Best Buddy, Braydon

For the past five years, these two little boys have been best buddies. Although they are quite different in many ways, they love each other, will miss each other greatly. Besides cousin friends, Braydon was Garrett's first best friend. Many of Garrett's memories of the the past five years include Braydon. Sad day for Garrett.

All the good times are coming to an end, Braydon's family has moved to Seattle for work. But Garrett is not the only one who will suffer due to the move of the Hansens, Leeanne, Braydon's mom is one of my dearest friends in Manassas. She was my visiting teacher for years, and a true and caring friend. I always enjoyed seating on the Hansens front porch and talking things through with Leeann. Her wisdom and Christlike ways have inspired me to be a better mom, wife, sister and friend. Sad day for me.

Braydon's older sister, Tieona, and Shaylyn have been favored baby sitters among our children. We will all miss the friendship of the Hansen family tremendously, but wish them well on moving back to the west coast.

I love the many CRAZY faces of Braydon. This kid cracks me up. He can say and do the funniest things. Even though, he is half the size of Garrett, he wrestles him with no fear or hesitation.

Once again...

I have fallen behind in my blogging. So here come about six posts to cover the past month.

Grandma Hatch came out to watch the kids while Keith and I went to New York City for 4 days. I don't know who had a better time me, or the kids?

We stayed at the Hilton right off 5th Ave, so we had a great time shopping and walking Time Square, and Central Park, with very little exhaustion to me. As luck would have it, after checking out the Natural History Museum, I sat down on a bench to rest then got up, and walked away. Less than a minute later I realized that I didn't have my camera, but when we went back there was not sign of it. We checked inside, hoping that I left it in the Whale Room, which by the way does look just like the movie, Night in the Museum, but no luck. I'm bummed about all the great picture I had taken with my little powershot camera, but the camera took a dip in the ocean last year while we were at Outer Banks, and has never worked right since.

Therefore, no pictures of N Y.

Huge thank you to Grandma Hatch for watching the kids, helping with the quilt, and loving on the kids. Kendall cried the whole way home from the airport after we dropped you off, "I miss my Grandma."

On the way home....

We realized that we could just pull over in the empty parking lot at McCarthy Tire to see all the fireworks from our car. Taryn fell asleep so Keith pulled the other kids out, put their PJ's on, and put them on the hood to watch the show. As the fireworks ended, we hopped in our car and was home in ten minutes. Nice!

4th of July with the Beatty's

This year we once again had high hopes of going into watch the fireworks on the mall, but just could bring ourselves to do it. Between me being huge and pregnant, the heat, three small children that require a lot of junk, and the crowds, we decided to save ourselves the misery and stay closer to home. Thank heavens for good friends like the Beatty's who like to party and do it well. We joined in on their BBQ, slip and slide, pre-fireworks show, and overall good time.
Taryn had no fear trying out the slip and slide even with the many big kids cruising down the giant tarp. She probable figured she has nothing to lose with her arm already broken and it double use at a weapon.

Garrett enjoyed the fun, but as usual, Kendall avoided the crowds by staying on the swing set.

After dinner we enjoyed a little sparkle fun. We had to give Taryn a time out from the sparklers for trying to touch the hot end. She took it hard as you can see.

The Kunz family and cousins provided a fantastic pre-show for the kids in the street. As you can see my kids took a front seat and loved every minute.

HUGE thanks to the Beatty's for always letting us join in on the fun. Beatty's know how to have a great party. But due to my large size and general exhaustion, we decided to avoid the traffic and head home as the Signal Hill Park fireworks were just beginning.

Gone Fish'in

Last week Keith had the opportunity to go fish with some good friends of ours in Chesapeake Bay. Being the inexperienced fishermen that we are, we didn't know that the best time to fish in the bay is in the evenings, so Keith left at noon but didn't return until 1:00 am. He had a great time even though a pretty tough storm rolled in toward the end of the evening. Well, the kids were not please that Dad got to go fishing and they didn't. So the Warner's, our favorite family, invited us over for the fish fry and to fishing in their backyard on the Occoquan River.

Luckily Garrett caught a few fish right away so he felt satisfied and decided to explore the forest around the river. On his explorations he found goose feathers, and a toad. As usually he remained spotless throughout all his adventures.

Kendall on the other had didn't have as much luck. She tried a few times with Dad with no luck, so he had to bring in the professional, Mike, or as my kids call him, "Dr. Warner".

After much work, Kendall got the hang of it and began rilling in the fish. Even though she does look like she's having fun, she loved every minute and still talks about the "baby fishes"

Mike even talked her into touching one of the slimy things.

Mike and Tony even got me fishing. I didn't realize that fishing requires some skill. I kinda just thought that you drop the line in water and the reel it in and there's the fish.

Ports Discovery Children's Museum

We had planned to take a three day vacation up to Phillie, but with Taryn breaking her arm and the other crazy events of the past two weeks we decided just to do a manageable day trip. Lately I've been hearing from everyone how great the Ports Discovery Children's Museum in Baltimore is for my age children, so we ventured up for the day. We forgot to stop for a picnic so we decided on a car picnic in the parking garage. Good times!

The center of the museum is like a fun land, with games, a gigantic play center like the ones at McDonald's. Not very educational, but definitely entertaining for Garrett.

We decided to move on to the next floor were the kids LOVES practicing their cowpoke skills. Garrett was focused on roping the calf. With a little help from Mom, he had some success!

Kendall decided to learn from the video instructions. She followed them step by step, she even decided to add in sound effects like yelling, "Yaw-yaw!" Her Grandpa would be proud.

Although she wasn't trying, in the end the only thing she caught was Garrett.

Poor Tary-taryz was either too little, too much of a nuisance, or her cast could get wet, so she was confined to basically two playrooms in the museum. But she did love the balls, and games that were made available to her.

Besides the Egyptian room, the Water Works was the only other fun educational center in the museum. Garrett spent over an hour playing with these pipes. There was a small amount of water pressure so you had to channel all the pipes so that the water would flow the direction you wanted it too.

He was soaking wet, but had a great time.

He was so proud of his Water Works project. Garrett is going to love Science Fairs. I don't know how much I'm going to love them?

Next, Keith and Garrett decided to build a house with the Lincoln Logs. Garrett was quite proud of his creation, but.....

Taryn didn't quite have as much respect for the masterpiece. She's a Lincoln Log house's worst natural disaster.

Garrett wasn't too sad because Dad taught him how to launch logs across the room by making a catapult. I'm sure the attendent was loving that.

This one's for you, sis!

The purpose of this blog is to make my little sister feel good about herself. She recently posted the cutest picture of herself 25 weeks pregnant. You could barely notice her bump, and her arms and legs look great. Yes, I'm jealous, but happy for my sister. She works hard to look so cute. We were talking about our past pregnancies and the 'Hatch sister" view on pregnancy.

Which is, we, the Hatch girls, like to think that it's in our genes to be big pregnant women. Not true but it makes me feel good when people ask if I'm having twins or due next week. Nice! Anyways, most of us gain around 60 to 80 pounds with every pregnancy. I try not to complain to much, except for to Keith, about the weight gain, because we, are at least I, have easy healthy pregnancy, and happy healthy babies. With so many of my dear friends either not able to get pregnant to experience this choice blessing, or friends that struggle with difficult pregnancies and babies with health issues, I've decided to just to be grateful for this life in me and look up Weight Watchers in November. Wish me luck on that adventure.

So there you have it.

I tried the cute, sexy pose you used, which made Naomi, our babysitter, laugh while taking the picture.