Spring Break: Part 1

It rained about 70% of Spring Break but that didn't stop us from having some great family time. I'm gonna start this Spring Break post on the Saturday before break because all sorts of great things happened that day!

Elizabeth and I realized we could start a date day swap whenever they want to come have a date in Portland. And we could probably do it if we wanted to have a date in Eugene at some point too. But we wanted to start by doing temple dates. So we picked a Saturday and blocked out the day. Elizabeth came in the morning and dropped off the kids. We got to watch all four of them along with our three. Elizabeth got to have some temple time and all the cousins got to play together and they really do play together quite well. While she was gone we had a scripture lesson about the parable to the sower. We read the story with photos, planted seeds in good soil and made mud pudding.

I think I'll have a chicken make a cameo in every blog post from now on...hahaha...just kidding.  

It worked out great to do it with cousins. Then Elizabeth came back just in time for Edwin and Edgar to nap and Max and I left on our date. We started out getting gyros, always a win!

And then made our way for a temple date. It was perfect so he had to take a selfie outside...and observe our wrinkly faces, i guess if I have to grow old and get wrinkly, it's good that I can do it alongside Max...also, he's been testing the limits of his beard...and for anyone that didn't already know...our last name translates to "Little Beard" in German. 

Anyway, both Elizabeth and I were so excited at how well our date swap worked out and we hope to continue it monthly. We both get dates and our kids get great cousin time, it is seriously a win-win-win! Why didn't we think of this sooner? 

The next day, Sunday, I got to help play the piano for the children's music time which is kinda fun. 

In the evening, the weather was amazing so we decided to light up our fire pit for this first time this year. It's one of our favorite summer activities.

Can you see more chicken cameos?

Check out Max's cool Sunday evening pants....

We cooked hot dogs and biscuits on the fire. Simple, and it kept my kitchen clean, I call that another WIN! Charlie's a little pyro...

We have been cleaning out our garage and found a whole lot of worthless baseball cards, so they added fuel to the fire. There was something therapeutic about throwing each card in one-by one.

Anyway, on another day, I let the kids have a picnic on the trampoline, but now they aren't allowed to do that for awhile because I had to ask them to clean it up a million times and they ignored me...

On another night we had a family movie night watching Bedtime Stories, the kids thought it was funny even though they didn't get all the humor in it.

On another evening, we took a family bike ride around Tyron Creek, it took more time to prepare the bikes and load them onto the car than actual riding but it was still fun and Miles hasn't practiced much on his two-wheeler since last summer so he was a little rusty but we still all had fun.

He's been wanting me to do a photo shoot of him with his new smile, and this is what we ended up with. So weird.

 And a picnic of course..

 Moving on...

I have never been able to curl my hair like it has been done in salons, but I finally got some curling wands, and I've been frying up my hair figuring out how to use them.

 One day I got to run a bunch of errands with just one kid and this is what he does to me...

 He thinks he needs to be outside at all times...but he has proven to not be very safe if I let him loose on his own.

Anyway, I'm going to share about the rest of Spring Break in the next post, because there are a whole lot of photos from our family hike and beach trip!

Baertlein Weekend

Last weekend was another example of snow ruining our plans. But it all worked out fine. We were planning on going out to Max's uncles ranch house in central Oregon and meet up with Max's brother's family and take care of cows, ride ATVs,  build fences, and have a fun cowboy weekend. There had been tons of snow in Central Oregon and it still hadn't completely melted so it would have been challenging to get there (It is in the middle of nowhere) Anyway, after speaking with Max's brothers family, we decided to still get together in Portland and still have plenty of cousin and sibling time and eat the meals we had planned. They came on a Friday evening, we had a pizza party and sent the kids to bed. Saturday morning, Lisa made us a great pancake and bacon breakfast then we checked out a new-to-us park. Brent and Lisa had nostalgic memories at this park and it was fun for us to explore someplace new. 

Can you spot the turtle?

Miles "Take my picture mom!"

Emmett and Edwin

When we got back, Edwin napped and all the other little Baertlein boys ran wild outside. Brent set up a slack line and Lisa worked on an amazing corned beef dinner.

a bunch of Slackin' Baertleins.

Charlie was kind enough to offer his support.

After a good day of being outdoors we came in to enjoy our Irish dinner. Then sent the kids to bed and had some fun game time.

Charlie couldn't fall asleep for awhile because his top tooth was dangling by a thread so he eventually pulled it out. Then, there was the issue of Charlie's sincere prayers that he would catch a leprechaun. He had worked on a couple traps for weeks. SO basically we felt like the tooth fairy and a leprechaun needed to visit our house that evening. We don't really always do the "visiting leprechaun" thing. I have a couple of times when my kids didn't expect it and I don't really want them to expect it, but it is still kinda fun to surprise them. I went to bed after midnight and Max decided to stay up and get a little creative. He left green glitter around the house and around the traps.

 and threw around green crepe paper. We have done lucky charms the last couple of years, we got extra this year because cousins were in town.

 Beard on the family photos.

 Anyway, Max had fun with it, and hopefully they don't expect it every year. ha

Anyway, they were excited for Lucky Charms in the morning. Charlie was still disappointed that he didn't catch a Leprechaun, but happy about many other things.

We had a good breakfast with our cousins then went to church and August came with us which was super fun. Charlie loved going to class with August. When we got back Max and Brent worked in the garage while the boys played wild outside again. 

So it was far from a cowboy weekend but it was enjoyable to have a low-key cousin weekend.