Santa Cruz and a Night Out

I wasn't planning on posting again until we got back to Utah but turns out we did a couple fun things this week that I wanted to get on here before we left. On Tuesday Mikkel and I decided we should head down to Santa Cruz since neither of us had been there and we had heard it was the warmest beach in the area. Well since we were headed that way I called my dear friend Joni who lives down that way and invited her to meet us there. We were so glad she would come on such a short notice and it was so fun to visit and enjoy the beach. The kids had a fabulous time so it was well worth it to watch them have such a fun time.

Here's Joni helping the kids dig a big hole that they loved jumping into.

Eliza, Oliver, Joni and Trajen admiring their nice work.

Sweet little Eliza, such a cutie.

This summer has been great, I have seen Joni more this summer than I have in the past 7 years! Thanks for coming with us Joni and I hope it isn't 7 years before we get together again:)

Here's my summer buddies. What would I have done without these guys?

What a cute little family :)

Then on Wednesday night a few of us planned a night out for our friend Tosha's birthday! Tosha lives here in the apartments where we have been living. She has been a great friend to us and we have all enjoyed getting to know her. Here we are at the Old Spaghetti Factory. It was the perfect place we just walked there from our apartments and had a fabulous time.

Happy Birthday Tosha, come visit us in Utah. We'll all miss you! :)

Here we are after enjoying are wonderful dinner. I'll miss all the good times in California but I am excited to be heading home. We are leaving early tomorrow morning so I better get back to packing! See you in Utah:)

Summer Fun Coming to an End :(

Well here we coming into our last week of summer out here in California. We are sad to see it come to an end but excited about what is to come in the future...except the winter in Utah:( We have had a wonderful summer with tons of fun. We will be packing up and heading home within the next 7 days but I am sure we will find some time to do a few more fun things before we leave. Here is an update on the recent happenings in our lives. We were lucky to have some visitors come see us last weekend. Shaye's mom and her husband came on Saturday and stayed until Sunday evening. It was a quick visit but we were glad they would come. They were already in Cali for other reasons and took a detour to see us:) We had an enjoyable time visiting, shopping and hanging out in San Francisco. Thanks for coming to see us, everyone knows we love to have visitors!

Here we are down at the Pier loving the beautiful flowers.

Here's Mike, Monica and Shaye enjoying the sights and sounds of the Pier. We had fun walking through all the shops, watching the funny sea lions and enjoying a delicious lunch!

I just thought this was funny, we were getting ready for a picture but I look like I'm watching something intently and Shaye looks like he is disgusted, silly us :)

Now that's better :)

One of my favorite things to do this summer was attend the Oakland Temple. It was only a short 20 minute drive away so I felt like I should go as often as I could. Turns out I have had a lot of free time so I went about every week (except when it was closed for cleaning for two weeks). It was always enjoyable and helped me feel like I was doing something good with my time.

I usually had someone to go with but last week I just went by myself, as you can see from the picture:) I laughed to myself wondering what others were thinking of me taking a picture of myself but it was just so beautiful that day I was loving it. I was in no hurry to get home so I walked around the grounds, which I must say are just beautiful! Then I decided to go in the visitors center and see the art display they had. I was so glad I did, the art was beautiful and the cute sister missionaries I talked to were so fun. I just wanted to stay there all day and be a missionary again. It was so fun sharing stories with them and feeling their excitement for the gospel, I love it!

Speaking of temples I forgot to post these pictures from our Seattle trip. On the way home we stopped in Portland to see the temple there. It is right off the freeway so we thought it would be a good place to take a little break since we had Mikkel and little Traj with us.

It was so beautiful as well and I couldn't believe how quiet it was back there even though it was not far from the freeway. You would have never known, it was tucked back in this little grove of trees, so perfect.

Trajen loved it there and was probably mostly glad to be out of the car and able to walk around. Here is Shaye and Traj both getting their wiggles out.

Now to top things off here are some pictures of our pool. I hadn't taken any pictures at the pool yet, which was surprising since we spend most of our time there:) Here is Traj and I having fun yesterday. He's getting to be a good little swimmer and loves jumping in the water.

