Family (Dental) Visits

A week getting back in the swing of things!

Monday marked THIRTEEN years married for Michael and me! I think last week counted as our celebration :)

Michael took Lydia's wisdom teeth out on Monday, sweet girl. She did pretty well and they flew home together on Tuesday. The boys were so sad to see them go and so was I. We were lucky to have that time with them this month!

On Wednesday Ed and Sally came. I feel bad that Ed has had some issues with his tooth but selfishly so happy it has meant seeing them more frequently for some dental visits! The boys love playing games with grandma and grandpa and biking to Sprouts for some sushi.

On Friday night we had an end of year party for Michael's study club, and Diane and I danced basically the entire night with some new dentist friends of ours haha. The DJ just handed Diane his card and said, "I feel like you'll need this at some point." She's just a walking party. I had so much fun dancing for two hours.

Saturday was the first week of tennis lessons for Westin and me. This will be fun to try something new! We're just doing group lessons through the city, but my favorite part was riding bikes there with him and having a picnic between our lessons together. I also loved looking over at him during my lessons -- he was just playing by the little stream, building things with sticks and flowers, throwing any stray tennis balls back over to us. He wasn't bored or grumpy, he was content and sweet. I had forgotten to tell him to bring a book and it didn't even matter. I love that he doesn't need screens. Such a sweet kid with a love for nature.

That night we went to a fish and chips food truck with the Schmidts and then went to see one of our young women in an Addams Family play. She did such a great job! 

Happy anniversary to us! 13 years this week!

We had a cupcake wars night for YMs and YWs and I think these kids are so fun.

Camden man is back in the soccer scene.

He really loves coach Oliver and it's so sweet.

Grandma's rhubarb is thriiiiiving

Grandma and Grandpa came for just a quick visit!
Everyone loves when they're here.

Morning crew ready to roll.
We seem to leave just a little later every day as we crawl to the last month of school.

I love this napping baby who is very much not a baby.

Westin and I started tennis lessons! And we biked the three miles there together and had a picnic between his lessons and mine. I loved it.

This is what Westin made during my tennis lessons. He was so happy and content the entire 90 minutes, alone and outside. I loved looking over and watching him play. I just love that he is content with this type of play.

Easter Sunday 2025

 

Came home and immediately set out Easter.
The Easter Bunny somehow got some of Portugal's famous tinned fish.
But I don't see that being as well-received as the Reese's eggs.

Sharing some Pasteis de Nata and telling them about our trip.
Jenny and Lydia took SUCH GOOD CARE of our boys for us. That was the biggest service and so kind.
Our boys were so happy with them. I'm so grateful they were with family while we were gone.

This cute crew on Easter Sunday. 
They had a great week together, thanks to Jenny and Lydia!

We were so happy to come home to these boys.
It's not easy to leave them.

Easter Sunday is just such a JOYFUL day.
I was so happy to be home with my boys and feeling so grateful for our trip,
and for my body that feels so much better than most of the years in the last decade.
Today was a lot of thinking about resurrected bodies and how amazing that is.

Neighborhood Easter egg hunt! We're quite the crew now.

These kids are lucky to have such a good neighbor crew.

Portugal: Biking Day 5, Obidos to Peniche Peninsula

 Portugal: Biking Day 5

Obidos to Peniche, 30 miles

We woke up in our cute medieval town and headed toward the coast, our final stop.

This was our latest start, because we could see the forecast showing a rainy morning. We hung out aroudn the hotel until almost 9:30/10:00am, and our Canadian friends were considering renting a van and throwing their bikes in and having a nice dry 30 mile drive to the coast :) But we all ended up waiting out the rain (a little), and making our way there on our bikes one last time.

This was a pretty wet day, and lots of dirt trail riding, but it was so fun. This felt like the victory lap? I was just so happy knowing we'd done our rides and we were making our way to the coast for our final stop. The little tiled houses in the middle of farms and around lakes were so cute. There were fishermen out in little boats. The ride was just so pleasant.

We made it to the coast and Facetimed the boys. When we went out to grab our last dinner we chatted with Bill and Nancy on our way out, and they ended up joining us to go get some gyros. That was a fun last dinner, getting to know them a little more before they headed to Morocco for some more travel and we headed home to our little boys.

I really loved this trip. Planning to see new places breathes life into me. I looked forward to it for so long and I know I'll get miles and miles of happiness out of just remembering it. Traveling Maddie met traveling Michael, so being just that together again for a few days really makes my soul happy.

We'd love to go back to Portugal (I was feeling sad we never made it up to Porto, but I don't regret our fun bike days), and maybe we will someday when we eventually make it to see Michael's mission in Spain. But if not, we'll always remember it was such a friendly and beautiful place with fascinating history, and some mildly intense seafood. :) 

The last biking breakfast.
These will be missed.

