Author: Emily

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Satisfying

Life update….I went back to work this fall! My favorite type of nurse job I’ve done is being a postpartum nurse. Praise Jesus that I was able to find a PRN postpartum gig! It’s been a great fit.  So we’re still home schooling and Chase takes the lead on that when I have to work and it’s been a sweet little new rhythm to get into here lately. 

I was at church last week and I had a moment that’s just had me thinking this week. In Revelations 22:6 it says “And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.” Jesus talks to the lady at the well in John 4 about giving living water to the thirsty, and anyone who drinks of it will thirst no more. 

Well if there’s one thing I can attest to in life it is that we’re all thirsty. I see it every night at work. The screaming raging second night babe. Her insides have woken up, she’s peeing and pooping, she’s empty and needs filled. She’s hangry. She’s thirsty. 

And while I think we drop some of the outward screaming and raging pandemonium as we all mature I think there is still an inner thirst raging inside. The world offers us all sorts of different pacifiers to try satisfy it but there is only one who can do that. There is no amount you can travel, no politician you can vote for, there are not enough dogs you can rescue, there is not enough sour dough to bake, there is not enough you can save in an account, there is not the perfect number of kids to have nor the ideal zip code to live in, there is only one thing that can satisfy the thirst! 

This time of the year we think about him as a babe laying in a manger. If you don’t know him I’d encourage you to give him a try, He can satisfy and bring peace like nothing in this world can. And if you do know Him, here is your friendly reminder to calm down and bask in his life giving water. 

♥️✨Merry Christmas ✨♥️

Christmas morning 2023 🤣

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Together

Recently our home school co-op started another year of school. The kiddos and I did this last year and they were all so eager to get back to it again this year. 

I had the hankering to try to make all (47!) mamas a little bouquet of flowers to take home on the first day. I just thought it could create some smiles and some feel good feels!

What I did not know was how God was going to use this sweet imagery to stir my heart. So I got all the glass vases (spice jars, candle holders, salt and pepper shakers etc) and cut my greenery and my flowers and started putting them together. It made my heart so happy. I had a huge, wet, beautiful mess in my kitchen and then was a bit perplexed how I was going to get all this to its final destination. Could I get all of them in one container to transport them?

I found a crate and one by one started putting them down in there and it was just beautiful and then more beautiful and even more beautiful. And when they were all there together it was so so so sweet. God just laid on my heart the beauty of togetherness. Yes each of these separately were cute. But them all together, they were stunning. A small glimpse of the church, Jesus’s bride. Believers together. Doing things for Him, for His glory, for His kingdom. That is stunning! Together can draw attention, together can turns heads, together can get people talking, and with His light shinning through it all….big things can happen! If you feel like you are trying to do all the things on your own I’d highly encourage you to step out and get plugged in to a church, look into a co-op, investigate a small group or maybe even go meet the neighbors….there’s so many ways to fellowship!

Life is just more beautiful together. 

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Schneider summer schenanigans include but not limited to……

Bike rides. Parades. Rocking on the porch. Baseball and tee-ball with Tongie Rec. Scrunched faces. New teeth. New house. New town. Library programs. Our first Vacation Bible School. Thursday Farmers markets. Swim lessons. Family fair run. Homemade pies. Swimming pool days. Library reading program. Bonnets. Canning. Caprese salad, and lots of it. Super hero masks and capes. Bath time for all three at the same time. Sewing. Maelee’s first zoo trip. The ice cream man. Painted baby toe nails. Our 10th wedding anniversary. Chess. Eating solids. And it has ended with us joining a co-op for homeschool, just to name a few! It’s been a grand summer, I literally can’t believe it started with us in camper and has ended with us in a house. What a season! 

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HOME

This might just look like a normal 9 month milestone picture. (How in the world she can already be 9 months is beyond me!) This picture is extra special because this is the first time she’s in the rocker I had with the boys. We did not put the rocker in the camper. We put the rocker in her room…in our HOUSE!! Yes you read that right, we bought a house!!

I truly do not have the words. God has blessed us with an incredible home, a dream come true. We are soooo excited for this next chapter. We can walk to the park, pool, library, and farmers market. We can host and share our space. We pray that we will be wise stewards with all that has been entrusted to us!

It feels insane but it’s true…… the camper has parked and we are HOME!

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What a Month!

Albeit the shortest month of the year, we packed February 2023 full of memories!! We took a vacation for the entire month and traveled all over the south east! We hooked our camper up with our THREE kiddos and took off on an adventure. (We were fully aware that traveling with a 4 month old could be a disaster and we would have turned around and stopped…..but they all did amazing so on we went!!)

Memories include but not limited to- loosing a front tooth, boondocking, the Ark Encounter, a flat tire, a goat eating Mac’s shirt, a visit to Biltmore, baby’s first time at the beach, Mardi Gras in New Orleans, small town Texas, Kentucky Horse Park, frozen camper, and a Chiefs Super Bowl WIN!

The family and friends we got to share moments with will be a treasure forever!

