Daddy Showing Off Marty's Skills

Daddy has been working with Marty everyday on learning new elements from the Periodic Table of the Element. We also work on astrononmy, physics, airplanes, and lots of Spanish. Watch the video below for a tiny sample of Marty's knowledge.

Marty Goes To Diego LIVE!

Here’s a few pics prior to the much awaited event tonight! Marty, Mommy, Renee and Charley went to see the big show at Nokia Theatre! Marty was the best dressed kid there and we had “VIP” front row, center seats- and of course Renee made sure he came home with ALL of the souvenirs they sold! They wouldn’t let us take photos inside, but Marty can tell you that it was THE REAL Diego, Baby Jaguar and even Dora made a surprise visit! He didn’t want to leave…. What a night for all of us!!! Whew.

Here are the pictures

Email From Marty- July 2007

Dear Family and Friends,

Shalom everyone! I’m just back from summer camp at the Shalom Temple in Dallas and I had a great time! It was a 2-week day camp for kids my age who like “things that fly!” We made kites, played with airplanes and helicopters, read books about things that fly, did art projects, had splash days and sang songs! I was really welcomed by everyone there and the best part of all was I didn’t do anything to embarrass Mommy!! She just knew I was going to do, say or sing something inappropriate.

Just before camp we took a vacation to Florida to visit the Vaneskahian family. Wow, what a great time we had!! First we flew in a big jet to Orlando. I’ve been putting in quite a few hours on the computer flight simulator and I wanted to offer to co-pilot the plane but Mommy made me stay in my seat! Instead Daddy and I just talked about the moving parts on the wings and tail- you know, the flaps, ailerons, elevators, the rudders, pitot tubes and such. I know all of them! Daddy likes to show me off and quiz me in front of the pilots to impress them.

Daddy and I also spend weekends hanging around the hangers at local regional airports, until we get run-off that is. They’ve only asked us to leave the Mckinney Airport once! I just love to walk around and look at all of the different kinds of aircraft. The pilots of the medic helicopter in Collin County all know me and wave as they land and I’ve impressed more than one pilot as they’ve come into the FBO (that’s Flight Based-Operations, for you novices out there) after landing their planes. They can’t believe a 2 year old can know so much about flying. I have to admit though we do look a bit like stalkers!

Anyway, back to our trip…. Then we went to Cape Canaveral and to the Kennedy Space Center. The Space Shuttle was supposed to touch down there that afternoon so we were excited that we’d be there when it arrived, but an hour before it’s arrival time the weather was too risky and it diverted to California. It didn’t damper my day though! My cousins, Perla and Isabelle and I had a great time seeing the rockets and astronauts and stuff. We spent the whole day there with my Abuela and Abu, and my Tia Lusan and Tio Nelson.

Next we headed to the beach and spent a few days at Cocoa Beach. Cousins Dianne and Sabino arrived to kick up the party a notch and we spent most of the next day poolside! I tried the beach but I just didn’t like all of that sand. Mommy was disappointed because ya know, she could live on the beach if you give her a towel and a margarita! Daddy and I prefer the more civilized lifestyle of the pool! Finally we spent our last day back in Orlando and went to the water park for another party!! It was a busy trip, best part was we were so busy that most days I missed my naptime!

There is a little black cloud hanging over the Vaneskahian house, and it’s not due to all of the rain we’ve had. Mommy, Daddy and I are in a state of mourning since the Clendinnings moved to Colleyville last month!! Daddy’s been pouting since they first announced they were moving, and I told Mommy that I wanted Ella to move back home but she said that Ella had a new home and it just wasn’t as close to us as her old home. But she said that we’d still see her and get to play together!!! Mommy was the only one in the house being an adult about the situation and realizing that the Clendinnings were just a few miles farther down the road….that is until the weekend the new swing set arrived in a box!!! Where is Ben when you need him??? Every project, every chore that Daddy would put off would finally get done when Ben would come over! (Ben, Jill, Ella and Logan lived just down the street and around the corner.) Now my swing set was out of it’s box and in a million pieces on the grass in the backyard and both Mommy and Daddy were staring at it. For some reason Daddy was just taking pictures of the pieces. That’s when Mommy said “I can’t believe the Clendinnings went off and left us!”


