Charlie turns 10

 November 2021

Charlie turned 10, a whole decade! He has grown a whole lot in the last year or two and it has been wonderful to get to know him as he matures. He is so fun and I'm hoping he will always have his playful and curious spirit. 

He is an excellent big brother and even when I think he's off in his own world he is looking out for the safety of his little brothers.

He finds joy in any situation and is never bored. He seems to create fun and adventure out of thin air. 

Charlie's brain moves faster than I can keep up. He starts spouting off ideas for inventions, businesses, activities, trips, and projects and rarely stops. This goes on pretty much all hours of the day and often until midnight. 

He has loved and been annoyed with homeschooling. Thankfully the 2021-2022 school year was better than the previous year because more things were open for Charlie to explore his interests. (Swimming, STEM, nature school etc.) So he's been enjoying homeschool more and looking forward to some exciting things this coming year. 

For Charlie's birthday, he found a robot cake that he wanted to try and replicate for his birthday so that's what we did. It turned our cute and tasty. 

We just celebrated with our immediate family. We started with gifts. 

We then had plans to go to pizza Caboose and bowling (next door to each other) 

We were sad to find out that Pizza Caboose still wasn't open for dine-in guests which is part pot the whole appeal as it's an amazing train themed restaurant where you can sit in a caboose. Anyway, we were still able to pick up a pizza and take it to the bowling alley. 

He was pretty happy munching on pizza!

I loved Edwin's little Spidey stance

We all had a lot of fun, and enjoyed celebrating our big kid. 

Walter-11 months

November 2021 

Walter was 11 months and figuring out his little powerful legs. He starting walking at 10.5 months, the earliest of any of my boys, and took off with it!

 

 

He's just the cutest!

Halloween 2021

 October 2021

Halloween was a bit of a whirlwind and since we were so busy, we didn't do a theme costume. In fact, the day before Halloween (and the same day as the trunk or treat) I was going around picking up second-hand costumes for my boys. I lucked out with getting this gnome costume for Walter and it was absolutely perfect. 

Miles ended up with a batman costume which he has continued to enjoy.

Charlie used what he had to be a ninja/jedi

Luckily our cousins came to the trunk or treat with us and there was a whole big group of Baertlein boys. 

We had some chili and did the trunk or treat. The weather was decent too so everything was outside. There was a huge turnout and it was a fun way to meet more people in our ward. 

The Baertlein boy bartering. 

Halloween was a low key day. We took more pictures. The boys carved pumpkins on their own and I didn't have to touch any slime. 

More photos of course. He liked having his collar popping out of his costume. Fancy. 

Edwin was Spider Man of course. He had been wearing his costume daily, for months. 

In the past we had always gone to my grandmas's houses for trick or treating. One of which is our current house. In the last couple of years that we trick or treated, my grandma would tell us that we were the only ones to come by. We were hoping for some trick or treaters so I stayed home while Max took the boys up and down the street. We only got one other set of trick or treaters which were 3 kids that moved in two houses up, right around the same time we moved. ha After visiting our street. We went over to my Red Grandmas house which is the Place to be on Halloween. Her whole neighborhood goes all out. Walter and I visited with Grandma while Max took the boys around her neighborhood. This is one of my favorite traditions and My grandma and I usually end up eating pizza and watching episodes of Bewitched together. 

Our front porch. (The planter is quite a bit more tidy now, this was right after we removed the large ramp.)

Anyway, that was our Halloween, last year. We have big plans for this coming year, and so far my boys are all on board.