A Great Big Thank You!

We have on our "to do" list to call each of you and thank you for your thoughtful and kind Christmas gifts, but the time just keeps ticking away. Although we do not want this to replace the phone call and verbal exchange between cousins, we do want to let you all know how grateful we are.
Derek, Britt, Ethan, Reid and Luke, the girls loved the bracelet's and we made sure to wear them as much as possible throughout the season. The calendar was the biggest hit. We have all looked at it many times and are extremely impressed by your talent. One question...what did you do to the picture of the girls in front of the BYU sign...no one (especially me) needs those extra 25 lbs. you added! Also, didn't anyone send you the picture of the grandparents and the kids that we took at Thanksgiving? If not...I'm sorry (Grandpa????).
Hannah took the book to school and read it to her class and although Snickers chewed several pieces (because they were always on the floor...Alec), we loved playing with the play-mobile nativity. The kids really need one that they can re-arrange and personalize! Thank you, Merry Christmas, We LOVE you!
Adam and Aly...Wow what an incredible job (and an amazing amount of time) you did on that box of FHE lessons. Thank you! We also love the great box they came in. Jason still thinks that the armor was sent to us by mistake...he just does not understand why you would send it in a great big box all by its self, and not wrapped...on purpose (Go figure, Jason!)! I Loved the great saying by the prophet, thank...You are always so thoughtful.
Connor, Shelby loved her swimming gear and felt as if it were so personal. What a nice job thinking of her. The pants are the best part. We have to admit to all of you that we decided to open cousin gifts early (to help the time pass easier) and we have already been to the pool and used that great gift...Love you, Connor...Thanks so much.
Preston, you know Hannah so well...as well as Santa does.! She absolutely loved the little bunnies and their accessories. Did you know that Santa was going to bring her the house and more furniture to go with your gift?...Wow you are so smart. She even took the baby Bunnies to school to show them to her friends. She LOVES little things. Great job and thank you so much, Preston. We love you.
Adin, Oh my, you hit the nail square on the head with Paige. She loves the art supplies and cannot put them down, even today, still.! Her favorite part was the locking diary. It makes her feel so grown up. She took it to school for show and tell and then wrote the name of the boy that she "loves" in it and locked it up tight. (A little, big sister influence, or what?) She wants to use the markers and stencils to write you a thank you note as soon as life gets a little less chaotic and messy. Thanks Adin, we love you.
Miss Mia, great job choosing a car that Alec can drive without help. How did you know that he loves cars so much!? He also got the Cars movie for Christmas and loves your gift even more, now! Merry Christmas, Princess...we love you!
Mom and Dad, well you know how much of hit your gifts were. The girls still dress the dolls for day time and bedtime every day and carry them every where they go. The novelty has not changed. On Christmas day, among the mess and chaos, Alec went into the study (where we stashed the extra "stuff" to make room for Santa) and dragged out his bead maze. Although he is not quite as amazed by it, he still plays with it every day. Shelby has used her I-dog almost every night to put her to sleep, but then I have to remember to turn the darn thing off, which is usually after I have already snuggled down into a warm bed. The weight bench is my project of the day. Jason is going to return all of the gifts we gave him (as usual) and I am spending the day putting that and my trainer together to be ready for Tuesday morning. The best gift was,of course, was the rock of remeberence. It snowed shortly after we placed it, but we dug it out so that we could see it every day. You are so thoughtful and do such an incredible job of remembering Tyson and Timmy in everything you do. Thank you so much, but especially for taking the time to come and visit us. We had a great time. Hannah only cried for two days!
We love you all!!! Merry Christmas!!!!
from the Richards'

