The Schmidgalls

Okay, fall is our favorite time of the year! We LOVE it! I would go to farms and orchards every weekend if I could. The weather is crisp, the food is yummy, the humidity is gone, the leaves are changing…it is wonderful!

We took Ellie and her Grandma Schmidgall apple picking. Ella loved it! We had to remind her not to eat the ones off the ground!

Grandma helped Ellie find the apples.

Daddy’s girl, for sure!

Mommy is okay too.

Ellie was excited to see her favorite animal - a rooster! She crowed at it!

Once we got home, Grandma made us two apple pies. Mmmmmm!

A couple of weeks later, we visited Cox Farms with some families from the church. My mom (”Mimmy”), Aunt Karen, and Uncle Dan were in town so they went along! The 80 degree weather sure didn’t feel like fall but the festival was a blast as usual!

Ella and her friend Violet, dancing to the band!

Daddy and Ellie on the hayride

Mimmy and Ella fed the goats…oy, those germs!

Ellie and her cousins - a bit sweaty after a corn fight!

Smile with the pumpkins! (”Pop-ins” as Ella calls them!)

So September was also the month I turned the big 3-0! I told Joel that what I wanted most was a weekend away with my girlfriends! My best girls and I kissed our kids good-bye and took off for a few days at the beach. It was wonderful, amazing, fantastic. The heavens celebrated my birth with lots of sunshine! I am smiling now even as I think about it.

I pretty much love girl-time…like double heart love it! I am forever 13 and live for giggling, snacking, talking, squealing, laughing, more talking, and playing. I just pushed it out of my mind when I called home to find out Ella had forfeited her afternoon nap, gotten a time-out during our evening worship event, and thrown a toy into the toilet just as Joel was flushing it. Sorry babe, but mama is laying on the beach and eating crab cakes.

One of my consistent prayers for my daughter is that she will be blessed with supportive, affirming, honest, and fun girlfriends! These gals are one of the greatest gifts in my life. It was perfect to celebrate a milestone with them. Love ya ladies!

Grace, Paige, Laura, Lora, Christina, Nina, Amanda

In case the girls get mad at me for posting this photo, I just remind them of the photo I COULD have posted! A-hem!

Okay, if you post a picture of your friends’ booties, you better be willing to post your own as well. But, I AM pregnant people.

In addition to allowing us to communicate with our family and friends far away, this blog is also a family scrapbook. So, I can’t let some important things slip away without mention. In the craziness of life, I didn’t not mention some very important events.

September was an exciting month in our family. Joel led a city-wide outreach called Convoy of Hope. It included grocery bags of food, a job fair, haircuts, family photos, BBQ, a kids area, and much more - all free!

I cannot explain the energy, the prayers, the sweat Joel poured into this event. We prayed and prayed that we would be able to bless those in need in our community. And, as the hurricane weather came closer, we prayed against rain! It was so stressful to wake up on the day of the event to forecasts of pouring rains and heavy winds. Let’s just say, thanks to the Hurricane, we will never have a daughter named Hannah (it was Hurricane Hanna)! Joel reluctantly postponed the event. I had been praying against rain for days and suddenly found myself praying that it would pour like never before and give him peace in his decision. God answers prayers! We had tents fall down, downpours, dangerous winds.

But, the Lord knows best and the next day, it was GORGEOUS! We had over 10,000 guests! There were close to 1,200 volunteers from various churches. It was amazing!

We worked like crazy to get the word out!

We gave away 80,000 pounds of groceries!

These were the team shirts. They said “Hope” on the front so whenever we wear them we are pretty sure people think we are campaigning for a certain candidate.

The man with the plan!

The whole family joined in!

Ellie helped leading up to the event.

I was so proud of Joel!

Convoy was a catalyst for some really big changes in our church and our commitment to our neighbors in need. My husband has a passionate heart for serving others and I can’t wait to see how God unfolds everything!

Okay, okay…I know I have been terrible about posting. But I have just returned from Thailand and I have decided that you get a pass whenever you have left the country, especially when you had to spend 24 hours traveling EACH WAY. (Yeah, yeah…I know that my posts were drying up well before the trip.)

There is much to say about our trip to Thailand. I will get to that, for sure. But, in the meantime, I am feeling like a total let down of a mother because in just five days I will be half way through this pregnancy and I have yet to say or post anything except a sonogram pic. Uggg!

Here are couple of important dates:

July 12 - Found out we were pregnant - at last! We had tried for eight months this time around so it was relief for sure!

September 3 - (12 weeks) - Saw first picture of our baby! It was our in-office sonogram.

September 27 (15+ weeks) - First felt baby move!! (This was five weeks earlier than with Ella!) This was a big deal since I hadn’t even been able to hear the heartbeat yet.

End of September (15+ weeks) - First wore maternity clothes. I always like to put it off as long as possible (19 weeks last time) but I just couldn’t make things fit any longer. I am in that weird in between stage where regular clothes are too small but maternity clothes fall down. Sighhhhh….

October 7 (17 weeks, exactly) - First heard the baby’s heartbeat!! Relief! For some reason, the doc was never able to find the heartbeat with the doppler before then. They would pull out the sonogram machine and say everything was fine…but I was still waiting to HEAR it for myself. It was WONDERFUL!!

So, here is my first pregancy picture (18 weeks) - just before we left for Thailand. I do feel slightly guilty about waiting this long to start taking pics of my belly…but, to be honest, I just wasn’t really in the mood to flash pics of my growing body. Things start expanding much more quickly this time and I wasn’t sure I wanted to show it off.

We are not going to find out the gender of the baby this time. But, when we were in Thailand, one of the pastors prayed over me, placed her hands on my belly and said, “I pray for this baby, that he will grow to be a man of God.” Joel has been elated…but I am terrified he will be let down. We will have to wait and see!

There were a few summer memories that didn’t get blog time. For one, we had plenty of fun times at the zoo!

Though our life is a zoo itself, Ellie got her first trip to a real zoo this summer! We went a few times to our National Zoo here in DC. She loved the pictures of the panda a bit even more than the real panda bear!

Then, after a family wedding in Colorado, we took Ella to the Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs.

Ella met a baby wallaby!

Mommy’s favorite’s: Ella and Elephants!

Auntie Amy, what are those strange animals with long necks?

We got to feed the giraffes! It was amazing! Ella was not thrilled about the long black tongue but she accepted the challenge.

Many more trips to the zoo to come!