The news is out......

Well I have been outed...............

Step 1 admission: I Brendan am the main Blogger in our family (wow now a ton of weight has been lifted off of my chest)

Step 2 even though I do blog, do not make it look like you do: because of this I tend to write some of our posts like it is Tatem writing. (Tatem does make contributions from time to time so you will never really know who it is) It gives me just a little bit of man hood back. Now that I am also the stay at home Dad. (Not really but our business is traditionally slow in the winter). I have a few extra minutes to let the world into our lives.

Now that that is out in the open, Here is what has happened in our world.....

We went to Portland this weekend to go on a triple date with Scott, Jeremy, and Brook. It was a lot of fun. We ate dinner at a restaurant that is right on the river in Portland, we watched the boat light parade, and went to Tatem's parents house and played games. (Jeremy and Brook, we need to hang out more often.)It was a quick trip we went down on Saturday and came back Sunday. But it was nice to get out of town for a few days. Now we are back to normal life.

I really have been noticing how I can't stay up late anymore. Saturday night we were up until 12:00. I really wanted to check out at 10:30 but I forced myself to stay up late. (Sad, I know.) Tatem hates that I am turning more and more into a old person that goes to bed super early and then wakes up at 6:00. What is even worse is when I am awake I get board, so I decide to wake her up.

Tatem has had the past few days off of work. (she had some paid time off that had to be used). So we have gotten a ton done. The baby's corner of the house is much more put together, we have organized our bedroom and are hoping to be ready for his arrival.

The baby is right on schedule. Tatem had another doctors appointment today and is measuring well. After Christmas she starts the weekly visits and next thing we know he will arrive.

Another week has come an gone..and we are still the same.

Rain, Wind, Snow..... Whats Next

We have had a very crazy past few days. Saturday it started snowing, for those of you that are not familiar with Seattle we very rarely get snow and when it comes the whole world comes to a stop. Granted we do have some quite extreme hills that can cause problems, it is really funny to see people park their cars on the side of the freeway and walk after an inch of snow is on the ground.

Sunday it started to rain and become really windy (50-60 mph gusts) we live right on the edge of green space (0nce again if you dont know Seattle we LOVE our trees) we have 60 foot trees that sway and act like they are going to fall on us at any time. We had one fall on our patio last year but that is a different story for a different time. Any way back to the rain. In the last 12 hours we have gotten 3 inches of rain. For a city that is very used to the rain it is a ton. I (Brendan) am not looking forward to my inspection this afternoon. I guess it adds a little excitement to my otherwise typical Monday.

Tatem and I had a great Thanksgiving. We went to Portland and spent it with the Livingston side. It was great!! The weather was perfect, nice and sunny and in the mid 50's. Sam, Jeff and I went golfing. I played horrible but it was still nice to have father-in-law/brother-in-law bonding time. Tatem registered for baby stuff at baby's R us, with the sister-in-laws, We ate and ate and ate played games and just had a jolly old time....

The only exception from my Thanksgiving being a storybook ending is there was no Miracle whip for the traditional day after thanksgiving turkey sandwich. Nothing in the world tastes better to me than leftover turkey, white bread with an ample helping of Miracle whip with a pinch of salt and pepper on the side. I would even go as far as to say that I prefer the sandwich over the whole dinner. So this leads me to a little debate..... What is better Miracle whip or traditional sloppy, gooey, Mayonnaise??? (yes I am a little biased). Miracle whip with its delectable sweet tangy taste. A flash of flavor to the tongue.

I needed the Miracle whip so bad (do I sound like a drug addict) that i went and bought a supply to keep in their fridge and now I am assured that at the next family function, I will be able to have my hit of the tangy zip.

BABY NOTE:
Well life on the baby front is just great. I Brendan can still see my toes and am able to tie my own shoes. Best of all I don't get tired when I walk up our stairs. The story is not the same for Tatem she is starting to get into the uncomfortable stage. Every task seems to be a huge challenge. Just getting off of the couch takes precise planning and sometimes an extra lift. She still is working and probably will stay there until the baby comes. She has not decided if she will go back after. Insurance benefits are a huge draw and she would only need to work 2 days a week for us to have full benefits. But no decisions have been made yet. Our little guy should be making his entrance in the next few weeks (4 or 5 I cant remember). No we still have not decided on a name and are still open to any suggestions.

