Charity's Latest

She hadn't even gotten dressed yet, and already caught a butterfly :)

Sweet :)

This was an exciting moment for all of us :) Kelly's the 2nd Mommy in our house- and she actually LOVES it, so it's awesome :)


win, win, win, win situation :)

The Newest Member of the Hatch Family

My brother Brent and his wife Sarah just had their first baby!! Sarah was diagnosed with Toxemia a few days ago, and was admitted into the hospital, and then Thursday they decided to start her because her protein levels were just so high. She was only 32 weeks along, so their sweet little Charles Wain Hatch was 2 months early, and weighed 3 lbs 2 oz, 15 inches long when he was born yesterday, July 18th.

We got the privilege of seeing this sweet little infant today!! The kids, my sister Heidi and I all went to the hospital to see our new little nephew/cousin (I'm SO EXCITED that my kids will finally have a cousin on my side of the family- he is their first!). My kids did not get to see him, because they are not allowed in the NICU, but I did, and what an incredible experience it was. He is SO TINY!!! I seriously could not look at him enough. And it's so neat to feel his sweet little Spirit when you walk in the room. You can tell that he is a strong little guy.

I got to watch him for a while and I got to see his cute Daddy watch him. That was a really neat experience for me. He's absolutely adorable, Brent and Sarah, ya done good! I think he looks just like Brent.

It was really cute because as soon as I turned on my video camera to get a few videos of him, he SMILED!! I LOVED it. And as soon as I can get that on my computer, I will put it on here. It was so dang cute. He's doing really well so far. He is breathing on his own which is really good for a baby his size I guess. He was wiggling and getting a little fussy while we were there. Until his Daddy touched him of course- how sweet is that!


Just look how tiny he is!! I can't believe it!! I just think that's the cutest thing that he is so small. Not necessarily how ya want it, but if he's gonna come out early- it's fun that he's so cute and little. I'm really proud of Brent and Sarah and their courage to take on this new adventure. Really isn't parenthood just one spontaneous thing after another!! I know that they will be strong, and that this trial will only make them stronger. I love how they stick together through it. I love how patient Sarah is, and how much she loves her new son and her husband and she is willing to sacrifice for them. It's just really neat!! I'm so happy!! I had no idea how excited I would be for this day, but it was incredible!! I can't wait till Brent and Sarah can bring him home, I pray that his time in the NICU goes smoothly and that he can come home soon. I can't wait till Noah and he are buds and hanging out together at all the family things. (We'll make sure that big Noah doesn't pick on him Sarah :) jk.) Anyway- WELCOME, BABY CHARLIE, WE LOVE YOU!!!! CONGRATULATIONS, BRENT AND SARAH!!!

(The kids, Heidi and I spent quite a bit of time in the hospital- mostly just in this waiting room, thankfully they had a tv :) I am only putting this picture on here because of how funny it looks that Noah is looking at the camera and smiling :) cracks me up :))

Crazy Kids

My friend Andrea came, and we got out the slip-n-slide. What fun. The kids are nuts though- I have no idea what they were doing in this picture, but apparently just running and sliding down it is not longer enough :)

I just LOVE Charley's pose in this one! Kelly and Charley are totally buds, it's cute. Who woulda thought that our girls would get along so well. I'm glad :) Thanks again Andrea!!

Another First!

Noah started eating solids this week!!! YAY!! I'm really bad at following the rules and starting with JUST rice cereal. Mainly because none of my kids have really gone for it, but also because it's just so fun to feed them something yummy :)

I started him off with the rice cereal yesterday, he wasn't too thrilled about it. Which actually says a LOT because for the last week or so he has been TOTALLY interested in ANYthing I put in my mouth. If I'm holding him at the table he is reaching and grabbing for my fork every chance he gets. He's been ready to start for a while now. But the rice cereal just wasn't his thing. Then I tried mixing in some pears for a little flavor, but still nothing. So I was about to give up.


Today though, I tried just the plain pears (don't tell my pediatrician), and he LOVED it!! (of course :)) I did mix in a little bit of the peas, just enough that he couldn't taste them, and he was just going nuts!!

He really couldn't get enough!

Luke sat there asking for bites the whole time, so of course being the softy that I am, I let him have a few :) He says to me, "I wike dat baby food. Noah food yummy!" (I can't wait to surprise him with something that's not quite as "yummy" that will be fun :))

I was bummed to not have Nate here to enjoy the "first" but Kelly and Charity both made excellent photographers, as always, filling in for Daddy :).

