Wanted: One maid. Willing to work for free....

So I have been on a creating spree. I am learning how to crochet and I LOVE it. It's relaxing, almost mindless and portable. It's almost the perfect hobby. I have made a hat, several pairs of beaded socks, and now I'm working on a bag and another hat. I guess I just have the itch to create! I just made the Easter dresses for my girls too. They turned out darling and they were super easy. I bought the pillowcase dress pattern from macymade on etsy.com for $3, the fabric and ribbon for $10, and little t-shirts to go under them for $3.50. That puts me under $20 for two Easter dresses. I think that's pretty sweet. The only problem I have is that I can't create and clean at the same time. It's times like these when I really wish I had a maid but I can only afford a free one. Any takers?? =o)

It's snow much fun!

Paige, Kaylie, and Kamber (Paige does not know how to take a picture without posing!)
The return trip of Porter's loop. See that look of terror on his face?

The maiden voyage.

Even the dog ran along.

Grandma Jo Bean is currently having a greenhouse constructed at her house by Uncle Skinny. He brought all the little girls with him to play with all my little ones. During the afternoon, the sun actually came out and so they all wanted to go out and play. Adam became the entertainment committee. He started up the 4-wheeler and hooked a calf sled to it and gave the kids rides around and around the pasture in front of the house. The girls loved it and wouldn't get off. Porter took one trip and half way through, he started screaming, "I'm scared! I'm scared!" He did eventually take a trip around with me holding him, but only if my arms were wrapped tight around him. (So much for my tough little boy! lol)

One year older and wiser too....

'Tis the season for birthdays at our house! Here are the pictures of the celebrations:

(The computer won't let me rotate any of them today so you get them as they are - sorry!)

The birthday boy ready to blow out his candle.

Riding his dino like a bull.

It's a dinosaur!

Brand new Wranglers from Grandma Jo Bean!

A football blankie so Daddy can have his back.

Getting started on his gifts.

A cowboy cake for my little cowboy.

The kids wanted to "eat" the candles off Adam's cake.
Porter actually took a bite. YUCK.

I forgot to bring candles so we dug in Adam's mom's cupboard. He wanted it as a '454' because it a good caliber gun and engine.

Sarah's favorite place in Grandma Jo Bean's kitchen.

The birthday boy and his cake.

Sarah did not like frosting on her hand.

Sarah's sweet Teddy Bear cakes.

Poor girl got sick on her birthday. You can see how flushed her cheeks are in this picture.

She was really not sure what to do with the presents.

The toothless wonder!

Paige finally lost her first tooth yesterday! I am so happy and sad at the same time. Happy because she has been having problems eating because of the tooth hanging on by a thread and sad because it means my baby is growing up! She lost it while watching TV. Apparently she was standing in front of the TV and wiggling her tooth when it popped out. She was so surprised that she just started hollering "MOM! MOM! MOM!" and when I found her she had this huge grin and blood streaming down her chin. The tooth is MIA. I don't know where it went but we're going to have to let the Tooth Fairy know the story in a note when Paige goes to bed tonight. She has not stopped grinning and had to call and tell all the grandparents because she is so proud to be so big! As you can see from the picture, lost tooth number 2 will not be long!

How many trips to the doctor can the Hatch family make in one month?

