The Results are in...

Okay, so apparently my sneaky tactic didn't work...shameful. It is a good thing we told our parents and siblings or they would have never known! Of course, I am talking about the newest (well, still in development) little Bowen member. I thought I was going to be so clever and with just a few minor adjustments to our blog everyone would know what we were having. Sad thing is, I told Kadon what we were having and then I told him to check the blog and he still didn't get it...bummer. So, here is the hint: WE CHANGED THE COLOR OF OUR BLOG!! - FOR A SPECIFIC REASON!!
Dang it! Once again I am too clever for my own good. So, now to just spit it out: our blog is baby blue because we are expecting a new little baby boy come February. Sorry for the delay.

Takin' time to "Chillax"

After Cooper's fairly rough day today, he decided to take a break and chill-ax. It was just he and I, sitting back, watching some food network while waiting for apples to be soft enough for the strainer. I happened to glance over at him and had to catch it on film. Take a peek at my adorable little boy!

Brave Boy

My little Cooper got his shots today. He had to get 6 of them, which, unfortunately meant 6 different pokes. He handled it much like you would if you were a 14 month old baby boy getting poked 6 different times while your mommy held you down as you screamed in pain and terror. Yeah, it was sad. However, the saddest part was something I hadn't anticipated: Kameryn. Now that we live in our new place we are within walking distance of almost everything in town (Yeah!) including the health department. We purposely scheduled Coop's shots at 10 am so we could make it in time for "lap sit" at the library (which no one attended besides us ... Gwen....) So, of course it was only natural for Kami to accompany us. (Plus, Brandon is in harvest, so we currently don't own a father/husband.)
Well, poor little Kameryn just about died when Cooper got his shots. The second he let out his first blood curdling scream and she got a grasp of what was happening she came running. "Mommy, please don't let her hurt my Cooper brother!...I don't want my Cooper brother to cry!" It was heart wrenching. I had my little boy laying on my lap, with his big blue tear filled eyes looking up at me, pleading with me to save him. And my little girl pleading with me to save her brother from his pain. When I explained to her why he had to have the shots, she laid herself down on the floor and just sobbed. This was one of the hardest and most touching things I have experienced with my kids. I was shocked by Kameryn's sense of protection, and intense love that she holds for her little brother. I knew it was there, but the intensity with which she fought for him and mourned with him surprised me. Being a mother is awesome!
This whole experience also made me reflect on my relationships with my siblings. I know I would fight just as hard to save them from their pain as Kami was with Coop. Being a sister is awesome too.
Oh, and of course, as these things always go, in a matter of 5 minutes all was forgotten and Kami was promising to come back and see the nurse in a couple weeks. So no hard feelings.

Ultrasound

We have our ultrasound on Thursday morning. Check our blog for updates. We are excited because for the first time I don't know what we are having. I am excited to find out and definitely happy for whatever the outcome is. Anyway, check back about Thursday afternoon.

Pretty Girl

So there is always a first time for this, and our first time happened on Saturday. I was taking care of some very neglected dishes and thought, mind you, that my children were happily playing with the toys I had gotten down for them. Even though they were extremely quiet, I just assumed they were deep in thought.... (Yeah right, I know all you mothers are laughing at me right now, but really, Kami has been really into quiet play lately.) Anyway, I was almost done with my dishes and had to take something into my bedroom, that is when I came upon her, smiling in all her splendor. Take a peak:

I have two things for which I am very grateful about when it comes to this scenario: 1 - she made relatively little mess. 2 - despite the fact that I no longer own blush or mascara, I am very grateful that I just bought a whole lot of makeup for a dollar (www.eyeslipsface.com) Hopefully it comes fast, seeing that mascara and blush are about the only makeup I wear. (Which is probably why those are the only two things Kami got into.) I really am fortunate, it could have been much worse. And, look at her, she looks absolutely adorable!

Welcome, twice

I am sorry to inform you that from now on you will have to grin and bare your teeth because every time I save up my pennies (and sometimes my energy) I am going to be posting a blog similar to this one; a blog all about my decorating adventures in my new house. Unfortunately for some (mainly my dad) the majority of all my decorating endeavors will have been inspired from something I have seen in a pottery barn catalog.

