Merrit's track meets

For those of you who might be interested in going to one of Merrit's track meets, here are when they are happening. May 3 at home May 7 at home May 10 at Fenton High School May 14 at Linden High School May 17 at home May 21 at home May 23 at Davison High school May 30 is a meet by invite only at Davison high school All meets begin at 4:15 p.m. He is running the mile and doing the long jump or sometimes the high jump. He'd love the support if you could make it. I'm not sure if there will be a cost.

Where have we been?

Since we've moved to the country, I barely get on the computer anymore.  If it's not something I can easily do on my iPhone, I just don't do it.  Wow, I'm such a technology snob! 

We've been busy, but not necessarily doing anything blog-worthy.  Jason's still working two jobs, and since we've moved WAY out here, he's been driving a lot.  He's been working two days each week in Chesterfield, south of Richmond, and it takes him an hour and a half to get there.  Next week, though, he goes back down to one day there and will pick up another day each week in Fredericksburg!  Yay!  He'll finally FINALLY be up to four days in this office! 

We're still waiting on our original house.  We've seen tons more, but still like this one the best, Greek column and all.  It's only been 3 months since we made the offer on the short sale, but it has felt like much longer.  We took Mom and Dad to peek in the backyard, and it made me feel good that they liked it.  Sometimes you just need that outside confirmation.  :)  Our lender says we could close mid-June, but we were previously told end of April, mid-May, etc, so we're not holding our breath.  It would be bad timing in June with the reunion, but we'd certainly make it work.


Here are the kids snuggling in bed with all their blankets, Mom made them all.  Carson is especially attached to his blanket.  He gets upset if his sisters pick it up.

Carson is getting big.  He's been walking for about a month, and LOVES the freedom it gives him.  I've had to be much more aware of when he's outside.  I used to just put him outside on the patio and he'd stay there, pushing the toys around, but now that he walks he wanders everywhere. 

He likes the goats a lot, but only when they're behind the fence.  He's finally brave enough to feed them out of his hand.

Jason and I took a beginner hang gliding class last month.  We bought it on Groupon.  It was such a blast!  Jason was really good, he went up about 20 feet and glided nearly 200 yards.  I was ok, the instructor said I was quite good for my first time, but I didn't go nearly as far as Jason.  It was so fun, though, and definitely something we could get into doing when our kids are older.  That was a spectacular date!

 The girls love living here.  This picture is from over a month ago, when we first discovered the swamp on the property.  It's a favorite spot of ours (although I did have a tick bite a few weeks ago, so we're very careful now to check for those...ewww).

 My first roasted turkey...mmm...  I have always a had a fear of raw poultry, it is so gross to me, so this was especially challenging.  I decided to tackle it one afternoon and it was WONDERFUL.  I've made it a second time, too, and it was even better! 

 Macie loves helping out around the house, when she's in the mood.  :)

 Addie's hair is getting so long, and I love playing with it.  She wants to cut it to her chin, so I've convinced her to wait until it gets long enough to get to locks of love.  She still has a couple more inches to go, so I've bought myself some time. 

We've been very involved with Addie's preschool. It's a co-op, so the parents do a lot of helping.  I just love it, and Addie does too!  We invited her entire class to our house, and eight of the other fourteen came, along with their siblings and moms!  It was so fun to have them over, meet our goats, jump on the trampoline, and play in the swamp! 

 Her preschool goes on a lot of field trips.  Here they are at the resevior, right after they caught tons and tons of frogs.  Her preschool is awesome.

 As you know, Mom and Dad came to visit!  We visited tons and tons of historical sights around town, and were exhausted when they left!  It was so fun to have them here.  They were also here for Jason's birthday, Mom and and I worked together to make his ice cream cake, and we loaded it up with 33 candles!  It was ablaze!

Addie LOVES BUGS! She always has quite the collection.

 And this was from Thursday.  Carson discovered HE LOVES MUD.  It was so cute.  He just kept going back and forth, sloshing around in it, sitting it in, throwing rocks into it, and just doing everything you'd expect from a boy.  Fun times!

We are having a....

We are having a BOY!!!! His name will be Zalen James Hutchinson. Below are our most recent ultrasound pictures. The baby is healthy and normal. We are doing well also. :)

Cruise 2012

Here they are, pictures of our cruise!

Heather found a great deal on a last-minute cruise booking, and since next month is our tenth anniversary, we decided to take this long-overdue vacation. It was a seven day cruise on the Holland America cruise line, and we made four stops: Grand Turk, San Juan in Puerto Rico, Saint Thomas, and Half Moon Cay.

So let me describe what you'll be seeing in these pictures.

The first four pictures were during our stop in Grand Turk. In the first, you can see the beautiful Heather, and two cruise ships off in the distance. Ours is the one on the right. We went snorkeling off of Grand Turk, and in the second picture you can see one of the snorkel guides with a stingray in his arms. He held it for a while and let people swim up and touch it. We were already back in the boat, though. The third picture is us looking awesome after the snorkeling. Then a cool shot walled in by cruise ships.