It was a long weekend for the 3 of us. I kept offering to help them but they seemed frustrated every time I’d pick up some parts they didn’t need, or when I’d ask for the 100th time if I could swing yet! I have to give the folks some credit though, by Sunday night the swing set was finished! I think they might have finished earlier but they kept taking it apart and moving pieces around. I’m not sure but I think they were building it wrong. Daddy said to Mommy that she had helped him screw it up enough that he wouldn’t ask her to help him next time. Mommy had a big smile when he said that so I think that was her plan all along. I have a very smart Mommy!

SAVE THE DATE!! Plans are underway for my 3rd birthday bash on September 8th! Word on the streets is that “Tony the Pony” is hosting the bash this year at The Johnson Ranch in Southlake! There will be, of course, pony rides, as well as games and fun and lots and lots of ice cream to keep us cool!! Put it on your calendars for Saturday, September 8th. You wouldn’t want to miss my birthday party, would you?

I start my new school on September 10th! I’ll go on Mondays and Wednesdays to the Spanish Schoolhouse Preschool. I’m really excited about it. It’s a Spanish immersion school so I plan to be fluent in Spanish by the end of the first semester! Daddy is giving me a head start and has been teaching me lots of new things this summer…he’s teaching me not only to count in Spanish (from 1 to 50) and to know the alphabet but I also know the colors, most of the body parts, and a few new words each day all in Spanish. And if that isn’t enough, since I’ve already memorized the planets, now he has me memorizing the Periodic Table of Elements. I know…don’t laugh, I’m serious!! He uses both flash cards and the actual Periodic Table! He really quizzes me on it! Don’t call Child Protective Services yet, he makes it a game and we actually have fun! And I have learned most of the Elements between Hydrogen and Silicon. I’m going to have to play it cool when I get to preschool or they’ll throw me out the first week for knowing too much Spanish and too much weird science trivia for a 3 year old!! I don’t want to be labeled a “geek” before I hit Kindergarten!

Have a great summer! Adios and Shalom!!
LOVE,
MARTY a.k.a Jean-Martin Garabet Vaneskahian

Email From Marty- May 2007

Dear Family and Friends,

Hi guys! I hope you had a safe and dry Memorial Day weekend. Sure doesn’t seems like Summer is on it’s way with all of this wet and gloomy weather, but it hasn’t slowed me down much!!!

I’ve been super busy the past 2 weeks. Mommy and I took a mini-vacation to Aunt Mary and Uncle Vic’s house in North Richland Hills. We had a great time, only thing was that they weren’t home while we were there! We were “house-sitting” and taking care of “Precious,” their Westie and “Kitty Hope,” their cat while they went on an airplane and then a boat with some of their friends. Mommy and I stayed up late and played, slept late in the mornings and had a nice relaxing time!

Grandma and John Daddy live only 10 minutes from Aunt Mary and Uncle Vic’s house so we saw them a lot during our mini-vacation. I spent a few nights with them and there was a present at their house for me every time I came over! We also spent a lot of time with Uncle Tommy and Renee and Charley. They have a new swing with a special car swing just for me and lots of room for me to ride my trike. I had a few crashes with boo-boos to prove it!

Best of all was a surprise new pony that Uncle Tommy got for me to ride! “Tony, the Pony” lives at their house but he’s mine to play with and ride anytime. He’s really cute, check out the photos on our website photo album to see him. Mommy says I was a little spoiled on our mini-vacation…but she was a little too!