It doesn't take a close friend to realize that I have an obsession.... (with pottery barn) so here goes: my latest decorating masterpiece, inspiration courtesy of PB. I have entitled it - Welcome, twice.

I have included my "inspiration piece" so you all could delight in it, as I did. I didn't take a pic from out front because I got busy and then it was dark and I wanted to post this right now! By the way, many thanks go to Gwen for picking up my "supplies" for me. I hope you are happy with the end result. I know I am!

Messy Man

This is just a post for all of you sitting back in your chairs saying, "Oh, I remember when Cooper was such a messy eater. I wonder if he is still that way?"

So, I am totally teasing because anyone who knows my son would not be asking that question. But just in case you are...here is your answer:

Nope, he's not.

(The best part about this photo is that the majority of this mess is on the surrounding areas)

Growing Up

It is amazing to me how quickly my little ones are growing up. It is exciting, yet saddening. Kami is getting so tall, she is outgrowing her shirts, and I just gave Cooper a "big boy haircut" last night, with the clippers. I cut off a good 2 inches. He has already had more hair in his young life than Kameryn has had in hers. Sad... But he was such a big boy, he sat right down and remained still. I couldn't believe it.
Kameryn is still amazing me with all of her little sayings. She is so cute. The problem is, she says so many cute things, I can't keep up with her. I think what it is is that she is getting so big and so her vocabulary is trying to take on "big kid" phrases, but she is still a little girl and so sometimes she misinterprets them. That is when it is cute. Also, her logic makes me laugh. She just brings so much joy to my life. The other latest Kameryn news, she absolutely loves pasta. Every meal she begs me if we could have noodles. She also loves puppies. She has taken on an alter ego as a puppy. She is so silly. Makes me laugh. It also makes me wish we could get her a puppy. But, at the same time, I am not so sure I am ready for that responsibility...we'll see.
Cooper has started a new phase in his boyhood: pestering. It is so funny. He will climb up on your lap and stick his bum in your face and just laugh and laugh. He thinks he is so funny. You push him away and he is right back up there, giggling. When we went away for our girls night Brandon said Cooper was the worst. I just laughed. He totally gets it from him dad. He just thinks it is so much for to pester and torment. Totally Boy, and oh so cute. I don't know what it is, but I feel like he's not my little baby anymore. He is getting so big. Everyday he gets more and more like his daddy, both in looks and personality. Just one of the reasons I love him so much!

Pirate Day

So, this is totally lame...but I just found out that today is Talk like a Pirate Day. Savvy. (By the way, totally love that word. I think it may be my new favorite.) Anyway, I just figured that since I spent about 6 weeks being a pirate last year, it is only natural that I should be one to embrace and celebrate this day. I probably won't go around talking like a pirate. (I don't do "accents" very well.) But, at least I can pass on the info.

Things to Love

Recently we have had a smattering of things to love about our new house. Here are the promised pics.


I know these first few pics don't mean anything to the majority of you. But we are so excited. Here is our new furnace, air conditioner, thermostat, and gas line. Yeah for us. We also got new duct work, but I spared you guys having to look at those pics. Just know they look great!

Now, here are the pics I know you are all dying to see! Ignore that not completely void of mess in the closets and admire the handy work. I don't know what I would do without these shelves and I send out a special thanks to my family for all the work they did for me to bring me these. I'm sorry we are lacking a pic of my new garbage disposal (be jealous Gwen because it is beyond enviable. It is better than you could even imagine.) but, I just canned apples today and I am not all about cleaning my sink out just to take a picture. So enjoy these others:

My beautiful front door. My game/coat closet


My master closet. My new shelves above my toilet


My washroom shelves.

One last thing that I love about my new house (I love a lot more than one more thing, but I will only mention one more in this post) MY DISHWASHER!! It is the best ever. The "layout" is wonderful and it cleans like a dream.
Go our new house!

The Big Debate

Here is the "quarrel" going on in our household right now: what to do about the trim on the front of our house. Let me back up a a bit. Brandon and I have NEVER been fans of the trim color of our house, or our house in general. The trim is blah beige/cream/blahness, and our house is white. We do not have a problem with white, our problem is with the paint job, it should have had 3 coats, it got 1, so it looks dingy. Plus it's old. We would like to replace the siding, but that is definitely a job for down the line, what with all the other actually mandatory improvements we need to make.