In closing this post, I do ask that all Miracle whip supporters unite with me in the cause, to help extend a hand to Tatem to join the right side of this very important debate. One Cause one Fight.

I have been Tagged!!!

The Rules: Each player lists 6 facts/habits about themselves. At the end of the post the player then tags six people and posts their names then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Have fun!

I have been tagged by my great friend Carrie!!! Ya!!

1. I have been married three years on December 28th to the best guy in the world, who I have to admit I chased for almost a year before he got his act together. I wouldn't trade these last three years for anything!

2. I am going to be a mommy in two months. I am super excited, but also super scared at the same time.

3. I bite the inside of my cheek when I'm bored. It's a nasty habit that I can't seem to break.

4. My favorite vacation spot in the world is Maine. I know what your thinking, "Maine? Who goes to Maine?", but it is so relaxing and it is a place where I can get away from the world.

5. I am probably the most indecisive person in the world. I hate making decisions, because what if someone is unhappy with it. Brendan is trying very hard to break me of it. But shouldn't decisions in marriage be joint anyways? :)

6. I am not creative. I wish I was more creative and I try really hard but sometimes it just doesn't come. As you can tell from my very creative habits/facts about myself. I'm trying to take up scrap booking and sewing, but don't ask me to come up with any ideas on my own, I need a pattern to follow exactly. It is really odd because half of my family is super creative. My dad is an incredible artist and woodworker. You'd think that I could have gotten some of his genes, but noooo I got jipped!!!!

I'm tagging six people now:
Monique, Stephanie Heaton, Stacey, Stephanie Cundick, Ashley, Maria

Sunny Days....

This fall has been incredible! It has been much more sunny than I remember last year being. Well the lives of Brendan and Tatem get more an more exciting each day as this new kid approaches.

Quick poll. Did any of you take a trip before your children were born? Like a last "freedom" trip? We want to do something special but don't know what to do.

Well we have finally bitten the bullet and started to get some stuff for the baby. We got our crib. It is really nice and much better than we anticipated. Because, we are probably going to be here in our townhouse for at least a few months after the baby comes we got a mini crib. It is about the same size as a portable crib but much nicer and it fits really well in our bedroom.

We have also started to research strollers, car seats, etc...... (any good tips or brands would be great). Time is really flying only 2 and 1/2 months and we will be parents.

The business is doing well and we are continuing to become better bloggers. As you can see we haven't done the best.

Fall Colors, Winter Rains........

It is amazing how fast time go's. Well our summer is gone and the fall/winter rains are returning. As crazy as this sounds I am kind of looking forward to some gray skys. Next month though I am sure I will be over it and will go into my winter depression, Just kidding (that was only my first winter here). Although the winter blues are a real thing here. The local news always has a story around this time giving advice for how to be happy during the winter. For everyones information. The cure for the winter blues is at least 20 min of daily exercise, as well as getting outside (even in cloudy weather) for a 1/2 hour.

Well I am now a Real Estate blogger. My first post was published last week on a national real estate blogging site. It didn't get as much attention as I was hoping for and it only stayed on the site for a few days. Ido feel good that I made it to the "big stage" and hope for other opportunities. Overall the business of Pillar To Post SE King County is doing well. I am really looking forward to the market rebounding. We have been really blessed to be in the #1 market in the country and have been blessed to stay busy. I would love to do more, so now I market, market, market!!!

Baby News.....................we (Brendan and the currently unnamed child) have a morning ritual where I tap on Tate's tummy and he kicks me back. Who knows if he really feels the tapping or if the noise just makes him mad. At least we are getting some quality bonding time. Tatem is also entering her 7th month. Only a few more to go. For the most part she is feeling really good. I cant tell you how nice it's been. We have decided that we are going to stay in our town house probably for another 6 months or so. It is going to be to much to look for and move into a new home, also winter is traditionally a slow time for us, so we need to leave our savings where it is for now.