Ready to ride that last day -- we're expecting rain. 
It will be great :)

Lots of our day looked like this;
Dirt trails, rainy conditions.
It honestly just felt pretty great though, knowing we were just slowly making our way to our finish line and that it was a flatter and shorter ride than the day before.

We went around a whole lake and it was really pretty.
We could see on our map that we could just skip it if we wanted to.
But how could we do that??
It's so funny because we'd honestly never opt in to a rainy ride through Fort Collins,
but of course we'd do that in Portugal. We came for this!

So many beginning surfers out there. The waves would pick up here and there and they were fun to watch.

I'm going to miss this little thing.
I worry about a million different things at home and here I just worry about this little GPS,
and finding a yummy snack.

Portugal: Biking Day 4, Alcobaca to Obidos

 Portugal: Biking Day 4

Alcobaca to Obidos, 35 miles

Our longest ride day! With some pretty serious hills, but we did it! We left later because the forecast showed rain all morning until almost 10am, so we just kind of waited it out. Still caught some rain spots along the way, but some beautiful riding too!

We were sad to leave Alcobaca. We would've loved another day there. We rode along the bay through Martinho do Porto, then to Foz do Arelho. We wanted to get through our long ride in good time because we wanted time to spend in Obidos, a walled medieval town. 

We had our wettest day, but there were always breaks between the pours. I had the best chocolate croissant of my life today and snuck one away for our ride, and eating it over a lookout point high over the coast was just the best. We needed one hot chocolate stop after getting just poured on, but still made the ride in good time. We had time to get changed and dried and talk to our boys before we went out to walk the walls of the city. 

Obidos was interesting! It was more touristy than we expected. I guess in the summer it is insanely crowded and super hot, which did not seem fun -- the crowds were already pretty steady while we were there, and walking along the wall (most of which doesn't have barriers) with two-way traffic was kind of terrifying, so I can't imagine that with larger crowds. The bookstore was really fun, the main street was a souvenir spot but we didn't grab much except yo-yos for the boys. The church was gorgeous. Mostly it made me miss the Old City... I have almost an ache in me to explore the Old City in Jerusalem again. This was a fun day. We kind of expected it to be our favorite city but Alcobaca kept a hold of that.

My favorite breakfast of my life. We were wanting like double our normal calories at this point and breakfast was the time to fuel up! That chocolate croissant right there... best one I've ever had in my life. 

Every part of the hotel reflecting the monastery's aesthetic.

Did I sneak a chocolate croissant for the road? I did. I am so glad I did.

Heading to pick up our bikes from the hotel storage room.
This place was unreal.

Heron nests!
Starting our on our longest and hardest day,
so I was a little nervous about it but we had all day to do it haha.

Old windmills!

This whipped cream! Our rainy hot chocolate stops gave us life!

This lookout point seemed like the appropriate spot to eat my magical chocolate croissant. This will be one of the life moments I wish I could go back to :) :)

It was SO GOOD.

This double tile house, such pretty colors.

Riding dirt trails around the bay.

Cemeteries are just beautiful.
So many stories.

More cork trees!

I just loved these little bird decorations along these simple white and color-trimmed houses.

Such a beautiful neighborhood.

Made it to Obidos! This was the pool on our roof. We never had time to swim at any stop but you have to at least get eyes on the pool :)

Our hotel really leaned into the medieval vibe.

Walking the walls around the city

View of the aqueduct

This wall walk was wild, there were zero barriers through most of it and the foot traffic goes both ways. It made my stomach drop often, and they said when it's crowded in the summer they have people fall off every year. I was terrorizing myself picturing my children walking with us!

I loved that the Portuguese version of the BFG is called the GGG.
Il Grande Giganta Gentile :) 

Maybe my favorite tiled church.

Pastel de Bacalhau Com Quijo
Like a cornbread type fish cake with sheep cheese inside.
Again, sounds gross.. and I really liked it haha. Michael not so much.
Think of it as kind of like a tuna melt but with the fish mixed into the batter of the bread instead of with the cheese.

Pretty violin music while we ate our fish cake :)

This shows you more of the fish cake, but this one is extra cheese and we didn't go for that.

This looks like grilled cod but it's the previously salted and dried preserved cod that is 18+months old and then rehydrated for the dish. It doesn't taste like jerky but it's definitely more toward jerky than fresh grilled fish, and saltier. I could eat this piece of fish no problem if it was fresh, but I could not finish this. Just a different vibe, but I like it.

Facetiming those cuties! Usually this happened when we were done with our bike ride for the day (around 3 or 4) before they went to school back home.