The only bad thing about our mini-vacation was my sudden illness. One afternoon I was playing in the Johnson’s backyard and all of the sudden it felt like a bug flew in my ear! It really hurt. I told Mommy and NayNay (Renee) but they couldn’t see the bug. I kept on playing but holding my ear. Mommy took me to Grandma’s house because she was going out with friends that night. John Daddy looked in my ear and said it looked OK to him. I rode my tricycle at their house, holding my ear, which Grandma thought was strange, but I didn’t complain. I just kept saying that there was a bug in my ear! Later I climbed in Grandma’s lap and curled up, now holding both ears. Grandma decided she’d better call Mommy, since I was not acting like my usual jovial self. She called just as Mommy was leaving to meet her friends. I always have had good timing when Mommy has made other plans!!

So Mommy cancelled her plans and took me to Cook’s Children’s emergency clinic. She was now worried too because I was acting like I was very sick and she was afraid I would be worse if she waited until the next morning. She got us checked in at the clinic and we waited our turn. In triage I explained to the nurse that I had a bug in my ear while she took my vital signs. She seemed sympathetic to my problem. We went back to the waiting room to wait again. We waited and waited. I was beginning to get bored and my ears were feeling a little better. I was watching a video on the big TV screen and got down out of Mommy’s lap to dance to the music on the video. I think Mommy was embarrassed that I was dancing and didn’t look sick like the other kids in the waiting room. But you know me, I love to dance!! Just as I was really getting into the groove, the double doors opened and “JEAN MARTIN” was called. Boy did the nurse lower her brow at Mommy as she dragged me –still dancing- thru those doors and into the examining area. Mommy was a little pale herself…but her color came back, even got redder when I stood up and announced to the doctor when she came in that I had a bug in my ear!! 5 minutes later, we were out of there with a prescription for antibiotics to cure my ear infection…and I was dancing and singing all the way to the car!!

Since I last wrote I have been exploring the different modes of transportation. One evening Ella, Ethan and I took our mommies to a carnival in Frisco and had lots of fun. We rode in teacups, on a train, inside a huge teddy bear, and my personal favorite was the helicopter! Our mommies were a little hesitant about putting us in the helicopter because some of the helicopters on the ride went up very high and they couldn’t figure out which ones went high and which ones stayed lower to the ground as they went around. But us kids insisted that we ride! So they buckled us in tight, put Ella, the oldest, on the outside and told her to hold the bar in tight to her chest because it was a little loose. The ride began and around and around we went. All of the other helicopters went up and down, but ours stayed low to the ground. Our mommies were relieved but we were disappointed that we got the bum helicopter that couldn’t fly! Just as the ride was about over we all figured out that the bar that Ella was holding in tight was the lever to push out and make the helicopter fly up! Oh well, we had a really fun time that night!

Then Cousin Grace and I decided to try out the train at Forest Park in Fort Worth. Her grandparents (Aunt Mary and Uncle Vic) and my Grandma took us for a fun day. Later in the month we decided to try the Tarantula Train in Grapevine with Grace’s parents and Mommy. Wow is that train big! It was a fun ride until we had a train robbery, and a masked gunman got on the train! There was a shooting that Grace and I weren’t expecting and it was a little scary. I almost cried but wanted to look brave for Grace! Thank goodness there was a sheriff on the train and all was well in the end!

Good news! I’m all signed up for summer camp beginning in July! There’s a really cool two- week camp for kids my age that teaches all about “Things That Fly” so Mommy and Daddy thought it would be perfect for me since I love airplanes, helicopters, balloons, kites, etc. ! It would also be an opportunity for me to expand my religious culture awareness. The camp is at the Temple Shalom of Dallas. Daddy liked it because the curriculum was science based. Mommy and I went over to the synagogue and met the Preschool Director and toured the school. Mommy liked it because it offered other fun things like art and splash days and stuff I’d like, as well as learning more about the Jewish customs. I think it will be fun!

I’m getting my sunglasses and sun-block packed because we are heading to the beach! In a few weeks we are flying to Orlando to visit the Vaneskahians and then we’re off to Cape Canaveral to see all of the space stuff that Daddy tells me about! After that we are all going to the beach for a few days with my cousins Perla and Isabelle! Before we leave Orlando, we are going to a party at the waterpark! It’s going to be a fun trip and I’ve missed seeing my Abuela and Abu so I’m excited about spending time with them.