A Christmas "storm" hits Saratoga Springs

We had a wonderful Christmas! Christmas eve seemed especially perfect...I think because we got to go to church and listen to some outstanding music and talks and then still have the rest of the day to do our normal traditions. I spent three days (non stop...as Shelby told our guests) cooking what ended up being a wonderful Christmas dinner. We set up 100 luminaries and shared the evening and nativity with Jasons parents, grandma and our neighbors. It was a really nice evening.
Then......Santa Claus made it here, to Saratogata Springs, in a big way. We were woken up at 7:12 by Shelby standing at our bedside. She woke up her sisters and their grandparents and finally our morning (only if it is his idea) child. And then we took "the walk" down to the family room. The biggest attraction was the three man tent that took up the whole room. (Santa must have thought it was smaller than that when he started setting it up.) The fake "matare" (translation fake guitar) was a hit with Paige. Hannah loved her drum set and sewing machine and Shelby was most excited by the designers world game she wanted and her american Girl doll. She completely forgot about the new bike because her dad insisted on putting it in the garage by 8:00 a.m. When she went to bed last night I had to remind her of it. We never got dressed all day...it was great! Jason was bombed with new clothes and I got a beautiful new, expensive robe, a vacuum (that I desperately wanted), and a trainer for my bike. Now all that is left of this Christmas day is a big mess...A tornado of a mess! We loved seeing all of your christmas photos and hope that your christmas was as pleasant as ours. Now, we plan to take a week to sit on our big bums and stay in our P.J.'s. We love you all!
(Hey Adam, how do you get your captions so nicely placed under each picture?)

Merry Christmas from the Micros!

Christmas Eve Walk

Check out more photos and a play-by-play of Christmas Day on the Hatch Family Blog. I'll put up more photos later, but I have to get back to playing with my kids, like I vowed I would do since I've "benignly neglected" them (as Derek puts it) for the past month, in order to complete Christmas projects.

A Continuation of our Christmas!

Connor took this picture of us walking with Mia.

Our Christmas walk was GREAT! We read Mom's story and it made us all cry. We talked about Tyson and Timmy for almost the entire walk. The weather was almost exactly like the story. It was a winter wonderland here in Colorado!

We all wore our Christmas best to church.

Christmas started early with a lot of snow and a lot of sledding in our own backyard. This is me with Adin and Mia.

We were outside sledding for hours!We started a new, messy tradition of decorating sugar cookies. It was a huge hit with the kids!

Christmas 2006 A HUGE SUCCESS!

Opening presents was, of course, the hit!

Mia loves her kitchen set, but thinks the sink is for a bath.

Our Nativity wasn't the most reverent one. All the boys wanted to be wise men. Mia didn't want to dress up at all. I was Joseph.

The Christmas Eve pajamas!

All 3 boys slept together in the guest room. NOT A GOOD IDEA! They loved it though. They decided to wake up for Christmas the first time at 1:30am. Next at 2:15, 2:30, and finally at 3:15 before actually sleeping until 7:18 am for the big deal.

Mia's 2!

The Big 2 started with some yummy frozen pizza! That was only the beginning!

We then had some princess cake!

Then, the presents. Mia got some princess dress up clothes that she had to have on even before she had finished opening the box. She started to strip down immediately to get them on!

Here's our 2 year old princess! Shoes and all. Too bad she's too tiny to walk normally.

SERIOUS WHITE CHRISTMAS

I made a mistake in not taking pictures yesterday when the snow was so thick you couldn't move. Colorado came to a complete halt on Wednesday afternoon and all day yesterday. I shoveled snow for 5 hour to get to the street! It was amazing. All the kids have been out playing in it, but we never took any pictures until this one of Connor in his snow fort. We'll get some more tomorrow when we're out sledding in it. We'll have a white Christmas for sure this year!

Connor wrote a comment in the blog below about Santa Claus (the one with the pictures of the micro Weaver's and Santa. He logged in under my name, but he addresses it to Ethan. I think you'll get a kick out of it. Make sure that Ethan reads it.

Also, Shelby we've been wanting to say something about your letter. We would love to do something again with you. You have to admit that dinner was awesome even if the hockey wasn't up your alley!

Grandparents escape snow arrive in Michigan

We are here. After a mad escape Tuesday night we drove the entire trip in rain, but without mishap. Fortunately no mishaps and a rather pleasant trip. We enjoyed a good story tape and even took time to visit. We did have freezing rain the first night going into North Platte, but we are here and the road is behind us.
Derek and Brit gave us their bed and we slept well.
Merry Christmas from Michigan.

Christmas...a love/ hate relationship

I asked Paige yesterday, "Why do we have Christmas?" She, of course, replied..."to get presents!" Oh where do we go wrong? Oh yes, it might have something to do with the questions we first ask them when the season arrives..."What do you want for Christmas...what can Santa bring...what can I get you...etc..." Then we spend every waking hour buying and buying and ignoring them...telling them to make their own snowman because Mommy is to busy for you! What a joyous and spiritually uplifting month December is...
Last night I finally got to my "last"...before the next... project (making four pairs of PJ pants...the lovely Christmas eve tradition (something Shelby told me, the other day, that we have none of)) only to find out that my sewing machine is on the fritz. I spent one entire day shopping for fabric ($60 later), another entire day tracing and then cutting out four patterns, only to find myself with this attitude and no way of constructing the bloody pajamas. Needless to say I was able to catch up on my blogging and wrapping...lucky me.
I hope that you are enjoying the holidays as much as we are! With love and Joy...Cami

by the way, check out the Hatch Blog for more pictures of the boys!

