May was a fun month! Tom came out for a quick visit, and we saw Jan today (but no photo evidence - sorry! We'll have to get that on Tuesday at Ashley's wedding dinner). Andrew turned 1, Jake turned 3, we had a party for Amie's 29th b-day, we had two days of sunshine (that's right folks... two) and Doug and I left the boys with my sister and spent two days in Salt Lake City (it's a pretty exotic local when you're leaving the children behind!). We ate at the Melting Pot and loved it, and saw a couple movies. We really liked Thor. Oh, also in May, Amie and Jake got in a squirt gun fight in JCPenney Portrait studios. There was not water in the guns, but that didn't stop them. Tomorrow we're going to Heber to ride on Thomas the Tank Engine. Jake could not be more excited. (*Heather, you'll have to teach me how to move pictures where I want them to be on this thing!)

In true Hatch style, we ate green pancakes on St. Patricks day.  However, I draw the line at that-- no green milk, or eggs.  gross!
I went home to visit Mom and Dad in February when Doug and Laurel were there.  I got started on some pillows to add some life to our family room, and these are the finished products.  (If you could tell, the one with piping around the edges is the one mom sewed...)
Then we celebrated my birthday.  Hyrum got me the perfect size cake... and lots of other things.  :) Among them, he got me a potted plant which has survived quite a bit.  It's actually a miracle, because I've killed about 2 or 3 potted plants already this year.  I think that because its an outdoor plant its more resiliant.  Thanks to everyone for my birthday presents!  Except Matt-- I'm still waiting for my book.

So the snow kept coming, and we didn't really go anywhere except to the temple.  And finally, in APRIL it started to be decent weather.  We went to Middlefield, Ohio, where they have a large Amish community.  (There's another place thats bigger- but this one was only an hour away).  We "rode" in buggies, and went to a cheese factory.  And we ate our share of food!  They have an old fashion country store--beans and wheat in bulk quantities, farm parts, penny candy...  You better believe we hit up the penny candy!  It lasted all of a day or two.  (Yes, those little colored tootsie rolls). 

Jenna and Natalie came to visit (for about 5 waking hours.)  We had fun, though.  We took them to a good Mexican restaurant and when they got done eating, their plates pretty much still looked this full.  Then we played games, ate and laughed our heads off about mom pulling off the door handle, and then climbing over the stick shift repeatedly. 
Hyrum's friend who lives in Indiana was driving up to Toronto to buy a car-part (he fixes and re-sells cars), so he asked Hyrum if he wanted to go.  They went up to Toronto for a day, and got to see Niagara Falls.  We saw it last summer when we were driving back from Massachusetts, but since we didn't have passports with us we couldn't see the Canadian side.  And quite honestly, theres not much to see on the US side.  So Hyrum finally got to see it all.  His friend said, "While we were standing there looking at the water falls, Hyrum crossed his arms and said 'I deserve this'."  He spent the previous week or two studying non-stop for finals, and finally finished.  (And got a 3.9 GPA! And ever since Aunt Lana posted on facebook that he's a 'smartypants' he loves to call himself that.)

So this picture might look like we went to the Louisville temple, or the Columbus temple... but nope-- its the Detroit temple!  We figured that since its only an extra half hour, we'd check out Detroit this month.  Temple is the exact same, of course, but afterwards we headed to the city to look around. 
We were expecting the worst (something along the lines of downtown Cleveland-- once nice, but now mostly run-down.)  We were surprised that it was actually a nice downtown area!  Clean, well kept, things to see.  We spend a few hours walking around.  This is me infront of Canada!  They had a walking path that runs along the river-front. 
This is the world headquarters for General Motors.  There are 5 towers and you can go in and walk around.  They have cars all over the place, and almost boardwalks that wrap around (that I think cars can drive on).  It was a pretty cool building. 
And when you're married to Hyrum, you have the privilege of visiting "the stadium" wherever you go.  He doesn't even like baseball, but he LOVED the stadium.  So no, its not just limited to soccer. 

Last week, Hyrum's mom sent us "bocadillo", which is Guava paste.  You can see that little box there-- it has little squares of this candy.  We made empanadas with bocadillo and cheese.  YUM!  Maybe we'll bring some to make next weekend when we come to Kentucky.  Hyrum was in heaven.  I guess its common to just eat the blocks straight, along with a glass of milk.

This is the first time all week that the "New Post" button has worked!  I have lots of posts to catch up on, because now that the weather has warmed up, Hyrum and I actually do things!  It will have to wait until later, though, because we're off to the Goodwill.  :)  Yes, we're cheap.

After a long, long, long winter, we finally have SUN in Utah! Yay! The boys were thrilled and Doug's been saying what a wonderful day it is all day long. We went outside and filled up the water table (Jake has been asking to do this ever since he and Andrew got it for their birthdays) and let them get soaked. Then we went out and bought sand for the sand table (also a b-day gift - thanks, Jan!) and Jake loved that as much as the water table. We're ready for summer! Oh, and the picture of Andrew pulling leaves and flowers off my plant... that's my Mother's Day plant that we got at church. Doug predicts it will last just today; I'm hoping it will make it into next week, at least!

Today at family dinner I was dangling my toes off of big round chair in Doug and Laurel's family room, and Jake came up and licked my big toe. Just like that. For no apparent reason. It was pretty funny. We all tried to stifle our laughter as Laurel explained to Jake that feet are gross and we should not lick them. But, we all failed miserably and got a good laugh out of the whole thing. Who knew my feet tasted so good!