Summertime and the living's easy . . .

Today is my last day of class until August. I have been taking classes not stop since I met Alex. And now, I get a little bit of a break. Yay. I took a couple of writing classes the last two weeks that were just wonderful, really helped me to expand my writing. On the down side, they were all day, every day. I feel like I've hardly been able to see my family. Thanks to Colleen for taking such good care of us these last two weeks, though.
Graham is getting so big. He is crawling and standing, and he thinks that he can walk too. He'll get up to the couch or the chair, stand there, then turn to make a run for it. Sometimes he falls; sometimes he catches onto one of us. That boy is active. We can hardly keep him still long enough to change his diaper.
Alex is working at the Water Lab again this summer, doing some research. He will also be taking class starting in June. He's done a great job taking care of our garden, which looks fab.
So, just a quick update to let you know we're still kickin'. I've included a picture of the dude. Look at that face!

April Fools'

This is how Alex woke me up this morning,

Alex (incredibly serious face): "Laura, a car just slid down the hill and hit into our car."

Laura (nearly jumping out of bed): "Are you serious?"

Alex (jovially): "April Fools'!"

Needless to say, April Fools' is less than my favorite day of the year. I unknowingly played an April Fool's joke on Graham, though. This is what he wore to bed last night (plus some more pictures; it's for fun); he's grown out of nearly everything else. Merry Christmas!




Also, I thought I'd share a recipe. We had this for dinner last night. It was an experiment that turned out to be delicious. Enjoy.

Green Chile Soup

Rice (3/4 c dry rice + 1 1/2 c water)
1 large chicken breast, shredded
1 can chicken broth
1 can green enchilada sauce
1 can diced green chiles (3-4 oz.)
1 can diced tomatoes
1 clove garlic, minced
garlic salt
crushed red pepper flakes

Cook rice.
Cook chicken in microwave, shred.
Mix everything else in big pot. Cook.
Add shredded chicken. Simmer.
Add rice. Stir.
When it starts to smell yummy, it's probably ready.
Good with cornbread, tortillas, or plain.

Spring Break

We're on a much anticipated Spring Break this week. Since we have internet access, we decided to update our blog. The semester is about half way over and things are going well for us. Graham turned five months old this week, and we celebrated by giving him rice cereal for the first time. He did great! I think he really likes it. Although, we were probably more excited about it than he. Graham is rolling over, front to back and back to front, and he can sit up on his own for a little bit. He's getting quite mobile and I can tell our little man is maturing by the second. This morning we found a third tooth coming in. We love our Graham. Here are some pictures of the babe and also our first day of Spring Break in Logan (yes, that is snow. As it turns out, there was nearly two feet of snow in the valley by the end of the night. We love Logan!) You can see the teeth in this one. Here's a video of Graham and his first taste of cereal. There is no sound and the video quality isn't the best, but it's fun.

Teeth!

Well, my little boy sure is growing up fast. Saturday we discovered two teeth, bottom front and center. We'll try and get some toothy grin pictures posted soon. We took him to his four month check up today and the doctor said he sees a few more coming in too. My goodness! He's been rolling over for a few weeks now too. Before I know it, he's going to be chasing me around the house.

Catching

To begin with, let us justify our poor blogging performance. We don't have the internet; we've been "working on getting the internet" for the last six months or so. We'll try to catch you up to speed.

Graham is now three months old and getting cuter by the minute. He's really strong and seems to be a very bright child. In our doctor's words it was: "He seems to be highly intelligent." He loves to play and smile, stand up, drool, and look around at everything. I think he's on the verge of laughing. We blessed him the first Sunday this month and he did great. Just stared up at Alex the whole time. He's a pretty mellow kid. We love having him in our home.

We just started another semester and it's going pretty well so far. Alex is taking Thermodynamics, Statistics, Electrical Engineering, Dynamics, and Numerical Methods. Yee-ha! This semester I have American Literary History (Civil War to the present), Shakespeare, Poetry Writing, and a class on the Civil Rights Movement, pretty interesting stuff. We are currently playing ward basketball and doing a lot of baking. "It's for fun."

Last month was a pretty exciting one. Alex and I both turned 23, we had our one year wedding anniversary, and we both got all A's (one A- for me). We had a great Christmas; it was nice to be able to see all of our family (even Sarah and Mike on the webcam). And this New Year's Eve we were actually able to celebrate the change to the New Year, whereas last year was spent with a bout of food poisoning for Alex.

Not much else going for us, most of our time is spent doing homework, dishes, wiping up drool. But we're happy and having fun. We've included some pictures of our babe. Isn't he sweet?

Six and a half weeks

Graham is six and a half weeks, 7 weeks on Friday. It's so fun to see him growing, his personality developing, and him staying healthy. We haven't been so good at keeping everyone updated on our blog, so we have a slideshow of some of the pictures that we have from the hospital to yesterday. They are chronological, or should be anyway. He's starting to get some cheeks and leg chub. We also included the first smile that we caught on camera, which is fantastic.

We're making it through the semester. We have one more week of class and then finals, and we've been fortunate to stay healthy and do well in our classes up to this point. Hopefully we're able to finish our final projects and do well on our tests.

Anyway, enjoy the slideshow. Also, we really appreciate the support that we've received from our parents, siblings, and extended family. The gifts that we received and some help baby sitting really helped.

Baby-Graham!

Graham Verlin Hatch was born on October 10, 2008 at 9:35 am. He weighed 7 pounds 4.8 ounces. We have a picture of him on the scale to prove it. He was 20 inches long, and as you can see in the pictures, has lots of dark hair. He's doing really well. He's been really sleepy as have the parents. He has this wonderful ability to fall asleep anytime anywhere, especially while he's eating. His head is back to its normal size and shape now and he is so handsome. Maybe this happens to everyone when they have kids, but all of the nurses have given him compliments and have told other nurses to come have a look at him because he's so cute.

Laura is doing really well. Labor in the hospital was relatively short and the epidural helped a lot. She is very tired, after a few days of contractions through the night before birth, and a couple of nights of interrupted sleep here in the hospital. She's learning how to nurse well, and recovering very nicely. I am very impressed with her. She's been very strong and patient and selfless. I think giving birth is the most Christlike thing anyone could ever do.

We are all very happy, a little bit tired, and excited to come home from the hospital this morning. We appreciate the congratulations and support that we have received. Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure.

P.S. Graham also brought snow with him. Since he was born it has snowed each morning, and we are fortunate enough to have a nice view of the mountains, that have remained mostly covered by clouds, but then peak out every now and then and show their new white attire.