Summer Lovin'

Every year it seems like summer goes by so fast, this year has been no different. I don't know if it goes by so quickly because it is my favorite season or because you get to have the most fun with less work, or if it is just because it really is only 3 months out of the year??? I don't know but it has been a fun one for sure, So since I have been busy enjoying the summer while it lasts I haven't really been updating the blog, so here's the run down of whats been going on with us Bateman's!

LAKE POWELL

Let me start off by saying that this summer has made me realize that I need to be better at getting the camera out and taking pictures because it is kinda lame how few pics I have of all the stuff we have done!

Ok so last year when I went to Lake Powell with Devin and his family we were just dating so it was fun relaxing time with my handsome boyfriend... This year we are a family, so it is still fun but not so relaxing time with my handsome hubby and our 2 kids:) Overall I think the kids really enjoyed our time there, but me being the worrisome mother that I am may have smothered them just a bit;)

In this picture the were playing with the 2 lizards we caught, Camden named his Zander and Mariah named hers Lake Powell.

Poor Camden was barely able to move around the house boat without me on top of him about his life jacket and where he was at all times. The worst was at night, I didn't sleep almost the whole time we were there because I was afraid that he was going to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom or something and end up falling into the lake. Thats just how I am so my kids are going to have to deal with it:) We brought fishing poles thinking that the kids might enjoy that, in the end we found out that they are still not old enough to have the patients for something like that yet, so Devin and I enjoyed fishing a bit. One of the days it was really windy out so Devin took the kids out to the end of the cove that we were camping in an then they swam back since the wind would basically push them back to camp. Here I go being a worry wart again, but they started out as these 3 little heads way out in the distance, and as they got closer one of the little heads was floating farther and farther away from the Devin and the other little head. I was yelling at him to get which ever child it was. Turns out it was Mariah, and they were all fine and enjoying the float in. Looking back I don't know what I was worried about, they had life jackets on and the wind would eventually push them into camp. I think I just don't like the fact that if something had gone wrong there wasn't anything I could have done about it.

Mariah pretty much loved anything we did, she loved being on the boat, catching lizards, hiking, playing in the water, and just hanging out. She is like her momma and just loves to be out side in the summer. I think this picture is so cute of her!












Camden was not so hip on the camping thing. He kept asking, "When are we going to go back to our awesome house with the bunk beds?" He is a home body. He is always fun to have around tho. He keeps us laughing. One day Bryn asked him what his mom's name is, he said "Carli" and she asked, "what is her last name?" "Momma" he answered "Carli Momma". So that became the nick name that stuck for the trip. At the end of the trip I asked the kids what their favorite part of the trip was, Camden said that the only thing he liked about the whole trip was the night that we built a camp fire. He loved helping Dad get all the wood and start the fire. The whole family gathered around and we made smokes (with strawberry marshmallows because I thought that sounded like it would be good, and BJ concurred with me that it was delicious!) So we all ate smokes and listened to Grandpa Bateman tell a camp fire story that was quite entertaining to us all. At night before bed we would tell stories with the kids, this is when we found out how creative Camden really is. His stories involved bears (named Zander... turned out to be the theme name of the trip) lizards, aliens, hunters and magic. He was very entertaining.

One of the last days that we were there we hiked Hole in the Rock... with the kids... I had never hiked it before but I figured that since everyone else had and they didn't say anything about the kids not going that it was probably an ok hike for them... wrong!

It took us about 3 hrs. We basically lifted the kids up and down the whole thing. Thankfully BJ was there to help out too because at the end they were spent and whining and we were tired and hot. BJ carried Mariah for the last bit back to the lake, Sydney's flip flop broke so Devin carried her, and I carried Camden. The sand had to have been over 100 degrees and it would get into your water shoes and just fry your feet. Jumping in the lake never felt soooo good!

They are quite the little buds. Camden loves doing whatever dad is doing!

Sydo and the Kiddo's!

It ended up being a really fun trip (Devin dream vacation might I add). I loved spending time with my new Bateman family. I have so much fun with them and feel blessed to be able to call myself a Bateman!

