House hunting and keeping

House hunting is not my favorite thing. I really hope i only have to go through this once... maybe twice... ever! The really bad part is that i have barely even begun the search and the worst part will be actually doing all the work to get into one. I have faith that the work will be worth it in the long run. after 7 years of renting other peoples homes it would be amazing to finally get into a home of our own. To be able to tell the kids they can run and jump without worrying about downstairs neighbors. To be able to have pets without landlord permission or do be able to build things and paint things and not worry about the fact that its not my house. To be able to plant a garden or flower beds. Honestly i cant wait for the day. we have found the house of our dreams and its a fingertip length away. We can only hope and pray that things work out and we get it.


        Things have been going well around the hatch household. Josh has been working on the long wall move in the coal mine so he worked alot of days and alot of hours but thankfully its all over and done with. The kids and I have spent most of our time cooped up in the house doing schoolwork or cleaning. Ive been trying to make my way through my sewing and mending pile and its nice to have so many quilts and projects done. the weather has been horrible until this last week and the snow didn't do us any favors. after getting over a foot of snow last week, this week the temperature decided to jump to the 50's and melted it all. although the warm weather was a nice change, it didn't benefit us for the fact that everything has melted and our river is now flooding half the county and many people are stuck in their homes and some have been evacuated.

        Our anniversary was a few weeks ago and our friend Connie was amazing enough to come stay with our kids overnight so we could run away. We went to Chico Hot Springs in Pray, MT and it was so much fun! We got massages, swam in the hot springs, ate at a 5 star restaurant and had the best time. can't wait to go back. We also added another character to the family. A small brown ferret we've named Farrah. She's extremely entertaining and we all love her.

I'm so far behind in posting here, I almost feel as if I should just start over... but that would unfortunately erase all of my previous posts. There weren't many but they were still things I want to remember. So it is now A new year. 2014! The year started off shaky. We had three family members die within the first three weeks and it was definitely a sad time in this household. But we've held strong and we are not going to let it ruin the rest of the year. I've made my super long list of New Year resolutions and although most of them are long term goals I can honestly say that I really have been keeping up with quite a few of them and have real intentions of fulfilling the long term ones as well.
       We are still in wonderful Roundup, Montana, (I say that with only partial sarcasm). It still sucks being so far away from family but the longer we are here, the more the place grows on us and it really does feel like a home to us now. My amazing sister and her family have moved about 1700 miles closer to us and honestly I couldn't be more excited (unless she was another 600 miles closer).
       We've added another beautiful addition to our family. The perfect Saydie Cleo Hatch! She is our little ray of sunshine and she makes our world go round. She is nearing 1 year old now and time has flown by so fast! Its so sad to see my kids grow up.
       We are still trying the homeschool route and although I am terrified that I will be the worst teacher ever and screw up my kids education, it is the most amazing thing to see them learn and know that i had a part in it. Also hearing more and more things everyday that have gone wrong or that i done approve of in the school system now days i'm more grateful than ever that we decided to give homeschooling a chance.
     The last year has been fairly eventful for us and we have made some great friends and amazing memories. Hopefully this year will hold even more in store for us!!

Sadly I Just realized that it has been over a year since my last post Shame on me I know. Well here is a very brief update on what has happened that i can remember since then.....
Josh was offered a job at Signal Peak Energy in Montana. So sadly we sold the dogs, the horses, and some of what we owned, loaded up dads trailer, and moved to Montana. One week previous to our leaving I gave birth to an amazing baby boy. Stetson Russell Arthur Hatch. He was born November 14 2011 ( i know three days earlier would have been very cool). He weighed 6lbs 14oz and was 20 inches long.

(dont worry the tree is only about 3 ft tall)

Josh left two days later on his own to our new home. A week later, the day before thanksgiving, My dad and my brother Branden drove my dads truck with the trailer of our stuff, and my mom and I loaded up the kids and followed in my car. We stayed the night in Idaho and finished our journey the next day. unloading our stuff and returning to Billings to have Thanksgiving Dinner at the Cracker Barrel. I wasn't impressed but itwas better than gas station food. When we arrived we were sorely dissappointed, as the "apartment" we had rented was horrible, sad, small, and scary. Thankfully we were only there about 6 weeks before we found a larger safter place that we love. We did have a small christmas there in that tiny rat hole, and i dont believe we've ever had a more humble holiday.

We started going to church and we've made a few friends. We live in beautiful house and we've made a few adventures this summer heading to the missouri breaks and catching some of the most amazing fish ever.

Now it is the first of September, Josh has been at the mine for 10 months and they are on the Longwall move right now. Time has passed by very fast for us, but it has been lonely with our friends and family so far away. also we havent had much chance to ride horses and the hunts are coming up, which sadly we will miss out on this year. but we've been very blessed and dont have much reason to complain.
I will be starting to homeschool the kids later this week and it will be another next experience for all of us so wish me luck!

First Fish

Yesterday we were hoping to be able to go fishing and unfortunately that didn't happen. So this morning me and the kids woke up and decided to hurry and go before anything else happened. We went out to the fish and game pond here in Huntington (which was a very long walk). Kaylee struggled with it a little bit as there was no-one to pack her and she had to walk, but she toughened it out most of the way (with her brothers help )and we made it.

When we first got there, we each had our own fishing poles to use. We borrowed Wyatts small 'cars' fishing pole for Kaylee and he got to use a big one. We cast hers out first and wouldn't you know it, she caught a fish before we even had the second pole cast out. She reeled it in all by herself for the first time and was very proud of herself. (needless to say I still can't figure out how to rotate my pictures so you have to look sideways)

We caught 9 fish total and took four home to have for supper. None of them were real big but they were alot of fun to real in. More than half of what we caught were albino trout which are very weird but they bite like crazy. These are of Wyatt reeling in a small albino.