Seattle is full of fun.

Well we have had a lot of fun this past weekend. On Friday Tatem and I spent the day attempting to play tour guide for Brian and Ashley VanCamp. They went on a cruise that returned to Seattle so they had most of Friday to spend site seeing before their plane left. We went to the Locks, saw the fish ladder, had lunch at the crab pot. While we were eating Tatem and Ashley turned into star struck fans when Ty Pennington happened to come into the restaurant . (They are filming an extreme home makeover house in Kirkland). They say that he is better looking in person than on T.V. We then went to Pikes place and walked and walked and walked around checking out the vendors and watching the monk fish (if you have been to Pikes place you know what I am talking about. If you haven't, well come visit us and we will take you there)



On Saturday we went to the Red Bull SoapBox Races. It was so much fun and there were a ton of people there. (the announcer was saying somthing like 50,000) The weather wasn't great it rained but what should we expect we live in Seattle........ Tatem saw her dream guy, Sir Mix Alot (he was one of the judges) so now her live is becoming more fulfilled and we took a picture by a tree.



On a baby note.... he is getting bigger and starting to kick. We still don't have a clue what to name him but that time is going to be here faster than we know it.

So here is my first attempt at putting together a movie, It is not the best and when I uploaded it the quality of the picture is horrible, I will try to save it differently but, I wanted to show off all of the fun times we had in Maine. So here it is......

-Brendan

Where has the summer gone??

Well a new month and now no more summer. It seemed like we were finally starting to see some warm sunny weather here in the great North West and soon we will be in our winter gray. I can feel the depression coming back already. (Just kidding)

We have had a full week, learning about the boy, trying to figure out names. Which with Tatem is not a fun task. She doesnt like any of the name's I suggest. Like Pedro, Nike, I Love Lamp, (are you just saying anything that you see?) Well if you have not seen anchor man than this will seem pretty stupid. Sorry I digressed I am just trying to keep our options open to something that is not usual. We have considered Evan and Tate. But only time will tell.



We went to a Mariners game last night with our good friend Scott. It was alot of fun and the seats were great but the Mariners are in a really bad slump.... So the play was horrible. They got spanked by the A's, a team that should have been and easy Victory!!! So of course we left early.

I have discovered a very interesting fact....... When ever we go out to eat what ever I choose is what Tatem wants. For example last night at the ball game I decide that the Grande nachos looked like a great choice. And as we can see from the picture above I did not end up with them. But what would be an even better picture would be to see all of the nacho stains on Tatem's shorts from her reaching across and stealing them while I was eating. It was pretty funny to see that every chip she snagged, the toppings ended up on either her shorts or sandals.

And the Baby's Gender is a.................

Well, it was an exciting morning for Brendan and I. After 21 weeks of waiting we finally found out what this little Marchant is going to be. Of all the picture's that were taken Brendan was only able to make out one distinct feature......... the face. Maybe he was sitting to far away from the monitor to really get a good look at what the tech was showing us. To get a good ultrasound your suppose to come with a full bladder. By the end of the ultrasound, which took about an hour, I thought that I was going to burst.

We had taken an online test when I was about 12 weeks along that said I had a 50% chance of it being a boy. The test results were right!!! Can you believe that? We had a girl name all picked out and have no boy names. This was the only picture we got today, I was a little bummed they didn't give a picture of the "boy parts". But it sure is a cute picture of the little guy.

Both of our parents are really excited. Especially Brendan's, this will be their first grandchild. His mom probably has already boughten plane tickets for when the baby is born. My mom called me to find out if I knew before I even had the ultrasound. Maybe she thought I could predict the future.

It will be fun because this little guy will have two boy cousins his age to cause terror with. What's even better is I will most likely get all of these cousins clothes. It's nice having older brothers to give me their hand me downs.

Life comes at you fast....

Well it has been a long time since we have posted anything.