Well, on Friday I got adventurous and painted the front door. I will accept no opinions on the color because I LOVE it. So don't offer them unless you agree with me. (Brandon likes the color too, so this is not our debate.) The problem is, our front door is almost entirely obscured by the hideous screen door...it, however serves a purpose, so it can't go. It is also in great shape so replacing it is out of the question. Anyway, the color pop to our house from our front door was a wonderful surprise, however, it's impact wasn't great enough and so we decided (this was a joint decision, mind you) to paint the sidelights flanking the door.

Unfortunately, that is where we ran into a snag. First of all, Brandon is a terrible painter and will not be allowed to participate in painting anything I care about from now on. Besides that, after standing back to assess our work, Brandon decided it looked funny. He thinks we should now paint all of our trim. The problem is, all of our trim connects out front, and around the whole house, and I do not want to paint it all teal. That leaves us with the dilemma of what color to paint our trim...while still leaving our house white. AAGH!

Here are the picture. I made sure to take a pic with the screen door open so you could see the full impact of the color change. The other picture is a before pic so you can compare the before and after. (Sadly, at seeing this, our lawn looks worse than it did before, but trust me, up close it looks a lot better)

I have now come to the conclusion that we will NOT be painting all of our trim. (due to cost, labor, and frustration) However, we are excepting comments on how to possibly enhance our current work with minimal cost/effort. Anyway, let us know what you think, and join the big debate.

Whew!

Do you ever have those days that have you running ragged and when you finally have a chance to sit down all you can think to say is "whew!" Yeah, that's how today has been. I am finally sitting down and all I feel like doing is crying. Not because I'm sad, but because I am SO tired, and I'm still not done. I figured it was time for a blogging moment.

I know I probably mention this every time I mention my husband's name, but, still the same, I have the best husband EVER! Guess what he helped me do today.... can apple pie filling. I don't know what I would have done without him. He ran the apple peeler/slicer while I chopped, made sauce, cleaned jars, etc. Seriously, I would have broken down had he not been here to help me. The best thing, he does it willingly and even volunteers to help me.

So, check out our extremely good looking quart of apple pie filling (Which I might add, all 16 quarts sealed!) Brandon asked me why we had to do so many quarts, I told him it was because it takes 2 every time I make cinnamon rolls. (If you have never had cinnamon rolls with apple pie filling, you really should try it. FABULOUS!)

Also, funnest thing ever, if you notice, I had to take my picture on our BRAND NEW CACHE COOKER/CAMP CHEF!! So excited to own one of these. Brandon had a $40 gift certificate to sportsman's warehouse. So we got our cache cooker for $40.

Now time for our next picture. Here is the front of our house; notice anything missing? Those ugly, hideous monstrosity spider bushes/trees! I am so happy they are gone. I hate those things! They actually pulled out remarkably easy. They must have known they had no choice. So excited, every time I drive past my house (which has been 2 times now) I breath a sigh of relief. It looks so much better!

New, New, New

As we start life in a new house we are confronted with a lot of new things. We have a new ward, new neighbors, new callings (Brandon is the new young men's president), new piano students (I am now up to 9 or 10. YEAH!!!)... And, then there is the "happy" new messes, new expenses, and new confusions.
I am still opening all the wrong drawers and forgetting all the things I thought I knew (like the fact that we were out of toilet paper) These things I guess get lost among the shuffle of moving and settling. Luckily for us, we had so much help with the moving part that all we have to worry about is the settling. The saddest thing for me has been the realization that just because I have a new house, all my old messes haven't miraculously vanished. I am still the same messy person. That's a bummer. Good thing something like that can be changed. I start flylady tomorrow.
Fall is a busy time as well for us, and so all the new has to take a side step to all the current I guess you could say. Our house, which basically just means me and the kids, are sick with a cold. It is canning time and we canned jam for the first time all by ourselves the other day. (We've canned many times before, just not solo) We got apples from Brandon's parents and plan to do applesauce, pie filling, and apple butter, come tomorrow. I am excited for that!
All of the new in our lives is wonderful. Except...we do miss our old neighbors just a bit. Our neighborhood, however, is great! We can walk to the park and library in under 5 minutes, which we all love. Our new ward is promising to be nice. We are excited to LOVE it. Another, and might I add the current best new in our lives, is our bedroom arrangement. Since the two rooms are so close and our two munchkins are sharing a room, Kameryn Grace has been going to bed and sleeping through the night all by herself! GOT TO LOVE THAT!!
More updates and pictures to come as time allows. (I did find one of our two cameras....I just keep forgetting to pull it out of Brandon's truck)

