In the last several weeks I graduated College, we went on a big hike, moved to Portland, went white water rafting, saw our baby's face, and have been cleaning and unpacking tons. So we are a wee bit busy but pictures and details will come soon. Life is good!

A babymoon week

I love having this time off...Life is good and I got to spend a whole lot of time with my other half which hasn't happened since...maybe last summer's rafting trip?
This summer has been filled with intership stuff for both of us, while we are excited to be finishing our education, we have also been the busiest we've ever been which will not change much with the coming of our little boy and max starting work as a firefighter paramedic.
We decided to take a trip for just the two of us, we usually get to go on a week long rafting trip with Max's family every summer but this year it didn't work out with our busy school schedules so we took our own camping trip...This also became our babymoon, our last couple's vacation before we are a solid family of three.

We went on a Wednesday so we pretty much had the whole forest to ourselves!

We have both grown up going on several camping trips a year but we had never gone a trip with just us and there was something incredibly fun about getting up whenever we felt like and not worrying about missing breakfast or getting up early enough to feed the others and making the camp fire when we were ready etc.

We got to spend hours in the hammock!!
The weather was perfect...we even got a mini thunder/lightning storm


We went on a mini-hike...it was more like a nature-walk with the purpose of finding good sticks to make Harry Potter wands for the premier we went to later in the week.

we ate great "camping food"

We took a garbage bag full of school papers that were no longer needed and burned them...it felt kind of good.

Then, on our way home we stopped at a park in the canyon to play volleyball...we took pictures to prove to our little boy that a) his father is super strong and b) his mother is doing some sort of sport while he's in the womb.

after camping for 3 days we came home but our vacation was not over...we continued it by cleaning up then heading to See's candy to redeem our Christmas gift certificate from Red Grandma...Yum!

In the meantime, I am 24 weeks pregnant and we recieve weekly e-mails on the progress of our baby's development. This week it informed us that my uterus is the size of a soccer ball. What?? that seemed huge so we got out our soccer ball for a photo shoot.

24 weeks and growing like crazy

But there was more...the next day we went to see the final Harry Potter movie. We were too cheap to do a mid-night showing so we went to an early bird showing on Saturday morning. Using the remnants of two gift cards...we only spent $2.75 for our movie tickets so it was just about as good as going to the dollar theater. We didn't completely dress up but Max widdled some incredible magic wands for us and our group. We went with our good friends Joe and Lindsay and Anna and Buck. Max made a wand for everyone...he's so crafty. Sadly I didn't take any pictures. Then, after the amazing movie we went home and took a long nap. we have missed the summer-time afternoon naps.

So all in all...it was an amzing week that I got to spend with my favorite person . It just reminds me of how much I love that man I married and how perfect he is for me. Today he is back to work and I start back up with student teaching on Wednesday so it is back to our busy lives. But the end is in sight...Max graduates on July 29th from the paramedic program and I graduate from BYU on August 11. Then we are back to Oregon!!

names

So, we had another ultrasound on Tuesday and found out that we are still expecting a baby boy! We were actually disappointed with this appointment. The doctor was running over an hour late so somehow this translated into a two minute ultrasound. He didn't really point anything out to us and I'm pretty sure he didn't check all the organs he is supposed to. We were lucky to have my friend do the early ultrasound 6 weeks ago. Oh well, we are having healthy baby boy as far as we know!

On another note...we are discussing names and we have some ideas but we are asking for some thoughts and opinions.

First off..our baby boy's "womb name" is Barnebus...this is what Max is constantly calling him. I'm hoping this name won't stick but it is fun to have a name before we have a final decision.

Here are some real ideas.

Choice #1 Isaac Gorden Baertlein

Choice #2 Charles (Charlie) Gorden Baertlein

That's all we got so far. The name (and spelling) Gorden has been passed down for many generations in Max's family and we want to keep that going...(it's max's middle name if you didn't know)

I've always liked the name Isaac for no apparent reason

My youngest brother, Danny, has two middle names one of which is Charles. Ever since he was named this I planned on calling him Charlie but it never stuck. He has always been my Danny monkey. I have still always loved the name.

So, if you were choosing our child's name which would it be? Isaac or Charlie? Just curious. i want to hear your vote, if you can't leave a comment send me a text.

In other news, baby boy is kicking more each day. Max started feeling it recently which made him ever so joyful! Which in turn made me excited to see how much he loves our little boy already!