Have a great Summer and send me a postcard if you get out of town!!

Love ya,
MARTY aka Jean-Martín Garabet Vaneskahian

Email From Marty- Spring 2007

Dear Family and Friends,

A Belated Happy Easter to you!! I’m still working my way through the candy filled-eggs. It may be the 4th of July before I eat all of my candy!! That cool Easter Bunny laid a big bunch of eggs in my backyard this year. If it hadn’t been for cousins J.D. and Carley being in on the hunt and quite faster than me, I would have had enough candy to last through Halloween!!

I am a big boy now, as I no longer fear the fuzzy fellow. I even had my picture taken with him! Our neighborhood party had an egg hunt and the Easter Bunny came early to see us kids. Then he showed up again when Ella and Logan and I had lunch with him at the City of Allen and got our pictures taken. Mommy said he came during the night to our house and left my basket full of toys and laid all of those eggs in the backyard.

For those of you who read my last letter and have been patiently waiting to hear the news…I did get accepted into the Spanish Schoolhouse in Frisco!! Mommy beat out the other parents in time to get me enrolled, so I’ll start school two days a week in September! Even thought they’ll teach us Spanish in school, Daddy already has begun my Spanish “immersion” and I can count, I know the colors, some body parts, and of course I know that “avion” is airplane in Spanish!

Speaking of airplanes, you won’t believe where I’m going this weekend!!! The U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels team of precision show planes will be performing at the air show at the Naval Air Station in Corpus Christi and my fabulous parents are taking me to see them and all of the airplanes and helicopters at the show! I have a metal replica Blue Angel airplane that goes most everywhere I go. Mommy calls it my teddy bear, even though I don’t think it looks like one! I ask Daddy all the time if he’ll please take me to the Navy, but he just says I’m too young. I can imagine what a cool place the Navy must be…a playground filled with airplanes to play with and climb in, and no mommies to call you in for naptime!

I’ve had a busy time these past few months. Ella had a really cool birthday party at a place filled with bounce houses and toys. I think I’d like to live there! I’ve been afraid of those bounce houses, but Jill coaxed me in and jumped with me and made it fun. Then Daddy climbed in and started jumping too!!

Cousin Grace and I took the folks to see Elmo Live at Nokia Theatre. I think they had a good time. We certainly enjoyed it! All of the characters from Sesame Street were there!!

For Mommy’s birthday, Daddy took the day off and we took the train from Plano to Dallas and had lunch on top of Reunion Tower at Antares Restaurant. I could watch the airplanes and helicopters fly right by at eye level. It was fun and so was the train ride. It was my first train trip. Thank goodness I came along with Mommy and Daddy or they may have never made it home!! I like to read letters on signs and ask what they say. We took the RED line train to Dallas, hence the “RED” would be important to get back on that color line to come home. On the trip to Dallas I asked what the red sign said, along with other signs inside the train car. After lunch we hopped back on the train to go home. A while into the ride I started looking around at signs again. I asked Mommy what the BLUE sign said, she looked and casually read, “Downtown Garland.” A few seconds later it registered to Daddy and he jumped up and yelled “Blue Sign?” Yes, they had put me on the wrong train!! Good thing I was there…I think they are becoming a little absent-minded!

My next train ride came just days later when Ethan and I hopped aboard the train at the Fort Worth Zoo. We rode it twice!! Our Mom’s took us to see all of the animals at the zoo. We had a great time! It was our first time to visit a zoo and we know the animals were really excited to finally meet us.

Ethan and I also had the pleasure of that annual Texan tradition- pictures in the bluebonnets! Our mommy’s met in Grapevine and took us out in the field of flowers and took a million photos. Of course we tried to make it as challenging as possible for them by not standing still or posing!!!

Big news- Uncle Tommy has new baby cows! I got to see the new baby cows and they are so cute. I climbed the gate to try to get a look because all of the longhorns were way out in the pasture. But as soon as they saw me they started coming in. When they got a little too close I got nervous and got down until Renee and ChaCha came back over with me.