To help get everyone caught up on Brendan and Tatem here is what we have been up to. Well we didn't close on our new house and boy was it an emotional roller coaster.
We knew that because we are self employed it was going to be more difficult to get a loan but our mortgage broker continued to say everything is fine........until the day of closing, when he called to say "we have a problem" well to make a long story short, we hit the mortgage market at the wrong time. I am sure that everyone has heard that the sub prime mortgage market has gone down the tube and now the finance companies are setting very strict guidelines. One of of the big ones is that a self employed person needed to have owned a business for 2 years. Right now we have owned our business for 19 months. So we are going to wait until December to resume our search.

(Casey, Ashton, Tatem, & Brendan at Fort Knox)

On a brighter note we just got home from a week in Maine on Tuesday. It was such an awesome time, Tatem's family is blessed to have a "Camp" (a few cabins) to go and stay at each year on a Lake Onawa in the geographical center of Maine. Some generation or another has been going there each year since the civil war. So it is full of history. It was really interesting to see all that has been collected and saved over the years.

(My family-Mom, Dad, Casey, Caden, Angela, Ashton, Brendan, & Tatem, walking the train
tresell at "Camp")

(View of one the cabins "Lazy Beaver" from the lake)

Brendan was finally officially inducted into the Livingston family after going to Maine. It is lucky he liked it so much or else we might have had to split. My family holds Maine as a sacred place. My family has gone on vacation there every summer since before I was born. My dad went up there since he was a baby and his mom and her dad, ect.

We went to Fort Knox (seen above) in Bangor, Maine and then spent the rest of the day in Bar Harbor. It was really cool seeing the architectural differences on the East coast versus the West.

I am super sore from all of the activities, we spent alot of time on the boat, tubing, skiing, and surfing (yes i said surfing). Scott and I decided to pull the wind surf board behind the boat it was great fun. We learned a new language "AYUH" (which is like "Eh" in Canada) and ate Maine lobster. Tatem spent a lot of time reading and being a general woos. (She only got in the water an hour the whole week.) But, in my defense I am pregnant and really couldn't join in all the water activities with Brendan and Scott.

If anyone has a chance to go the the Vacation Land (Maine) you sure should. It was great.





Well here is the Baby update. Tatem is now 20 weeks along so we will be finding out any day what it is. I am still thinking girl but I guess I will just have to wait and see. She finally is feeling good and I can't explain how great it is. She actually will come into our kitchen again without gagging. It's funny, one day she wasn't showing and the next day she had the baby bump. This picture was taken three days ago and it has already gotten bigger.

(The Baby Bump)

Our goal is to become better at writing on this but as before we will see.........

The New House

Well I thought I would update our blog, Time sure does fly. We are closing on our new home in only 4 days, Life has gotten so exciting.

Tate is still feeling sick but has newly discovered the joys of sea sick bands. They look like wrist sweat bands but they push on a pressure point on the wrist and they really have seemed to help her to feel better. She is also reaching the magical end to her 1st trimester and is really hoping that the morning/noon/afternoon/evening/night sickness will be gone. She has recently discovered that tomato sandwiches are a new addition to her expanding diet of yogurt, and cheese sticks.

We have been slowly starting to pack our house up and get everything ready to move. I really cant believe how much stuff we have. It is amazing how much is collected in just a little time.

We plan on moving this Saturday so if anyone wants to get some service time in, you are more than welcome....... Hopefully I we will get better at our blogging consistency.

Wow where has June gone????

All of a sudden June is almost gone!! Well the house search goes on and on and on. I wish it was easier. We are really able to see the Real Estate transaction from another side.

Tatem had her 2nd doctors appointment last week, it is relly incredible to see how much changes in just a months time. The baby what ever he or she is, gave us a little show and moved around during the ultra sound. Tatem is really excited to have these next few weeks go by so that she can feel better and get over being sick.

Well I started writing this blog last week but never finished it, and in a weeks time we are really close to becoming home owners. We found a really nice little home in Maple Valley, WA. (it is about 25 minutes from where we are currently). It is so crazy to think that one week ago we were not really looking very hard and now we close on our home on the 20th of July. Now the real fun has begun. Hopefully Tatem will start feeling better so she can enjoy packing, moving, and decorating the new house.We will post more pictures in future posts.

Here we go again!!!