Microweaver Boys Believe in Santa!!!

...at least we're telling them they do. Actually, it's only Ethan that has issues... Reid has no problem believing, and he is excitedly awaiting the drum that he knows Santa will bring him. (His friend Kaden has several musical instruments and Reid knows the drum will make an excellent addition to their band.) And they told Santa to bring Luke cars, because that's what he loves.
The boys were more enthusiastic than they look... Luke was very nervous, so we just had to snap this photo as soon as we could.

Ethan asked Santa for magnets, but NOT Magnetix... he just wants the old fashioned horse-shoe shaped magnet. Which he should get, because he's been good and cooperative about this whole Santa business, despite his occasional lapses into realism. When I asked him the other day why he just can't believe in Santa, whom he can't see, like he believes in Jesus. He told me very emphatically that "It's easy to believe in Jesus, but Santa can't take presents all over the world in one night, and doesn't even start until midnight. I just need to know what's true, and what isn't true is nonsense." I'm not kidding, he said nonsense. He told me that if he grows up and doesn't know "what's true" he'll have kids and wake up on Christmas morning, and if he didn't know that there wasn't really a Santa, his kids won't have presents, because he didn't know he should buy them. So I asked him what he would do if he knew there wasn't a Santa, and he said he'd buy presents for his kids and put them out at night, so his kids would think there was.

So without admitting anything to him, I convinced him to only have these conversations with me when no one else is around.

Now I should get back to cleaning bathrooms or something.... if the house isn't clean when you get here today, Fred and Nori, I'm not the only one to blame (for blogging instead of cleaning).... Derek is still in bed!!! :)

Happy last-minute preparations!

The Family Fund

This year, we used the fund without any permission other than Mom and Dad. We're sorry. We should have asked for everyone to participate, but we had a great opportunity. There is a family that used to be in our ward. Their father actually broke into my office looking for drugs. I dropped the charges against him because I knew him. He is unemployed and is basically a drain to their family. They have 4 children and are really struggling to get by. When Dad and Mom were down here the other day we took some money from the fund and put it in a card to their Mother. We also bought a gift card for a grocery store. Alyson then prepared some stockings for each of the children and then Dad (being one of Santa's helper's during Santa's busiest time of the year) dressed up as Santa to make the delivery. It was unfortunate that the whole family wasn't there when the drop was made, but it was special nonetheless. Today, one of the girls from that family was babysitting our kids and told Alyson that Santa had come to their house on Sunday night and that the whole family just sat together and cried for an hour on how thankful they were (she suspects that we did it, but Alyson played dumb). We just finished doing "Secret Santa" for another family that is really struggling, the wife left her husband who is unemployed with two small children. We are truly blessed. During this Christmas season I would hope that we could all realize just how great we have it. Mom and Dad did a great job and were always able to supply us with not just our needs, but many of our wants. Even as we saw Tyson and Timmy struggle throughout their lives, Christmas was always a special time of year. We are very blessed and I love my family very much!

Tim's Headstone

Tim's headstone has been set and we have visited a couple of times. It was set last Friday evening and we found out about 10:30PM Mom and I went to the cemetary about 11 PM. We think it is great, hope you all agree.

The Last Couple of Days

This is a picture of Mia after she fell into the sink! Yes, the sink. We always tell her to get off of the bar. Now, she see's what can happen. She fell face first into the soapy dishwater.

Connor and Preston had their Christmas recitals yesterday and preformed magnificently.

Merry Christmas

Here is a sample of our breakfast with Santa event that we shared with Grandma and Grandpa during their visit.

Happy Holiday's from Utah!

Note to self: glue sticks look an awful lot like chap-stick and should not be left within reach of 1 1/2 year olds. (No need to worry, it was non-toxic.) Oh yeah, and those big black handled scissors should be put up, too.

Mia's Making Her Bed.

We couldn't find Mia yesterday and so we went downstairs and found that she had made herself a bed on the coffee table.

Happy Holidays!