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY... RIGHT!

It is really a shame that I have to do so many hard things for work...

Gym sleepover! Every summer we do a gym sleepover for the team girls. This year Kaylee and I had lots of fun with all of the girls, they made forts, we ate pizza, (I did some giants on the bars, I was so proud of myself), we played games, and watched Stick It! I really do love my job! That was Kaylee's last sleepover with us though because she had to move to Seattle for her hubby's school :( I am still really sad about it. She was so much fun to work with.

I am looking forward to coaching my first competition season this fall. I know my girls are going to do great!

MARIAH TURNS 7!!!!

 The cake! I decided that I was going to make a cute cake for her this year. Every year she always wants to do a pool party and grandma's for her birthday, so we decided on an under water theme. So I got online and started looking for ideas and fondant recipes.  Here is what my kitchen looked like when I was all finished... at 1 am on her birthday.

And here is the finished product. I am quite proud with this being my first try, and it actually tasted really good.

We had about 20 kids at the party, thankfully there were a lot of adults there to help too.

With so many kids in the pool Cam had me worried that he was going to try out his new swimming skills without me knowing, but he did great and had a blast with all of the other kids.

We tried to put up some fun decorations in the backyard.

She looks terrified but that is just her cheesy smile:)

                 Camden taking a whack at it!

Blowing out the candles!

She was sooo spoiled with presents, you would have thought it was Christmas!! It was a fun day for such a cute girl. She is growing up so quickly I can't believe it. I remember turning 7 and thinking that I was such a big girl. I can't believe I have a 7 year old now. She is such a smart little girl who loves anything arts and crafts. She loves to me my little helper and has even started having chores. She is so friendly and has so many friends, she will be friends with anyone and everyone. She is a great little reader and loves to go to the library and get lots and lots of books to read. I feel so blessed to be her mommy.

My Birthday!

Ok so the next few things I have to share I don't have any pictures for. I think this is the first year that I actually forgot about my birthday until just a few days before. Remember when you were little and your birthday felt like it was a special day? Yeah it is just another day now. And I feel like I am getting old... I tried to tell Mariah that I was turning 24 again and she said that I can't do that:) Well my cute hubby woke me up with my favorite breakfast, french toast, that he had gotten up early to make. He got the kids all ready for church so I didn't have to worry about that, and he got me the most awesome gift, a mac book pro!!!! I love it! My old hand me down laptop was dying and I had mentioned that I had never had my own new computer, that they were always hand me down's, so he got me my first new computer and it rocks!! I wish I could post the video on here (I'm not smart enough to do that yet) of me opening my present. Devin spent hours wrapping the computer and putting it in a bigger box, then wrapping, and an even bigger box until the present that I opened was in a box big enough for the kids to get into (which is what they did, they now have little play houses out of the boxes). Seriously how cute is he? I love him so much and am so lucky to have him as my handsome hubby!!

BALLET!!

Mariah decided that she does not like gymnastics and that she wanted to try ballet. So I found a place here in provo and signed her up. She looks so cute in her little pink leo and tights with a pretty bun on top of her head. She has gone twice now and she says she loves it. I just can't believe how expensive it is for how little I feel that they do. Oh well I will let her keep doing it for awhile and see in a couple months if I feel like it is worth it.

BABY DAMON

Last but not least we got to meet our new nephew baby Damon. He is so adorable! Devin's brother Michael John, his wife Breeann, and their kids Sophie, MJ, and Damon were able to come out for a visit this summer. It was so fun getting to see Mariah and Camden play with their new cousins. Sophie and Mariah played princesses while Camden and MJ battled it out super hero style with swords! They even blessed Damon while they were here so we all got to be there for that. It was so fun getting to know them better, I wish they lived closer so that the kids could play more often.

Happy Valley!!!

