A Special Day

Grace got baptized today! It was a very special experience for her and for our entire family. Since our lives got a little rearranged with moving, we had to rearrange the day that Grace was getting baptized too. Our stake likes to have all the child of record baptisms done once a month, but that date was after Matt would be gone to start his new job, so we were able to get special permission to have her baptism done today. That meant that we had to arrange everything as well. We did get to learn how to fill the font and that was a new experience for us. Grace was so excited and just glowed afterwards! It was great to have lots of our family share this day with us as well.

Grace and her Dad

Grace with Grandma and Grandpa Murray

Grace with Grandma Hatch

Three of my four girls - Sarah was a little hard to catch today!

10K

I have to admit that I am pretty impressed that I was able to run 10km this weekend in only 1hr 2min! My sister-in-law convinced me that we could do this and I very reluctantly agreed. I did a little bit of running a couple of years ago, but last year I was very pregnant and sick with pneumonia so there was no running for me. I was so grateful for Sheri and her encouragement and commitment to this run. I know that I wouldn't have done this on my own. What was really great was that my sister's Melissa and Rachel ran too! I had such a great time running with them and accomplishing this together. I was so sad that I couldn't find Sheri before the race started and we weren't able to run together, but our times were within 5 seconds of each other - we really did have the same pace which was great for our training. We never needed any music to listen to because we were always able to spend our runs chatting with each other. What an awesome bonus to have a sister-in-law that is such a great friend too!!

Melissa, Rachel and I before the race - - I'm the hottie!!


There were so many people there! It took us about a minute just to get over the start line!

Sheri, myself, Melissa and Rachel at the finish line!

Thomas ran the race too.

Melissa, Rachel and I showing off our medals.

Yup - they're real!!

It was such a great experience for me - I think I might be hooked!! Can't wait for the next one!!

Such is life....

I felt that I had to take a few minutes and record what has been going on in the last couple of days. On Thursday night we had a viewing for our house. I was called at about noon and told they would be there at 5:45pm. I worked really hard cleaning everything up and finishing a few last minute projects. In the mean time, Anna wasn't feeling very well, and ended up throwing up twice..... on the carpet in the family room!! I just got her a bucket, cleaned things up and kept on going, poor little thing. The rest of the kids watched TV/movies ALL afternoon. They didn't seem to mind, but in the back of my head I did feel some guilt, but such is life sometimes. 5:30 rolls around and I am loading all the kids into the van. I had talked to Matt earlier and planned to meet at IKEA for dinner - at least I didn't have to cook! I got everybody in the van, but didn't see Anna. She had crawled into her bed and was fast asleep. I had to wake her up and put her in the van (with another bucket!) and we met Matt at IKEA. I told him he would have to take the other kids in and I would stay with Anna, but then we decided to just go through a drive-through and eat at a park. By the time we had gotten our food and gotten to a park, it was starting to rain, but the time frame the Realtor had given us was up anyway, so we just went home and ate supper there!
Later that evening, one of the kids said that the lights wouldn't work in the bathroom. Well, the lights in the bathroom, one bedroom, hall, kitchen, one light in the family room, downstairs hall, and one plug in the front room weren't working either. So random!! We figured we had a breaker that was tripped, but everything was ok there. We had a friend come over Friday morning and test the breaker panel, and everything was working fine, so then we figured we had a short somewhere along the line, the problem was finding it! We searched and searched, took all the light switch covers off and took down all the lights, to try and find this short. By 11pm we were exhausted and had finally lined up an electrician that was a friend of a friend to come in at 10am this morning. He wanted to come at 11am, but during all the searching, we had another call to have another showing at 11am today!! Needless to say, we were a little stressed.
As we crawled into bed, I reached for my scriptures and told Matt to find a good one for us. He flipped them open and it opened to Alma. One of the scriptures that was highlighted was Alma 37:6 - "Now ye may suppose that this is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise." I went to sleep with a prayer in my heart that everything would be ok.
This morning, the electrician knocks on my door at 9:30am and by 10am he was cleaned up and out the door!! The plug-in that was behind the couch (which we never thought to check) had a loose wire which shorted out all the other lights and plugs down the line. It needed a new outlet, which I just happened to have in my garage, and everything was back in business. I asked him how much I owed him and he said $20 - which I gladly handed over!
I feel so very blessed, and I know that everything will be ok. I have been really worried about selling our house, as our last experience with selling did not got well at all, and I have been worried that I will be here by myself for a long time without Matt as he has to start work in just over 3 weeks. I saw a little quote on a friends blog that has lifted my spirits. It says: "Everything will be OK in the end. If it is not OK, it is not the end." I know I am being looked over and everything will be taken care of, and for that I feel very blessed!!

Hatch Family Reunion

We travelled to Cherry Grove on the August Long Weekend for the Hatch Family Reunion. The kids all had a blast and enjoyed getting to know all their cousins again. Here are a few pics!

Matt and his Grandpa having breakfast - it must be too early in the morning!

Matt spent some quality time with his cousin Rachelle getting a haircut, and of course spent quite a bit of time playing horseshoes too.

Anna had a ride on the miniature pony there.

Gideon was in heaven -- He was headed over to the pony any chance he got!

Face painting for the kids

Making homemade ice cream. Gideon and Sarah shared a cone.

Time for a nap!

Grace and a cousin with their loot from the fishpond!

Candy Cannon!! Uncle Al called the kids out about 5 or 6 times for a candy cannon. They would all follow him down the road, and gather together for the countdown. Then he would shoot the candy up in the air and they would scramble to get as much as they could - it was fun!!

Grace spent some time doing crafts - and I was actually there too!!

They set up their famous waterslide that has been to about 9 family reunions. Anna was brave and went down many times. There were smaller pools for the little kids too.

Saturday night they counted 275 people for dinner - it took a lot of meat to feed everybody. Especially the teenagers!!

No family reunion would be complete without bottle rockets!

Or fireworks

Or playing with fire!

We really did have a fun time and it was great to visit with everybody. Looking forward to the next one!

Grace got her cast off!

I just thought I would share a few pictures of Grace - I meant to add them when I wrote about her broken leg, but never got around to it.

This is Grace at her last day of school with her Grade 2 teacher, Mrs. Dochuk. Grace really enjoyed being in her class and she was an amazing teacher!

This is the loot she got from the parent council at her school and a picture that she drew.

There was so much to keep her busy!

Grace got her cast off on Wednesday this past week. She still can't put any weight on it and it still looks pretty crooked, but the doctors assured me that it will continue to heal and straighten out. It is amazing how much muscle you lose after 6 weeks!

Before and After

It has been a really LONG week. After we made the decision for Matt to accept the job in Lethbridge, we left and went camping for the long weekend (pictures coming soon!). We came home on Sunday night rather than Monday, and started working our tails off!! We decided that our house needed a little bit of a facelift, so we painted all three bedrooms upstairs, and moved all the furniture around to stage things a bit. We took a lot of stuff out to the garage to try and dejunk a bit, cleaned the carpets, washed the walls, etc, etc, etc. I thought I would compare the before's and after's. The before pictures are just after we moved in, and the after's are 3 years later.....