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