We are setting an unfortunate record right now. Someone in our family has had to go to the doctors office for something unusual for the last six weeks now! It all started with all three kids getting pink-eye on New Year's Eve. That is one heck of a way to ring in the new year! We went to Billings 48 hours later after we were no longer contagious to spend some time and celebrate the holidays with my family. It is always fun to see them. Adam and I got to go on a real date and go to the temple together, which had not happened since Sarah was born! Adam also got to go to Cabela's. While we were there at Cabela's, Porter started SCREAMING that his ear hurt. We ended up taking him to the Immediate Care place at the hospital and ta da! He had an ear infection. I got to spend almost an hour waiting at Walgreens for his prescription. The following week, I got to take Porter back to the pediatrician because it looked like the pink-eye was making a comeback. Then the next week, Adam started texting me at work that he was having a "gut ache" as he calls it and wanted to know if I had one too. I didn't. I asked where his pain was and he informed me that it was all over his stomach but mostly on his right side. I immediately started freaking out that it was his appendix. He wouldn't leave work to go get checked out but he did agree to go after work. Turns out it was a gall bladder attack but the nurse did yell at him for waiting so long to come in with lower right quadrant abdominal pain and told him to listen to his wife next time. (Thanks Nurse Kim!) A few days later Porter came down with a cough. I wasn't terribly worried about him. It just seemed like a typical cold until a couple days in when he couldn't stop coughing at night and started complaining of headaches. I got him in at the pediatrician's office. Turns out his oxygen level was low (in the 80's) and he had a 102 fever. They gave him a breathing treatment, steroids, and flushed one of his ears which was massively infected AGAIN. Finally, last night I was cooking dinner. I heard Porter start to cry but that's not anything abnormal with my three crazy children. It's probably more abnormal for them to be quiet. (In fact, Adam and I have discussed many times how incredibly stupid we were as children. We thought we were SO sneaky and we always got busted. How did our parents know?! Sneaky=quiet. It's such a dead giveaway! lol) Turns out that they were real tears. He had jumped off the arm of the couch and managed to split his chin open on my great-grandma's traveling trunk which now houses our DVDs. We got to rush to Immediate Care again. (You know it's bad when one fo the PACs come out the door to go home and wants to know what you're in for this time!) Luckily it wasn't terribly deep so we were able to get away with "liquid stitches" (why do they call super glue liquid stitches??) and a band-aid. The best part was how angry he was that they had no spiderman band-aids and had no sugar free suckers like they do at the pediatrician!! I do have a regularly scheduled appoint for myself next week but I'm really hoping that this is one streak we can put an end to!

How did Adam feel when his horse wouldn't cross the creek? He was crushed.

So last weekend Adam and his friend Mark Gough went for a ride (horseback) up by Gibson Reservoir with the intention of camping at Bear Lake for the night. They headed back in and got within about a mile of the lake before they had to turn around because the horses were belly deep in snow. (YIKES) They camped and goofed around for the night and intended to sleep in! Adam had been called in to work the night before they left and gotten home at 1 a.m. only to have to get up at 6 a.m. to leave. At 5:30 a.m., some bull elk started calling to their horses to see if they were cows and woke them up. (Adam swears that they must have been the dumbest elk on the face of the earth to think horses were cow elk!) All the commotion ruined their plan to sleep in, so they decided to just get up and get going, thinking that they could surprise the wives by being home before we were home from church. Not far from their camp they had to cross Bear Creek. They had crossed it on the way in and it was high but not bad The water had risen over night and now it was boiling. Adam and Mark both crossed easily but our dog Dixie was with and she couldn't make it all the way across. She was going about 3/4 of the way and then turning back and whining for Adam. He yelled at her to come but she just couldn't/wouldn't do it. He turned around and went back for her finally. Mark said it was the funniest thing to watch Adam dismount, put the dog up on the horse and then climb back up himself. Adam rode around for a minute to make sure everything was okay and then started to cross the creek. About two steps in, the horse decided it wasn't okay and started bucking. She flipped over backwards, pinning Adam in the creek with everything but his nose and mouth under water. The horse got wedged between a rock and the bank and couldn't get up. Adam couldn't move. As he lie there, he thought to himself about how much he was going to miss us. (He says that's a good thing because it means he's not afraid to die.) Mark pulled the horse up off him and got kicked in the knee in the process. The horses took off running. Adam and Mark looked for the dog for a few minutes but she was nowhere to be found. They are pretty certain that she got washed away. They had to chase down the horses and ride out. Adam got very banged up. He knew he had broken ribs as soon as he got up. He also had a bloody nose and lip and a black eye. He didn't believe Mark about how bad he looked, so he took a picture of himself just so he could see! They got phone service just as I was leaving church. Adam told me that he'd "come off Deuce and was pretty sure he'd broken a couple ribs" and asked me to come get him and take him to the ER. I was shocked at how awful he looked when I pulled into Mark and LaNeige's driveway. He was covered in dried blood, holding one arm to his chest, and slowly limping along. Not at all what I had pictured from his calm explanation that he'd "come off Deuce!" Mark and LaNeige watched our older two kids while we spent the rest of Sunday in the ER. Luckily he has no imajor injuries other than two broken ribs. He is doing as well as can be expected. I am so lucky to still have a husband. The only thing that saved him from drowning was a little scrubby willow bush that was exactly where his head landed. You can't tell me that's not a miracle. He and Mark have resolved to never again miss church to go riding. I think that's a good idea.