I must say that the pool is not near as fun when I go by myself, it's always better with Traj :)

Goodbye pool, we will miss you :)

Hatch Reunion and 50th Anniversary Party

I am just going to warn everyone up front that there are A LOT of pictures to follow. We just got back from a wonderful trip to Seattle Washington. We went up to celebrate my grandparents 50th Wedding Anniversary and have a family reunion. We don't get to see our family up there very often so it was great to be together and get to know everyone better. We rented this huge house on the Hood Canal where all 32 of us stayed for 4 days. The house was big enough for everyone to sleep comfortably and it had an AMAZING view! I hope you can stick it out and enjoy all the pictures...here we go :)

Me and Emily checking out the beautiful view.

Everyone relaxing and enjoying the good family time.

There was little park just down the street from the house and we went down to play basketball and a little baseball. The kids had a great time. Here's Nate being so sweet and helping Traj bat. I'm the catcher in the back ground, I must say I wasn't so good at it.

We spent some time on the beach but it wasn't super warm. We had to move around to catch the sun. Also it is a little bit of a rocky beach, no smooth sand there but it is was fun.

Everyone trying to be in the sunlight. When the sun went behind the trees we would just pick up and move following the sunlight:)

We love the beach!

Nate was loving this place the beach was covered in seashells, I mean completely covered! Nate was in heaven gathering as many seashells as he could.

Shaye even did a little fishing. Sadly no big catches but he had fun, it's all about the experience.

One afternoon we went to this little lake that was close by. Here's my Dad pulling the kids around on the big tube. We needed a boat but Dad did a great job!

We had so much fun, we're so sad it's over:(

Shaye ventured out on this floatie and we were all a little worried at first that it wasn't going to float. We were wrong and he went out further than anyone else. You go babe! :)

To top things off the big house had a jacuzzi in this room with tons of windows with the most amazing view. I'd say it was the best room in the house.

Here's Shaye and Uncle Tucker doing some serious cooking on the last night. Everyone was impressed with Shaye's hotdogs, they had perfect tiger stripes. Also those grilled veggies were delicious!

I think everyone was enjoying "So You Think You Can Dance" in this shot. Good thing we had cable up there since it was the finale!

So this was the activity that provided hours of entertainment, a bean bag toss. Yes, that's right the guys played this on the beach and then on the deck, and even when it got dark they just moved it inside. The last night they even set up a tournament and I don't think everyone went to bed until about two in the morning. This family just loves a good game and is a little to competitive:) Shaye and T.C. were a powerhouse team and won ONE of the tournaments:)

Here's Nate drawing pictures of Curious George as he watches the movie. He is quite a good little artist. It amazes me the little details he picks up.

Mikkel and I made her little specialty brownies the last night. The are just a little piece of heaven I tell you, plus they are just so cute.

Here's the whole crew just before we headed back to Seattle.

We got to take the ferry back to Seattle and all the kids were loving it. I must say I enjoyed it too:)

From the look of Nate's smile he is really enjoying himself! I just love this face, he's the best!

Here we come Seattle...

Here it is. It was a little chilly this day and a bit foggy but we still had a great time.

One stop we always make when we come to Seattle is eating at Ivar's for lunch. Shaye has never been here so we had to go. After we enjoyed our fish 'n chips we fed the leftovers to the seagulls. You can see this one snatching the french fry right out of Shaye's hand.

My Dad wanted to take this picture of the girls on this water feature. Apparently he took a picture of my mom in this same place 30 years ago...so sweet:)

Here we are all ready for the big party. Just think only 48 more years and Shaye and I will celebrate our 50th! It's just around the corner :)

I just thought this picture was so cute of "the boys" as Trajen calls them. They all look so handsome and are smiling so cute, we have Zach, Chandler, Trajen and Spencer.

Here's Grammy and Papa saying thanks to all who came. Grandpa said he was a little worried they were having a party because he didn't think anyone would come but we had a full house there and it was great to see so many extended family and people I've heard about but never met, it was great!

After they cut their cake they shared another first dance together and we all joined in, we love to dance!

Here's me and one of my favorite aunts Tiffany. She is just the nicest person and has such sweet kids, she has five and they are all so nice. This is her youngest Mia, such a cutie.

Here's some of the ladies chatting up a storm at the after party:) Kaitlin, Tiffany, Me, Mikkel, Katie, Mia and Emily

This is it, the whole Hatch family. Well, we are missing just a few but they all had good reasons for not being there. Everyone that could be there was there. We had such a great time with our family and it just makes us count our blessing that we all have each other. It was good to spend some good quality time with the Hatch family. I feel closer to everyone and I'm grateful for that. I hope to see everyone again soon!