You can see the longhorns if you look in the photo albums, along with our day at the zoo, in the Bluebonnets, Easter and more! JUST CLICK HERE!!

I hope you are having a wonderful Spring! Please keep in touch!!

Love ya,
MARTY aka Jean-Martin Garabet Vaneskahian

Email From Marty- Happy Valentines Day 2007

Dear Family and Friends,

Happy Valentine’s Day! Wow, February is already here and I’m still breaking in my Christmas toys!! I hope you are having a terrific 2007! I know I sure am…

We had a late holiday celebration with my Bolton side of the family in mid January when we could all finally get together. It was really a great idea to extend Christmas by a few extra weeks and I got to open EVEN MORE presents! And, let me tell ya my Aunt Mary and Uncle Vic did me up good with the gifts this year!! In fact, Daddy and I kinda got two-for-one gifts because I wanted to play with his present and he wanted to play with mine!

Daddy got a really cool indoor flying helicopter that is remote controlled. At first he was very cautious about flying it around the house, at least while Mommy was watching. But it didn’t take long before he was flying it up the staircase and zooming through the house. Unfortunately during one flight Mommy walked through the kitchen just as it crashed into the chandelier above the kitchen table- boy was that cool! From the look on her face she didn’t agree. Daddy let me fly it after a few lessons, but we didn’t let her know. I think those eyes in the back of her head spotted me at the controls one time because she came running to protect her big crystal bowl in the entryway and yelling at Daddy not to let me hit the crystal sconce from Uncle Martín on the wall. Mommy just doesn’t appreciate cool toys. That’s what Daddy always says.

My toy that they gave me is called an AIR HOG! It’s an airplane that you pump full of air, then let it go OUTSIDE and it flies. On our first flight out we went across the street from our house to the park area where there’s more open space. Mommy came along with the video camera. Daddy pumped the air into the plane, disconnected the pump, started the propeller and launched the plane. It flew about 30 feet and took a dive into the creek. Mommy and I looked at each other unimpressed as Daddy went to get it out of the water. Second try- it only made it about 10 feet and it went down prop first into the grass. Third try was a charm though! It took off, made a loop and headed straight for our house (the second story windows to be exact) but it side-swiped our house, did the same for the next door neighbor’s house, looked like it was headed for the back window of a Lexus parked on the street but suddenly took a sharp left turn and headed straight for me and Mommy!!! We screamed, ducked and it missed us by a hair- but guess who was standing right behind us… yep, Daddy! It was headed full throttle right for his head! He made an attempt to catch it and stopped it before it went for a second loop. What a stunt plane! I was jumping up and down yelling, “Cool Daddy!!” Mommy was yelling too, but I’m not allowed to say the kind of words that she was saying! She got it all on video but she says we can’t show it to anyone until Daddy edits out the audio.

Well I started off my year with a trip to the Rodeo and the Fat Stock Show in Fort Worth. Even though I live east of the “line” (Tarrant County line that is), I think I’m now an official cowboy. My Uncle Tommy took me, along with Renee, Charley and Mommy. We had a fun day, I rode a bull (see the picture- don’t tell anyone that the bull wasn’t moving, or even breathing!), and saw lots of horses and cowboys, I ate a FOOT LONG corn dog all by myself, had fries, funnel cake, coke, a stomach ache and saw a LOT of pigs and cows! Then we went for Mexican Food!! Fort Worth just can’t get any better than that!!

Daddy and his friends went on a trip last month to Washington DC. It was his Christmas present from Mommy. She coordinated with his friends from Miami to plan the trip. It was something they had been talking about doing for years but had never done. They all wanted to tour the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, see DC and just have a “guys weekend.” He was really surprised when he found out! He was even more surprised on the morning of the trip when he was leaving the house at 4:30am to go to the airport to catch a flight and Ben showed up at the front door with his suitcase to go along too! Mommy and Ben had kept that part a surprise too. It made Daddy’s trip really special. He came home with lots of great toys for me, as you can imagine. It’s a good thing I’m too little to understand where he was going or I would have had one big tantrum and made him take me along too! Of course, next time I will HAVE TO GO!!