The next 27 pictures are all from our stop in San Juan. We took a bus ride tour through a rain forest, which is in El Yunque National Forest (as you can see in the picture with us next to the sign). There's not much more to say about the forest pictures other than what you can see. It was raining pretty hard while we were there, so the water in the waterfalls and streams was a lot higher than normal. In that picture of Heather with a stepped waterfall behind her, those are actually steps up to another building that we obviously didn't try to ascend. The capitol building seen in two of the pictures is San Juan's capitol, which we drove right past. And the six following pictures are of the old Spanish fort. We were too tired at that point to walk back and tour it, though.

The next 11 pictures, beginning with a picture of a cruise ship, are from our stop on Saint Thomas. It's considered the shopping mecca of the Caribbean (and something like 90% of the shops are jewelry shops, no joke), but we're not big into shopping. We mostly just wandered around looking for Claritin, because Heather had some pretty serious sinus issues. The cruise ship seen in the two pictures was docked across the bay from where we had lunch. It's a Norwegian Cruise Line ship. I took the pictures mostly because I thought the waterslides on top were neat. The rest of the Saint Thomas pictures are of the bay or landscape. It was quite picturesque.

The last 7 pictures are from our stop on Half Moon Cay, which is the cruise line's private island. (And consistently voted the best of the cruise line industry's private islands according to their staff.) In the first couple pictures, I was trying to capture the length of it. It was a long island. The ship couldn't actually dock at the island, though, because the water is too shallow. So there was a ferry that ran back and forth all day. The pictures of the ship are while riding the ferry back from the island. The last picture is showing the contrast of the bright turquoise shallow water with the dark blue of the deep water.



We had a great time. The food was awesome (and all you can eat, even at the sit-down-and-order style restaurants) and the ship staff were excellent. We both really liked snorkeling. We went a second time during the stop at Half Moon Cay, and that was even better than the first time; we saw more fish, the water was calmer, and we got to stay out longer. So we're excited to do that more.

Trip to Jana's

This is a giant quarter on the side of the road in Pennsylvania. 

We went to the Battle of Fredericksburg Battlefield.  They are standing on the "sunken road'.

A recreation of Washington crossing the Delaware using "peeps". 

We went to the James Monroe Museum.

These are wig curlers.

I took family pictures of the Hairs while I was there.  Here are some samples.

Carson was so ready to be finished with the pictures by this time, you can tell!  I hope I didn't bore you too much.

Kurt and Heather, where are the pictures from your cruise? I'm excited to see how much fun you had.

So...

Should be studying for my final exam on Thursday right now, but I am really not in the mood. I can't wait for this semester to be over! After Thursday at 1 pm I'll be free for the summer. Wahooo!!!

TheTitanic

Dad, Jim, Joy and I went to the Titanic Exhibit at The Henry Ford today. It is a really good exhibit, I recommend it.

Baby Hutchinson's heartbeat at 150 bpm

Kalamazoo Air Zoo

This year for our Good Friday trip we went to the Kalamazoo Air Zoo. It's an airplane museum with lots of rides to keep the young ones happy. We took Hillary's family and had a great time.
Here we are with our heads up in the clouds.
Alexis and Chelsea in the balloon ferris wheel.
Chelsea riding in a plane.
Airplanes made out of pop cans that cost $130! I didn't post any of the pictures I took of the airplanes or the paintings on the walls, which were all really cool. The rides were fun and Dad is STILL talking about the flight simulator. We bought a grandparents pass, so for the next year if any of you want to go, just let us know.

32 week ultrasound

At my 20 week ultrasound they thought they saw an extra piece to my placenta and so they wanted to have an ultrasound at 32 weeks-when the placenta was bigger-to confirm yes or no.  So yesterday I went in for my regular appointment and they gave me a quick ultrasound.  They did confirm yes that there is an extra piece-it's not a big deal, they just needed to make sure because if there was they just need to make sure it comes out so that there isn't any hemorrhaging later.  And as an added bonus, she checked for the gender and it is confirmed 100% that we are for sure having a boy (phew!) and took one or two pictures of his face.  Now that he's bigger and has more soft tissue on his face you can see in the picture above that he really is a human and not an alien.  I actually think he looks a lot like my other kids...I mean, look at those cheeks!  She measured his body too and his head is measuring around 35 weeks and he is 5.4 lbs (yikes!) already.  She showed me a line graph with a line of normal babies weight at this time and a line of his weight and his was WAY above the normal weight line...hahaha...good thing I've decided to be induced a week early, I don't know if I would be able to push him out if I waited.  I am really getting excited to meet him and love him...6 weeks seems like forever.

Spring Break Fun!

We've been trying to do more fun, family things during spring break this year. Monday we went bowling (we forgot to take pictures) and had a blast! Today we went to a local frisbee golf course and had a blast too! We are really enjoying having extra time together. Although, our together time tomorrow is going to be mowing the lawn. I don't know that that will be quite as fun for the kids as some of the other things we've been doing. Oh well. Can't win them all.

Pinewood Derby

Jaxson won 3rd place at the annual pinewood derby this year. Granted it was 3rd out of 4, but still it was third and he got a trophy (which was all that mattered to him.) We love the derby. It's quite a family affair for us. We all made cars. I'll have to post a picture of those soon too.

Our new baby goats

This is Izzy and Deli standing next to Mom, Candy.

This is Izzy.

This is Delicious (Deli for short)

Our one good snow day

Happy Birthday, Jaxson (really late!)

Happy Birthday, Alexis (really late!)