Memorial Day Weekend! (Camping and branding!!)

For the first time since we got married, Adam and I joined my fam for camping over Memorial Day weekend. We didn't get to go up until after church on Sunday because I had my first Sharing Time responsibilities but we still got to go! It was raining all morning long here and Adam, I must admit, was not incredibly excited about the prospect of a night in a tent. We camped at Jellison Place, which is about 26 miles north of Harlowton via some gravel roads. It was actually a very nice place with a very nice road for gravel! It was basically inhabited with ATVers, which was fitting since that's what the rest of my family was there for. It was cold there when we first got there and then started to rain. I put Sarah in a snowsuit. It was blue and said all-star but at least she was warm! My kids were very excited about sleeping in a tent. We got it all set up before the rain really hit but spent the evening socializing in my sister's camp trailer. It's so fun because the oldest four kids in my family are now married so it's like hanging out with a bunch of friends. Sleeping that night was not so much my favorite. Apparently after having 3 babies my hips do not appreciate sleeping on the ground anymore! I could feel and hear the snap, crackle and pop every time I moved! Paige and Porter woke up once each because they were cold but we got them tucked and snuggled in and they were fine. That was so much better than I expected! Monday morning the sun came out and warmed up the whole place. It was such a beautiful day! We ate breakfast with my mom, although I wish I had the hook-up like Ryan and Tove! Everyone invited them to eat with them so they took their plates from trailer to trailer and ate! It was so cute to watch the herd of cousins running around together! All the grandkids from Haleigh (5) down to Jordyn and McKayla (1.5) ran around, played in the dirt, threw the frisbee, took turns getting 4 wheeler rides, and just generally had a great time together, so much so that when we finally left that afternoon, Paige pouted for the first 30 miles and wouldn't even look at me! Adam left that morning to go black bear hunting down the road in the Crazy Mountains for a while. He came back early afternoon to report that he had seen two bears: one that he dubbed the meth bear because it was just a juvenile, super skinny, and had rubbed most of it's fur off and another that he saw the tracks (which were huge) but only caught flashes of through the trees. I am glad to know that my husband has some sense because he wouldn't pursue that big bear up into the timber because he was scared. We all ended up mildly sunburned but nothing major, just enough to prove we were outdoors having a good time! =o)

Tuesday Adam worked during the day but we branded that afternoong/evening at his mom's house. It was such a great time. Crystal requested earlier in the day that I bring my pasta salad because she was "having a powerful craving." Adam and Jerob roped, our friend Mark and Skinny wrestled calves for one set and they used the handy north fork for the other. I vaccinated for a while but then Miss Sarah got super fussy so I turned into a specatator the rest of the time. Our niece and nephew, Cydnee and Ty, eventually took all the kids but Kaylie back to the house to watch a movie. It was so amazingly helpful. Miss Kaylie just sat inside the fence for the well by herself playing in the grass and watching until we were almost done. At that point she told me she wanted out so I let her out. I asked her if she could go back to the house by herself but she told me no and took my hand, so Sarah and I walked back to the house with her. I stopped in the driveway and asked if she could do the rest by herself but she just looked up at me and said "Come on!" It was so cute. We ate a fabulous dinner and visited. Adam took me out for a four wheeler ride and actually taught me how to drive it. I can't believe I waited til 30 to try something so simple! It's not at all like the motorcycle my dad tried to teach me to drive! I think it also helps that my husband is such a patient teacher. I don't get nearly so stressed when learning new things because he stays so calm. Adam took everyone downstairs to watch the DVD he made his mom for Mother's Day afterward. It is so fun to see something he worked so hard on have such a powerful effect. His sisters laughed and cried through the whole thing. I have to admit that I still cry at least once or twice during it even though I've seen it 15-20 times now! It was such a great day.