Well we finally got moved and settled into our new place in Provo! It feels so good to finally be settled! When we came home from our honeymoon our house had Devin's stuff kinda moved in, and all of the wedding presents were kinda stacked in the corners of rooms. We knew we would be moving so we didn't want to unload everything just to pack it up again. So it soo nice to finally be settled somewhere. And guess what?... I love it here! Haha. When I first met Devin I expressed my distaste for Provo... I guess you cant knock it til you try it right? I think the thing that I love most is that my kids are actually getting to be kids now, actually for the first time in their lives. I feel so bad that they are 4 and 7 and have never really been settled anywhere for longer than a year, and we have never lived anywhere that I could let them just go out and play. Now we have a fenced backyard and we live in a cul-de-sac with tons of little kids around, The first day we were here the kids had already made friends and were out playing while I was unpacking. I am also loving the fact that I finally have some cute stuff in my house. I have never had a house that I actually felt really homey and cute, but now I do. It is a work in progress but here are some pics of the beginning stages.

The front room.

My AWESOME new table that I scored at the DI for $20!! Love it!

My blue dresser in use! Devin told me that when I told him that I wanted to paint this a fun color and that I was going to do it blue he thought that our house was going to look like Pee Wee's Play house... silly boy!

And the kitchen!!!!

Our room is still in boxes and not picture worthy yet, and the kids toys have not been organized and put away yet so more pictures to come. 

Let It Be!

Ok everybody, I need some brutally honest opinions here. So lately I have been letting my hair just air dry and it has this little bit of natural wave to it. I have been loving the no fuss hair, and I think it is kinda cute with the wave, but I dont know if it just looks like I haven't done my hair today... so what do you think? I am getting tired of the flat iron thing and the fuss but I dont want to be walking around looking like one of those girls who just doesn't care about her hair, ya know?

FINISHED!!!

Here it is! It was a big job and I am so glad to be done with it. It is hard having such a big project and being a beginner because things are bound to go wrong, and so I look at it finished and see all of the flaws. Oh well, I actually do love it tho and I cant wait to get it into our new home and get settled! So the lessons I learned this time is 1) just because you watch a 2 min tutorial on glazing, doesn't mean it is as easy as they make it look. I think my glaze was thicker than theirs and mine dried super fast and the gloss of the paint made it hard to do. So basically the glaze was a nightmare for me! and 2) NEVER assume your 4 yr old is in his room playing when there are lots of "fun" spray paints and furniture outside... yep Camden went out and decided to add his own artistic touch to my dresser... so I had to sand it down and repaint it. Ugh he is seriously lucky he is cute! And there is nothing cuter than when the next day they really feel sorry for doing it and come and give you a sincere apology! Love my kids! By thi time I was done with this I looked like a smurf! I had blue feet, the blonde highlights in my hair were blue, my face had blue freckles, the inside of my nose was even blue... gross! Well now I am off to begin the packing process, yippee!

Projects

Can you guess what color my big project was today? I have so many projects that I want to get done before we move. The biggest is this dresser that we will be using as our entertainment center. I am painting it navy blue and I am loving it! but dont worry I am still a red rocks ute fan;) This is a pretty big project, and I am surprised at how much I got done today, and I am learning alot as I go. I am pretty tired now tho, through multiple Home Depot trips, paint color changes, "oopsies" and 2 kids.

Here is what I learned today, first off dont let your husband pick the color for a big piece that will be in your house, he will pick the color of car that he wants haha. Ok I cant dog on him because I gave him the ok, the porblem was that the blue that he chose looked like it belonged in the play room and not the living room, so back to Home Depot to get the darker navy blue. Next when you buy glaze, you need to have them mix it with a color, or you have to mix it with a color... and once I figured that out I learned that if you just start adding dark brown paint to a can of glaze it turns pink and over flows... back to Home Depot for them to mix it for me! And last but not least is the lesson that seems to be a common thread in my life, be patient!!! Multiple layers of wet spray paint make a mess, and it is a bigger job to have to scrape and sand all of those layers off to start all over than if I would have just been patient in the first place and let it dry!  In the end I am just hoping that is looks good enough to have in my house, if not I will just have to sick my better half on it. I am sure he would do a better job with this hehe.