He kept grabbing the spoon or my hand and like jamming it into his mouth!! I thought he was going to hurt himself. Or fall over.

And here he is eating the jar!

I just love these moments!! He's getting older. It's hard to believe that he's already old enough to be sitting up and eating from a spoon!! He's my baby!!

But how fun too. It's so funny to me that I still get all excited about these things when this is our fifth time to do this. And it's also funny to me that it feels so awkward and foreign to me when I've done this FOUR TIMES ALREADY! :) It's all good :)

I wish we had more pictures of him from the front :) He's so adorable...



How fun :) Thanks for letting me share these

89 Days, Watching Brad grow, Sunday, More Bugs, and 6 Months

I think we made this chain on Friday?? Can't remember, all the days are running together now :) But we made a chain to count down the days till Daddy comes home. The kids were all getting kind of confused as to when Daddy was coming home, and I thought this might make it a little easier to understand. Unfortunately Bradley still asks me if Daddy is going to be home when he wakes up. When we made the chain there were 89 days, and I think there are only 85 now?? I'm not sure, I'm not going to count them :) But you get the idea :) It is pretty long, even my Dad said, "That's a LONG TIME!" when he looked at it :) But yeah, it's nice, it will get shorter :)

But speaking of Bradley missing his Daddy. I keep telling him that Daddy will come home on his birthday, so today as we were walking through the store he tells me that "Daddy is going to bring me a cake." (deductive reasoning I guess) Then he said that when he eats his cake he is going to grow, and that I can "watch him grow when he eats his cake!" :) I had to laugh. He's so funny.

Also, I am happy to tell you all that I survived my first Sunday! WAHOO!! As most of you know Sundays were the days that I was dreading the most with this whole single mom thing, and so I was totally nervous for the day. Funny enough, I was actually shaking in the car on the way there (I'm not sure why, could just be my weird shaking disease, but anyway). Everyone in my whole ward (it felt like) asked me how I was doing and how things were going at home without Nate, and how he was doing. I couldn't believe it!! People I don't think I've ever even talked to cared. Normally this is not my favorite- I really don't like that kind of attention (do I like any attention? not sure, either way) but on Sunday it felt so good to know that so many people cared and were offering their help. So, I had all the kids ready and we got to church about 5 minutes early (yay for me :)). About 10 minutes into the meeting (near the end of the Sacrament) Noah totally let one rip (seriously it was loud, my friend across the aisle heard it and laughed- and that's saying a lot because our ward is not quiet!!) anyway, so it was more than a toot- and I could see it coming out of the back of his pants. I was wearing a white shirt, and did not want to risk letting it leaking out onto me, so I informed the older three that I was gonna go change him and to be reverent (not sure what possessed me to just leave them all there, I guess I knew someone would come to the rescue, plus I know that it only takes me 30 seconds to change a diaper ;), I ran out real quickly, and changed Noah, came back and nothing had happened!! All four of my kids were all sitting there peacefully. Talk about a miracle. Well, the rest of the meeting was somewhat uneventful (minus Kelly's little pout-fest, but that's something we won't go into) until Noah got hungry, so I did the unthinkable and nursed him in the Chapel during a talk. I'm pretty sure that nobody really noticed, but anyway- I was embarrassed. I just couldn't picture cramming all of my kids into the Mother's Lounge with all the moms, and the only other place I could nurse him would be in the foyer, and that didn't seem any less embarrassing. So anyway, when I was almost done nursing Noah the last talk was about half over, the boys started punching each other and screaming, so I decided we were done, and dragged the boys out with me. The boys and I spent the rest of the meeting in the foyer, and Charity came out and went back in a few times before she joined us. Kelly sat there "lonely" for about 5 minutes of the meeting. I guess it wasn't ideal, but really, I could picture it going a LOT worse. Plus, at the end of Sacrament meeting I was thinking about it and I realized how silly it was for me to stress about church being hard. I mean really! It's CHURCH!! The worst that can really happen is you end up in the foyer! Plus everyone there knew I was doing it on my own, and they were all ready and willing to cut me and my little ones some slack I'm sure. And really, everyone there was just so sweet about it all. I was relieved. Plus it hit me that- DUH!! The kids all go to classes the last 2 hours!!! It was a nice little two hour break to enjoy the meetings, and spend some fun smiley time with Noah. Couldn't have gone better in my mind. Oh!! and Bradley got to give his first talk this Sunday too!!! He did an awesome job!! I was so surprised that he just got up there and did it, no fear! He actually almost got bored :) and got a little figetty :) But I was so proud of him. I wish Nate could have been there to see it. He made me proud.

