Wedding Trailer

Here is the trailer to our wedding video!  I wish I could put the entire video up here but no can do so here is a glimpse of our special day :) Paul and Holly from Four Seasons Films did a wonderful job and I am so thankful to have this to look back on and remember!

http://www.fourseasonsfilms.com/jennifer&philip/

The Other Martin Family

Blessed Louis and Zelie Martin

I love many saints and I am always asking for their prayers constantly.  But while Philip and I were preparing for marriage we decided we needed to find a saint who would be our saint, a friend in heaven we could ask to pray constantly for our marriage and our family.  One day while praying that God would help us find that saint I stumbled across Blessed Louis and Zelie Martin who are the wonderful parents of St. Therese or Lisieux.  I was so excited for many reasons.  First of all they are married and were so holy which is perfect because we can look up to them in their marriage.  Secondly we all share the same last name...BONUS!  Thirdly, they prayed for their children and offered them up to God for his will to be done in their lives which is what philip and I were doing.  They did such an amazing job raising their family and teaching them to love God.  I mean, St. Therese, Doctor of the Church, is their daughter!  Not only that but all five of their children who lived (they had a few children die after birth), all girls, entered the religious life :)  Needless to say, we have fallen in love with the entire Martin family!


Continuing on with my story... We have been asking all of them to pray for our marriage and our family (Its funny how we started out trying to find one saint and we found a whole family of them).  As many of you know St. Therese's feast day is coming up October 1st.  

St. Therese

Philip and I have been so excited about our second sonogram and hopefully finding out the sex of our first child.  We had an appointment two days ago and were told we were measuring early by our first sonogram and our due date is February 12th :)  Dr. Gray told us we are about 19 weeks pregnant and should come in next week for our second sonogram!  We listened to the heart beat of our child which is always such an incredible blessing to hear it so loud and strong.  As we went to make our appointment for the sonogram the lady at the front desk asked if we could come in OCTOBER 1st at 1:30!!!!!!!  Holding back tears and much excitement I told her OF COURSE WE CAN! 




So... get ready everyone!  Next friday is going to be a wonderful day! 

St. Therese, Pray for us! 
Blessed Louis and Zelie Martin, Pray for us!  

The Martin Family

If you want to read more about Blessed Louis and Zelie Martin here is a link although I am sure I will be  posting more about them :) 

http://www.sttherese.com/Parents.html , http://www.thereseoflisieux.org/their-pastoral-significance/

Birthday Adventure

Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater

Philip and I after Dinner

Our Hotel at night

Philip surprised me and planned a fun adventure for my birthday present... a trip to southwest Pennsylvania!!  While in Interior Design at Auburn we studied many architects but my favorite was Frank Lloyd Wright.  My sophomore year I did a project on him and a house he designed... Fallingwater.  As soon as I realized we were so close to Fallingwater I was so excited!  We left friday midday and drove to our hotel which was amazing!  It was built in 1907 and served as a hotel for travelers along the "National Road" which connected the east to the west.  The hotel has had many guests over the years two of which are Thomas Edison and Henry Ford.  It was very old world looking and beautiful!  We ate dinner there at the restaurant and enjoyed music from a wedding reception that was taking place in the next room :)  It was fun to reminisce about our wedding.   

The lobby of our hotel

View from the hotel balcony

Saturday morning we got ready, ate a delicious breakfast, and traveled about ten minutes to Fallingwater.  The tour was wonderful!  Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures during the tour and of the inside of the house which I think ended up being a great thing as I just enjoyed being in this marvelous home.  It was fascinating to see all of his designs up close and fun to see in person rooms and details that I drew in my projects.  We ate a delicious lunch there before driving 2 hours back to Steubenville in time to fix dinner and watch the first Auburn game of the season :)  It was a wonderful birthday present! Thank you Philip!

Here I am in front of the

Beautiful fallingwater

Another view of the house surrounded by nature :)

All smiles at the end of our tour

Fun adventures in Ohio... or Pennsylvania

Sorry for the long break in posting. I am still a bit behind in my posts...

Around the end of August Philip and I took an adventure to Pittsburgh with some friends we have met here, Nick and Emily. They are from Illinois and are both getting their Masters in Theology with Philip. They all agreed to take a break from studying and take fun friday trip.

We went raspberry picking outside the city and then ventured into Pittsburgh for the Ducky tour and dinner. We each picked 2 pints of berries and ate a few along the way :) It was a perfect day to see the city! The Ducky Tour goes through the city on a bus/boat. The bus/boat is an amphibious truck built by General Motors Corporation during WWII for transporting goods and soldiers over land and water. It was so cool to be on the land driving around and then suddenly the boat drove off the road into one of the 3 rivers surrounding pittsburgh. One interesting fact we learned is that Pittsburgh has the second most amount of bridges in the world. It is second to Venice, Italy!

Afterwards we went to dinner at Joe's Crab Shack for delicious seafood and completed the evening with ice cream for baby martin. It was a wonderful day getting to know our friends Nick and Emily laughing and sharing lots of stories from life in Illinois and Alabama :)

Yummy Raspberries :) 

Enjoying the sun picking berries

Nick and Emily picking berries

View of Pittsburgh from the water in the Ducky boat/bus

Steelers Stadium from the water

Here is another Ducky boat/bus passing by us

After the tour with Nick and Emily in front of our Duck boat

Sweet Home Alabama

I am a little behind in my posts but I thought I would share our trip to home to Alabama which was at the beginning of August.  Philip and I made the 16 hour drive to Alabama August 6th and enjoyed a wonderful vacation visiting all of our family and spending a few days by the water.  It was so wonderful! The saturday night night before we left my parents threw a birthday party for my 23rd birthday which is actually August 31st.  It was small but very special!  Philip's parents drove over as well as our friends Ross and Genny.  It was so much fun to be around them all together one more time before we left for Ohio.

Here comes Mom, Dad, James and Julie with the cake! :)

Emma loves cake and blowing out the candles! 

Ready to blow them out!

Ross and Genny (our friends who are unfortunately big Alabama fans)
love us very much and gave me Auburn socks for Baby Martin!
This was the best present of the night! Thank you Ross and Genny!
We love you too and I promise we will return the favor one day!! 

Here We Go!

I promised my family and friends I would start a blog to share what Philip and I have been up to here in Ohio.  Now, two months later... we are up and running!

Our first month here consisted of Philip getting used to grad school work while Baby Martin and I slept on the couch during the first trimester.  However by the end of the month we managed to get up and start getting the house organized.  Here are some pictures of our first home together!  I hope you enjoy!!

 Below: Here we are after moving in looking a little tired

Here is our Living Room

Another view of our Living Room

Here is the dining area :)

Here is another show showing the dining and living area

This is in the dining area as well

Here are a few views of our lovely kitchen

Here is the master bedroom.  We haven't hung anything on the walls yet.  

We are waiting on getting some of our wedding photos.

Here is the Bathroom

And last but not least... here is the guest bedroom!

NOTE: It is now much cleaner and all set up for any guests who want to come visit! 

I will post other updated house pictures later :)