Here is the big dresser that is being painted navy blue. So far I got all of the drawers and the door painted, I will post a pic when I am all done!

I also picked up this night stand at the DI for $8 and thought it would look really cool painted.

And here it is finished, it is hard to tell but it is grey and the knob is black. What do you think? I love it!

Baby stuff

It has been super crazy at my house trying to get ready to move. So on sat me and my bff Carrie had a yard sale! Or as her husband would say we just swapped junk lol. But it was nice to get rid of a ton of junk I had in the attic! A lot of that was baby stuff. Yes, I got rid of almost all of my baby stuff, I figure that by the time I will need it anyways it will be close to 10th years old! So I'll just get new stuff:) But I did not get rid off all of the clothes, I had 12 bins of clothes! That's right 12! So I am proud that I just finished going through all of them and just keeping my favorites. I am now down to 7 bins and 1 bin of shoes! As I was going through the boy stuff Devin was informing me of the clothes I had that he would not allow his son to wear lol, so cute that he thinks he has a say. Jk I respect his wishes. It feels so good to be minimizing but I am sure next week when we are trying to find places to put everything in our new place I will still feel like there is too much stuff.

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The Honeymoon

We had so much fun on our honeymoon. We went on a Caribean cruise and got to do so many neat things! We have only been home for 2 weeks and I am already wanting to go on another vacation. Our first stop was Cayman, we went to a place called the Turtle Farm. I fell in love with sea turtles there! We got to hold lots of them and we got to snorkel with them. The little babies were my favorite. I am holding one of the babies in this picture.

Our next stop was Roatan Honduras. We went on the zip line which was definately my cup of tea! Only problem was how fast it was over, you bet I was full speed ahead! Then after the zip line we went to a place called Gumbalimba park, which advertises like you will see monkeys and birds throughout the park as you walk through it, so we are thinking that it will be really cool to see them in their natural habitat... well they had 3 monkeys on leashes and a parrot to put on you for a pic and that was all, wah wah wah. But it was still fun.

Next was Belize! I was so excited for Belize, but we didn't get much time there. I would love to go back and be able to see more of it. It was so humbling to see the way that the people lived there. In Belize when you turn 18 the government gives you a piece of land for free and you have 5 years to start building something on it. They dont get loans for their homes they just build what they can afford and it usually takes them about 10 years to finish it. I honestly think we should all live more like that.

The excursion we did here was cave tubing! I dont know if we have any pictures from that because we brought our disposable water proof camera and we haven't developed that yet. But it was pretty cool, we had to hike for about 30 mins up to where we were going to start tubing, it wasn't too bad of a hike but it was hot and you were carrying your tube. We had helmet on that had a light on top of them so when we were in the caves we could see things. We got to go through 2 caves and it was really cool to see the different formations inside of them.

While we were on the ship there wasn't a whole lot to do, but we did have 2 formal nights that were really fun, and they had a few comedians that were really funny. It was fun to just be the 2 of us though and not have to worry about kiddos for a little bit.

Our last stop was Cozumel! We went off on our own and did a city tour. We got to see alot of beautiful beaches, did some mexican shop shopping, and saw some Mayan ruins. It was alot of fun, this was Devin's favorite stop. The picture on the very top was one of the beaches here in Cozumel.

We had an awesome time on the cruise but our trip wasn't over yet! We got to spend a couple days in Florida with Devin's brother Mike, his wife Breeann, and their 2 1/2 kids Sophie,  MJ, and soon to be baby Damon! I loved getting to know them. Breeann is a sweetheart, and a talker just like me haha. Anyone who knows me know that I can talk and talk, so it was perfect! And I am so excited that I get to be Sophie, MJ, and baby Damon's aunt! They are such cute kids. It was fun to get to be an aunt and just play with them and not have to dicipline them hehe. I wish they lived closer so we could all play together!

But needless to say after all of this fun I was ready to get home to my babies!! I missed them so much! It was like christmas morning when we got home. It has been so nice having our little family together! I thank God everynight for the blessing of my husband and my kiddos in my life!