We hope you're enjoying your holiday season as much as we are! Derek did an excellent job setting up our village under the tree this year. Luke probably wouldn't even mess with it if his train didn't occasionally derail behind the Christmas tree-- I caught him with the church in his lap the other day, only because he was trying to reach the train. :)

Luke was watching the Polar Express with us the other morning in the (freezing cold) basement while Derek ran on the treadmill and I biked. See, we are trying to teach our kids to "Believe"!
Ethan and Reid played out in the snow today with their friends, Jacob and Chase. They built 7 snowmen-- snowpeople, I should say-- from left to right; Frostina 1, 2, 3, Frosty, Baby Danny, Roger, and Custard. :)By the way, Alyson, Mia, Cami, Shelby, Hannah, Paige-- I don't know if Derek ever told you, but you should open your little felt gift bags now. (Grandma Nori, yours is coming... it's in progress!)

Also, you should have opened the family gift that he brought to you. We hope you enjoy them this month!

Three out of three ain't bad!

Connor has had 3 opportunities to be on the honor roll and has done it each time! This time he was one of only 4 kids to get the honor roll. Once again he had to pull it out in the end, but proved that when it comes to finishing strong, he's second to none!

Happy Birthday Dad!

I just wanted to wish my very best Dad ever a happy, happy, happy birthday! I posted a couple of the recent pics of Dad and then a couple that I love. The one of Dad and me is at the Ironman and I love it! Have a great one Dad!

Happy Winter!

Sorry I don't have photos uploaded from my camera yet, but I wanted to write a quick note to say hi and that we are not ignoring you all. :) I'm just trying to "finish" my Christmas tasks, and keep up on the house work, which as you all know, is never done, especially with three boys who are building forts in every nook and cranny (we took one down last night which was entangled in some little Christmas trees and a nearby book shelf.) Not to mention the garbage bag full of junk that I cleaned out of Ethan and Reid's room today (I've become very skilled at doing this without them knowing exactly what I'm throwing away or giving away). I felt very proud as I dropped off a large load of "stuff"-- old toys and Christmas decorations, mostly-- at the Salvation Army this afternoon. I was careful to pull the car up far enough past the entrance so that Reid couldn't see what I was taking in-- that was a huge disaster that ended in tears for Reid and guilt for me-- was I really such a bad mom for giving away a junky basketball hoop that Ethan dragged home from the neighbor's garage sale that they NEVER ended up playing with?
We got over a foot of snow dumped on us on Friday, which was perfect and beautiful as we decorated the house Saturday and Sunday. Fred and Nori, you can count on a white Christmas! You'll feel like you're driving to the North Pole when you make your way up through the state.
Derek got into the spirit of things and went shopping for me yesterday. True to form, he was too excited to wait to give me my present until Christmas, and insisted that I had to have them now because I need them. So I conceded and let him give me my gift, which I was very impressed with-- a cute pair of tall suede/furry boots-- and I didn't even tell him to get them! Thanks, honey!!!
Speaking of husbands buying their wives gifts, Adam, Derek says you're stumped on what to get Alyson, but I have a GREAT idea for you... so great, in fact, that I wonder if she's already bought it. :) So call me or Derek if you want the idea. You heard about the laminator Derek gave me last year... I loved it! You have to get into the head of a female, I guess. That's where Derek's training in OB comes in handy. Ha ha
We watched the Christmas Devotional at home on Sunday, and Ethan and Reid did a great job paying attention. However, I don't think President's Faust story had the intended effect on Ethan. You might have heard the story that he told about a single mother supporting her 6 or more kids working night shifts trying to make ends meet, and then on Christmas Eve, finding her car filled with gifts for her children. When Ethan heard that, he blurted out, "See! It proves Santa isn't true! Even a prophet said it!" Now don't worry, we aren't encouraging his rebellion to believe! We refuse to give in to his logic and we've been watching the Polar Express among other Santa stories and are going to see Santa this week, to avert last year's disaster. We're hoping to have this childhood issue resolved by next year so he won't corrupt any of your children (or any of the rest of ours.) :)
Now, back to my Christmas projects!

Decorating the Christmas Tree

I, personally, was getting bored of Derek's car. Besides, Derek never even responds! We have had our tree up for a week, but just put the ornaments on. There was a lot of debate as to which ornaments deserved to be up front and which ones had "back of the tree" status. The kids and the parents seem to disagree a lot on this. So, we let them put them wherever they wanted and Alyson changed them this morning to where they SHOULD be.