Movie Moment

Do you know how in movies there is always some idiot who adds too much soap to the laundry therefore creating a huge mess of soap and bubbles and a slightly hilarious cliche comedic moment. Yeah....so yesterday that huge idiot was me. I went to wash my sheets and had placed them in the washer then reached up on my brand new wickedly awesome washroom shelves for the laundry soap. Well, sure enough I dropped it and the whole container of laundry soap dumped into the washer. AAGH!! I actually screamed for Brandon and he came rushing back, probably thinking a shelf had fallen down on me. Luckily for me, I was being neglectful and hadn't started the water in the washer like you are supposed to before you add the soap. So Brandon just scooped all the soap back into the container. It just made me laugh. Such an event could only happen to someone as awesome as myself.
P.S. I just have to search for my cameras and then I can post pictures of all the wonderful things my dad and siblings did for me this weekedn. You won't believe your eyes. You will be so jealous!!! I just have to find my cameras....

From the Mouths of Babes

Honestly, everyday Kami says the craziest things. However, whenever she is around my family, these funny little phrases seem to multiply. Here are a couple from this weekend:
My brother, Kadon, did something that apparently needed apologizing for. Kameryn looked right up at him and said "What do you say?" Kadon said excuse me. Kameryn then corrected him "My mommy says you say 'excuse me please' and this is my mommy's house." I have no clue where she grew to be so sure of herself but it makes me laugh.
Next one, my parents left to go home Kameryn kept mentioning her Grandpa and how much she loved him, whether or not he was following her back to her new house, and that she was going to beat him. However, as she was saying her grandpa's name she kept saying "my black grandpa", or "my grandpa black" It took me a while to figure out she was saying black and grandpa together like it was part of his name. I looked at her and said, "Kami, do you think your grandpa is black?" And she said yes. It must be because my dad has such dark skin and she has been talking a lot about what color people are because her Uncle Jami is going to buy her a brown puppy the color of her uncle Kadon. But she says it would be okay if he bought her a black puppy like her mommy. (She thinks my hair is black) So, I guess she thinks my dad is black.
She might also be getting confused when we say Grandpa Hatch. She might think "Hatch" sounds a lot like "black" Either way, I guess now we have a Grandpa Tractor and a Grandpa Black/Black Grandpa.

Moving In

So Brittany thinks she is too cool for blogging right now; so I, Kadon Hatch, her wicked awesome brother, am blogging for her. The main reason for her lack of blogging is because she has been moving in to her new house. It is a pretty nice house, an upgrade from a trailor with out a doubt, so I guess I am pretty happy for her.
When my family and I got here on Friday night most everything was moved in. Jamsion, Jeron, Mark and I helped move in the rest of the big stuff on Saturday morning and since then we have been unpacking and reassembling all of the Bowen's stuff. Everything still isn't put away, but the stuff that isn't is just in the basement, so in a sense it is kinda put away.
This morning we went to the trailor and cleaned up all of Brittany's mess. It only took a couple of hours but the fumes from the cleaning supplies kind of gave me a headache. Kami was a good help scrubbing the floors and walls. The nastiest thing was all the dead flies on the ground and all the fly crud on the walls nad baseboards and junk. It took some hard core scrubbing to get all the poo off, but it made the trailor look better.
Right now everyone is putting away the last of the stuff at the new house while my dad is building shelves and I am doing Brittany a huge favor by letting the world know that she is not dead and blogging for her. So yeah that is pretty much it, I hope you all enjoyed the update from Brittany's favorite brother Kadon.