Once again a whole week has gone by, and life is still good. Well a little update on our house search, we heard back on our offer and we didn't like their counter. So to make a long story short we decided that we will continue our search for our next home. We will most likely be leaving our current neighborhood which we love because the home prices here are way more than we can afford. (Townhouses start at 400+) So for now the joy is in the search.....

Tatem's Brother Jeff and his family were here this past weekend. We had a ton of fun, doing all of the Seattle tourist stuff, We went down town to Pioneer square and Pikes place market ate at Ivars Seafood Bar etc. etc. etc. But the highlight of the trip was the underground city tour..... There is something like 30 blocks of city underground it was a tiny bit creepy but we all survived and didn't even see any ghosts. (there are many rumors that some of the underground city is haunted).

We made our summer vacation plans yesterday and found really cheap tickets to Maine. So we will be spending a week at the end of August there, with Tatem's parents and at least one of her brothers. It should be really fun and relaxing. It is going to be hard though to leave the business for that long. Hopefully it will be a slow week anyway and we wont miss out on much business.

Well for now this is all. Hope all is great, B&T

Life is a bit Nerve Racking......

We put an offer on a house on Saturday.......... and now Tatem and I are nervous as can be. It has been a real eye opener to be on this side of the real estate transaction, The emotions are completely different, exciting, scared, nervous and the list goes on and on and on and on. We are now waiting to hear from all parties involved to know what our next step should be.

As our business continues to grow we should be able to avoid any of the fears of not being able to pay for everything. But even that is a fear, we are really in the great unknown..... we can book 10 inspections in one day or we can book 0 in a week, all part of the joy of owning our own business.

To move on... we have had another good week full of fun and excitement........well not really. Our life seems to be pretty boring.

Well put an end to any suspense that is left out there, we are expecting......that we will be expecting a new addition to our family, some time in January 2008. Actually the future addition is due Jan 18 (Brendan's birthday). Crazy times ahead. Now all we have to do is get past all of the morning sickness. I really don't understand why it is considered morning sickness any way because Tatem is sicker (if that is a real word) in the evening than she is in the morning. She also has some crazy eating habits. I call it her 2 am feeding. And pregnancy brain is a real thing.

Dont forget we would love to hear your coments

Wow how time flies.

Well another week has already gone, and we have had a great one. I really cant believe that June is almost here, where does the time go? This week was a little slow for the business because of memorial day, ( it is so crazy how holidays change the course of the real estate industry) So I (brendan) had a lot of time to get office work done. It also gives me a chance to write this blog.

Tatem and I drove to Portland this weekend but didn't leave until late Saturday afternoon. (good news about leaving so late is traffic was awesome and we made really good time) We had a great weekend with Tatem's family. This trip was a little more exciting that most, because we told the fam about the new addition..............????? I hope this peaks some interest....... I will get back to this announcement in a bit. We went golfing and had a family bbq and just enjoyed our time.

We met with a real estate agent yesterday to start looking for a home, The Seattle area is such an expensive area to live, who would have thought that you would have a really hard time finding a home in the 350,000 price range. Prices are insane and you really don't get a ton of home for it either. Oh well I guess that it is just part of life and we choose it, so now we get to enjoy all of it. We have been looking at some new construction homes and are almost ready to make an offer. But are not really in a rush because we don't want to close until December.

So much more has happened this week, but I have to run so we will probably make and addendum to this message latter.

We hope all is well and would love to hear any comments......so leave us some......

Another Sunny day in Seattle

Well we have decided that we are going to try this blog thing.

Just to get all of you up to speed on our lives. Here is a quick recap. Tatem and I left Rexburg in December of 2005 and moved to Issaquah WA, (it is about 25 min east of Seattle) and opened our Home Inspection business. It has been really exciting, stressful, and not quite as easy as we hoped. Most of all it has been an awesome experience and we are really seeing the benefits of our hard work starting to pay off.

Tatem is still a wonderful Wells Fargo employee, and luckily only works about 10 min away from our house. She cant wait until the day she can quit, but they have awesome insurance coverage so it is hard to say good bye.

Well we hope to make this a weekly update, and will see if we can. We would love to hear from any and all of our friends.

-Brendan and Tatem