So anyway :) Was that too much info? Sorry. I'm just amazed. I have been really blessed I decided. And I'm happy to not be as stressed out for next Sunday! :)


So this is the latest craze with the kids, I keep finding these lists around the house with names of bugs, and then little check marks to mark off how many bugs they are finding :) It's so adorable I think. It says, "A list for Detektifs" and then all the bugs :) So cute!!


Noah turned 6 months on Friday and I didn't even mention it :) He's getting so big!! And so cute too. I just love this age, where they just love everything they see! Just tonight he was laughing his head off at some little random chanty thing that Charity was singing at him, it was so adorable! I still can't figure out how he does this- sleeping like this just looks awful, and then if only we could have captured the noise level at the moment- he's usually a light sleeper in his bed- guess I need to stick him in the middle of the room from now on for his naps :) I just love the little guy.

He really did it!

this is us at the airport- the kids had a blast watching the elevator and waving to everyone that got in :) It was way hard to pull them all away from their daddy though- hard for ALL of us!!

Well, it happened. He really went. I think I'm still in shock, but so far things are going okay. I just want to thank everyone who has offered support and words of encouragement....it means a lot to me. I know I'm not the first person to have their husband go somewhere and I probably sound like a baby even talking about this, but I can't believe how much I miss Nate. I never realized how much I really do depend on him. For dumb little things like locking the doors at night. It totally made me nervous when I did it and I couldn't stop running scenarios in my mind of how I would get all my kids out of the house if someone were to break in or if something else were to happen. I'm pathetic I know, but seriously!! Nate is really my everything! I won't even go into the empty bed problem! I never thought I would say this, but it was a huge blessing that Charity came up and slept with me. Craziness :) So anyway- thanks everyone for everything! I am done with my pitty party, I will tough this one out! I feel like Heavenly Father is really carrying me right now and I feel like things will be alright. Nate is doing well too!

I have a tendency to only think about myself and how hard this is going to be for me, but Nate's the one with all the pressure at this point. I know he will do great though, so it's not too much pressure ;) He was sworn in today, he is an official employee of the FAA now. He just has to pass this training, and then he will be working at the center here in Salt Lake. We're WAY excited to have it all done up to here- Nate's carrying the load the rest of the way- I'm SO glad that it's him and not me- he's much more dependable. Anyway- this should be interesting :)

Pictures with Daddy

Isn't my husband such a hottie!! I LOVE these pictures!

I wanted to take a picture of each kid with Nate so that they could hang them up in their rooms- they turned out pretty cute, so I thought I'd share them :)

Nate's last day

Wednesday was our last day together. I feel kind of bad because I had all these wonderful plans and ideas for Nate's last week, and things I wanted to do for him, and unfortunately, most of them did not happen. Time just flew by so fast. It was still fun nonetheless, and Nate says he has no regrets about it and he loved it, so we're all good :) Just means I will have to make up for it in packages later I guess :)
We really just played around a lot in the morning. The kids had Daddy help them look for bugs......etc. Then Jared and Paulette watched the kids for us in the afternoon so that we could go out on one last date (sounds like Nate was dying or something, it's just 3 months- not forever)- thanks again Jared and Paulette. And then we went to the park and had a McDonald's picnic and played around. It was really a good time. Good memories to hang on to.



Charity took this picture of us- I think she's really getting good :) Just a little blurry I guess.


Noah did his first time swinging in a swing :) He was loving it until his big brother Luke was helping push him.


It was hard to watch Nate and Brad have so much fun together- they're like best buds- I know Brad's gonna have a hard time with Nate being gone.









are these not the cutest pictures EVER!


One last time with the "dragon" taking them to bed

Noah's sitting up!!

I just LOVE this stage. I think it's adorable when they are able to sit up and just look around at everything. He's still a little wobbly, but that's cute too- the look on his face as he starts tipping over, "uh....mom!.....ya gonna catch me?!!!!!" Very cute. Anyway. He's growing up!