Nashville

Way back before Christmas and before we could fathom the kind of ways the world would shut down, I conspired with Max's best friend, Richard to be able to plan a trip for Max to travel to visit Richard's family in Nashville. Richard and Marissa were totally on board and for Christmas, we let him know that he would travel to Nashville mid-May. Once the shut downs started happening we had nearly accepted the fact that this trip would not happen. But then things started opening back up in May. Max was still working from home and could work while on his trip and after some fancy airline switching Max was going to get to go on his trip and even had an extra day. 

He made sure to be extra safe on the flight and in the airport and while he was in Nashville, he spent the majority of the time at Richard and Marissa's house and worked on a bunch of woodworking projects.

He didn't take a lot of photos and I occasionally got some marco polos of projects Max and Richard were working on. They did do some long bike rides, went to eat some southern BBQ, went on a hike, made some projects by wood turning and using the glow forge and even watched the new Little Women movie. It was a joke that they had a slumber party in high school and watched the old Little Women movie and they may have been teased about that by myself in the past. haha!     

Anyway, here are some of the few pictures Max sent me, 

 

And here are some of the many projects he made. He designed a little sign for each of our boys and took great care in the details for each boy. Each part of their sign is a part of their personality. 

HE also did some wood turning and made some bowls and a rolling pin. Marissa made me some earrings. And it was like Christmas when we got to pick him up from the airport. We are so grateful for Richard and Marissa's many years of friendship and their hospitality in housing Max for a week. It was a wonderful time for him and probably the best gift he could have received as it wasn't something he would do for himself but is something he's wanted to do ever since these friends moved away. 

And while he was gone, I found out the gender of our baby #4 and I kept it a secret from him for 4 DAYS! I know I wouldn't have been able to keep it a secret if he had asked me about it but he didn't even think to ask because we both thought the phone call would come a couple days later than it actually did, closer to when he was coming home. I found it was hard to not tell him since I needed to process the results but I wanted to tell him in person. So I ended up telling one friend and she helped me process it. 

This video is so funny to me. It was around midnight on the evening he got home from the airport. He had no idea I had kept the secret for 4 days, (I really am horrible at secrets) I think he needed to process this for a bit as well. HAHA!

 

Mother's Day 2020

This event was many months ago and I can still feel how invigorating it was to get out of the house for the first time in months, but I won't get ahead of myself.  Usually Spring is full of outings as the air warms up and the flowers bloom, but this spring was very different. I was grateful that he had mostly warm weather and that we have a wonderful yard for my boys to play in everyday so we have been feeling beyond blessed in that way. Anyway, MOther's day was so long ago that I'm not remembering many of the details that weren't photographed (Thank you blog for helping me remember so much of my life that I otherwise would have forgotten) But I'm sure my boys started by making me breakfast. They also had presented me with some gifts including some Dahlia bulbs, door mats, a new toilet seat (the boys thought this was hilarious) some hose nozzles and I think some other things. Later, after we were all dressed for the day, Charlie had created a scavenger hunt for me to go on to find my last gift. I found a package wrapped in large leaves on a tree branch and when I opened it, there was a new fancy watch for me. It was pretty exciting. 

We had a low key day, playing inside and outside, we had beautiful weather and an easy costco lasagna for dinner. We also scoped out spots to plant my Dahlias...Also, funny side story. At this time I knew I was pregnant but didn't know the gender. I had spoken with a couple friends that if we were having a girl, I really like the name Jane Dahlia. Jane has always been our top choice for a girl but I had never mentioned the Dahlia part to Max and he didn't even know I loved Dahlia flowers. (Also, I loved that I could see Dahlia as a form of Dale which is my wonderful Red Grandpa's name who passed away when I was 12) Anyway, I thought it might be a sign that I'm having a girl, my little Jane Dahlia, when Max gave me the Dahlias. Stay tuned to find out if we're having a girl, but I'm likely to have our baby before that news ever gets to our blog. 

Anyway, My favorite mother's day tradition is spending the evening in a beautiful place with my family and getting some sort of photo with my kids. We realized that we have always had amazing weather on Mother's day because we have been able to do this for years. This year, after dinner, we walked to Marshall Park (Green Swing Park, according to my children) It was a fun little hike and the first outing  my boys had done in months. The playground was closed but that didn't stop us from having fun. 

We also wanted to take a photo to send to our families to let them know we were expecting baby #4

We found lots of painted rocks on our way. 

And we found a dreamy spot for mother's day photos...and for hiking barefoot. 

Looks like a couple boys were getting bored from all the photos. 

I think this is the one we actually ended up sending to our families. 

After they participated in my extensive photos, they were left with a lot of play time which meant forging up and down the creek. 

Max was telling Edwin some secrets. 

Here is Edwin's reaction, I found out later that Max told him that he could pee on a tree if he needed to. haha!

And another highlight was trying out the slingshot for the first time. 

Don't worry, they weren't aiming for anything. Just figuring out how to launch it. 

And then we hiked back to our home. It's fun to see little messages (and painted rocks) along the trail to bring unity despite this weird socially distant world we're living in. 

Anyway, I just feel so incredibly grateful for having the role of being a mother. There are challenges Every Single Day but there is also so much sweetness in each day and these boys are loved so much from their parents and they (especially over the last 6 months) have truly bonded and become incredibly close friends. 

Even though we have been keeping our distance, we have still been able to have lots of adventures in nature, which will hopefully be coming up on the blog!

A scavenger hunt leading to a great surprise

Well, I've been off my blog for awhile, partly because we stay busy but mostly because making videos is  hard for me and this post includes a long video. We wanted to share some special news with our kids and we thought it would make them excited to send them on a scavenger hunt (and make them do chores during each step) They knew they were doing a scavenger hunt and decided to pick costumes. Anyway, you can watch the video. They had to do 4 different tasks (chores) to get their clues and each clue came with a little symbol that represented a letter in the word baby (spoiler alert) haha! They had a lot of fun and it was fun to see them working together. Anyway, you can watch the video to see how it went down. And overall, they are pretty excited!

Little baby is a lot bigger than this now!

At the end we had a fun cookie making party with these amazing cookie decorating kits made by my friend Heather. So it was definitely a memorable night for these boys. 

And there you have it, the Baertlein's will be a family of 6!