Life is good!

Here comes the belly picture...

I finally decided to post a belly picture, I wanted to wait until it was obvious that there was a baby there and not just chub so here is our son in all his glory. He has been growing like crazy over the last couple of days.
This was the best picture I could get because Max is working right now.

22.5 weeks or 5 months

We get to have an ultrasound done by our doctor on Tuesday to confirm that I am indeed having a boy and to check all the organs and what-not. I'm so excited to see him wiggling around in there again.

In other news, Year round school is out for 2.5 weeks so that means I get a break for the next 2.5 weeks. It will be heavenly. I go back to start a new school year at the end of July and only teach 3 more weeks before graduation. So this means that I will be a college graduate in 5.5 weeks. It still seems so unreal to me. I'm as happy as a clam...Oh yeah, I also found out that I passed my huge capstone project (see a couple posts below) with a flying colors score of 96%. Needless to say life is good and I'm incredibly happy! Over the next couple of weeks I get to look forward to a romantic trip with my husband ( either a hotel or camping) and the last Harry Potter movie coming out along with a lot of restful vacation time that I will fill with enjoyable projects!

Father's Day, a family visit, and a birthday.

Over the last week or so we've had a lot of fun events and they were even made better because Max had nearly a week off from his internship...I guess it was only 3-4 days but I'll take what I can get. It was great having him around. Last weekend my grandma and aunties came into town for my Great Aunt Marilyn's funeral. we were able to host them and eat good food and play games. They spoiled us with some great home-cooking which was being neglected with our busy schedules so it was much appreciated. While my family was here we were able to all celebrate Father's day for Max. I made an amazing breakfast of homemade blueberry waffles, eggs, sausage, and bananas. He then got to open his present. He had mentioned that he wanted to have a matching outfit with his son so I got the closest outfit I could to something Max already owned. Baby boy will not be able to wear it until next summer but we are excited. Max got so giddy when he opened it and couldn't stop smiling. Max had to leave for to work at noon so he left and I went to church with my Grandma and Aunties. After church my Aunts made a delicious pot roast. After we ate, we delivered some to Max and to my aunt Deanna. We came back and played games into the night. I then had to go to bed to get up for teaching the next morning.

It was fun hosting some family in our house! They were excellent guests!

Several days later our friend, Nelson, celebrated his 29th birthday, his wife is in Texas doing a ten week internship so we knew we needed to make this a birthday to remember! Max prepared a little surprise party/BBQ

It was a success

Of course, Max likes to get crazy and make people take awkward pictures...so after giving Nelson his own bow and arrow set...he made him put on the famous Avatar wig.

And there you have it...Max is the best party thrower in all the land...

Weight lifted

As teachers our capstone project seems relatively simple, create a unit with 5+ lessons and teach it. Oh my, that was the most tedious project ever. Not simple at all. The lesson part was fun but the 80 page report was not. It wasn't necessarily hard just a lot of work that seemed to take the fun out of teaching. But today, June 13th 2011, I turned in this blasted report and life is good. I was nearly in tears from excitement as I handed my reports to the secretary, a whole 24.5 hours early. This is a picture of two copies of the report, two teachers will be grading it so I had to turn in two copies!

So I came home and celebrated by wiping the dust off Sharootie (our kitchenaid's name) and baking some cookies.
Max is working so he doesn't get to enjoy them with me but baby boy seems to like them, he is in a kicking frenzy!

Student teaching is half way over, let me rephrase, the hardest half is over. The part where I had a tedious report. I now switch to fifth graders (coming from first graders) which I'm thrilled about but slightly nervous.

Anyway, that was my last and biggest college project, 8 more weeks until graduation (only 6 weeks of teaching left)
I am happy!

It's a baby!!

First of all, we have an amazing friend that is an ultra sound tech and she gave us an early ultra sound on the hospital's brand new equipment and gave us a picture CD of about 20 images of our baby for FREE!!! All because she's amaing and wanted some practice. We are so blessed. Thank you Ashlyn! we will have another ultrasound from our doctor in a couple of weeks.

So here are the results...we are having a perfect little boy!!!

I was always confused by ultrasound pictures in the past but those look like obvious boy parts to me!
His head was wedged really low so we couldn't get a good profile but we got to see him flailing and kicking.

This is a thumb sucking pictures, it's still hard to see the face but it's there!!

We love our little boy so much already!! Now we just have to wait 5 more months!!!