Mommy and Daddy recently took me to visit a prospective preschool they would like for me to attend in the Fall. It’s a really neat school, called the Spanish Schoolhouse. It’s what they call a “Spanish immersion” school where the teachers speak only Spanish all day except for one English class. Mommy and Daddy really liked the concept, and since my Vaneskahian side of the family all speak Spanish it makes since that I should be bilingual! Mommy thought she was really ahead of schedule by checking into schools this early- 8 months early! But nooooo, registration for school beginning in the Fall is actually this month! Mommy was surprised it was so early. She was even more surprised to learn that there is such a demand for placement in the school that they now only have online registration. It’s like getting concert tickets on the internet at Ticketmaster!!! You log onto your computer at a certain day and time, along with all of the other parents and the fastest typers get accepted and the others are put on a waiting list! I think Mommy was ready to camp-out at the school the night before to be first in line at the door for registration. She says that’s what they used to do for concert tickets “in the old days!” She also says she didn’t have this much trouble getting registered for college! I guess her college wasn’t as fancy as a Spanish immersion school for toddlers!! (I’ll let you know in my next letter if Mommy typed fast enough to get me enrolled in school!)

Have a Happy Valentine’s Day!


See our all of our latest photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/vaneskahian/sets/.

And, visit our website at http://www.vaneskahian.com/.

Luv Ya!
MARTY a.k.a. Jean-Martín Garabet Vaneskahian

Jean-Marie's New Tiny R/C Helicopter

Jean-Marie and Marty both got some very cool presents from Uncle Vic and Aunt Mary. Jean got a tiny R/C Helicopter and Marty got an Hir Hog compressed air powered Airplane.

Here is some video of the R/C Helicopter flying.

Ella Clendinning's Christmas Recital - 2006

Here is video of the dance recital of our good friends The Clendinning's daughter, Ella.

Email From Marty- Merry Christmas To All! 2006

Merry Christmas to my favorite family and friends!

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas, or holiday celebration of choice! As you can see by the photo, I made friends with the big guy in the red suit just in the “nick” of time- no pun intended! Hohoho!

I’ve feared the old man for the past 6 weeks, since he first entered the malls before Thanksgiving. Mommy dragged me kicking and screaming, but I wouldn’t get close to him! Our next attempt she brought Renee and Charley (my Aunt NayNay and ChaCha) who promised me she’d buy me a bigger helicopter than Santa could bring if I’d just sit on his lap long enough for a picture. I thought long and hard about that bribe, but in the end I just high-tailed it back to the stroller! Well, I knew I was running out of time…so I finally braved the big lap of fur and fuzz. You know, he wasn’t so bad! He had a nice voice and we talked about airplanes and helicopters. He was hardly scary at all! I told him I’d been good- hoping he couldn’t see through that stretch of the truth and he said he’d leave me some presents after I was asleep on Christmas Eve!

He did it! Santa Claus even remembered that I was at Grandmama and John Daddy’s house in Hurst! I got just what I wanted plus a few extras too. We all had a very nice Christmas. We spent Christmas Eve at church and then at my Aunt Sandy and Uncle John’s for dinner and then Mommy and Grandmama and I went to visit some family at a Christmas party in Fort Worth while Daddy and the guys stayed home and got ready for Santa, whatever that means! Today we all had lunch at Grandmama and John Daddy’s and opened even more presents! I also talked to my Vaneskahian grandparents in Florida who were having a nice Christmas too. Abuela had just been to visit me last week and brought lots of presents too. You just won’t believe all of the presents I have! I’m a very lucky boy, and very loved, and of course very deserving too!

I hope you all got everything you wished for and a few extras too! Have a wonderful holiday and a very happy and safe New Year!

Love ya lots!
Marty a.k.a. Jean-Martin Garabet Vaneskahian

Christmas Video 2006

Here is video of Marty opening his presents from Florida in Christmas 2006