza of our life, Athens Special - you gotta try it!

The Botanical Gardens were also so fun because I got to learn all the new skills from my photography class. I've completed my first course - Beginner Photography and am about to move on to advanced. It's so much fun and I've really fallen in love with it! I'll post another thing about that later!

AHHHHH!!!!!!

I almost drop kicked my laptop making this post so this is a great time so share why I'm so excited for Christmas to come. I'm a mac user and my mac came with a faulty mouse so in hopes of correcting it, I'm asking for this from Santa Claus.

It's Apple's magic mouse. It sits on the side so there will no longer be accidental laptop mouse swipes in the future! Cha Ching! Happy Tuesday to all and to all a good night! :)

Under Construction

2011-10-02T06:35:00.003-07:00

I'm currently in the midst of changing everything around!

Domestic Epiphany

2011-10-01T11:35:00.000-07:00

So I promised myself that I wasn't going to make a blog until I absolutely loved the name. So while folding laundry (this doesn't happen very often around our place- bad wife, I know) I started thinking about the line from John Denver's "Country Roads".
Here are the lyrics http://www.superseventies.com/sl_takemehome.html

I don't know how I thought about it but I just kept singing it in my head, we all know it, "West Virginia, mountain momma, Take home, country roads". So trying to think of the cute blog name that semi rhymes (finding a blog name is almost like making a Campus Outreach newsletter) I thought let's name it, Mountain Martins. We live in Dahlonega where our backyard literally is the skyline of the Blue Ridge Mountains full of winding backwood country roads and it's now where we call home! Are you starting to see why I'm so excited about how perfect this name is?!!!! So all in all, welcome. Welcome to our life. We're just a couple of sinners trying to figure it all out one step at time (well that is with Jesus in the control room). One thing I promise that you will see in our lives is that I, Katie Martin, am the grammatical error queen and that is not a reflection of my grammar loving husband, Caleb.

Happy weekend!