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Homeschooling

Homeschooling is not mimicking an 8 hour public school day. We try to get most everything done between breakfast and lunch. And then who knows what will happen in the afternoon! Letter writing, fire building, gift painting, cake baking, bike ramp making, playing chess, puzzling, sewing, gardening ….anything goes! 🕰️📚🚴🏼‍♂️♟️🧩

Fun fact….Chase found out you can borrow cake pans from the library. We’ll read books, listen to audio books, watch shows, bake the cake and eat it too all of the same character. We’ve done this with Thomas the Train and Winnie the Pooh so far! (With Pooh I had the idea to let Merrick paint Poohs shirt and hunny pot with food color gels….it would have turned out amazing if I would have greased the pan first! 🙈) 📕 🎧 🧑🏼‍🍳🍰

Homeschooling is putting blue food dye in the toilet and letting them learn what colors blue and yellow make! Merrick still has not forgotten what two primary colors make green! 🚽 🔵🟡🟢🤪

Homeschooling is reading to our kids and then them chanting “read the next chapter, read the next chapter”…. and every subsequent chapter and then spending an hour finishing the entire book together! 📕📗📘📙

Homeschooling is letting them run the experiment on the teacher 😉 blindfold taste, smell and touch! Luckily they picked nice things for me- butterscotch chip, chocolate and a cracker. For them it was peanut, raisin, strawberry, onion and a cracker. 🥜🍓🧅

Homeschooling doesn’t have to be insane amount of planning ahead, teacher work books, and the picture perfect home classroom. We have one little shelf area we keep all our curriculum books and supplies in. We sit at the table, on the couch, on the floor and can go outside to do any of it! 

Homeschooling is not something I ever saw myself doing, but I wouldn’t trade these days with them for anything. We don’t know how long this will be our norm or what we will feel like is right for us but right now homeschooling has been a perfect fit! 

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What’s it really like…..

Having a baby in a camper?! 

We are two months into this and we are doing a-okay! I figured we’d have to move things around constantly because of the minimal space and that would get annoying, but there actually hasn’t been much of that. The boys don’t wake up to the nightly nursing calls and I thought that might be an issue as well. So honestly it’s been better than I was expecting!

She has a rock-n-play she sleeps in. We can fold it up when she’s not using it. 

By day the changing area is on our bed, by night it’s on the couch. 

The rocker stays out most the time, if someone is coming over we’ll fold it up and get it out of the way. The rocker has been nice for the nightly nursing sessions. And a relaxing spot to rest and snuggle during the day. I have a little book light that I turn on and that’s enough light at night for a diaper change and nursing.

Her first bath went just dandy. We have a collapsible laundry basket that does the trick. And once she can sit up it’ll be her little bath tub too!

We started cloth diapers a couple weeks ago. I wash them in the shower in a bucket with a plunger. We have a drying rack we put up over a heater vent at night to dry them. Whatever isn’t all the way dry in the morning we toss in the dryer to finish them up. So far this little routine has worked out just fine! 

She tolerates my big bows! 😉 Figure I’ve had babies without bows and now that I have one that can wear them we might as well!!

She’s eating, sleeping and growing like a weed already. The boys love her and want her to be apart of things!! Couldn’t have imagined a sweeter addition to our little family.

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Apple Trees

Across the interstate from the campground we are managing is a small orchard. 

In early August we saw they needed help picking peaches and this unraveled into helping pick anything and everything!

It’s been fun to learn: when to pick a peach (when the point is gone and the grove isn’t too deep)…..how to harvest okra (with clippers, once they are about finger length and at least finger width. Chase has deemed okra his favorite vegetable plant…it’s tall, keeps producing, has awesome flowers- pictured below!!)…… when to pick a watermelon (once the tendril is dry and there is a yellow spot on the bottom) and the list could go on and on!

After a few days of work over there…..Mac, the boy who lived on the ranch came back to us. Jeans, button up plaid shirt, belt buckle, cowboy boots and hat…that Mac. He’d work over there with one of us. When Chase picked apples he wore that bag over his shoulders, filled it up and then dumped it in the bin for sorting in the warehouse later.

It’s been fun to do. And my heart loves being in a garden. It’s not Eden but man I just feel God differently in a garden than I do anywhere else. 

One time I was picking apples and I was in shock by one particular tree. On one side of it you saw a good ole normal apple tree. Green leaves full of fruit. Then I went to go pick on the other side and yikes. A huge portion had fallen….a storm….a bug….a something bad…had taken its toll on this tree. Some of tree was on the ground, the leaves were brown….yet it was fruitful. And my mind just could not get over it. 

Even during our tough times, our storms, the woes…… those stretches can still be fruitful! A storm is not an excuse to be rude, impatient, callused and hard. When we’re squeezed what oozes out of us…the yuck or the fruit? The fruit of the Spirit as listed in Galatians 5:22-23 is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self-control….may these be the fruit that are seen in us, even during the tough times! 

And I’ll leave you with this fun fact…Maelee was due on Monday September 26th…I woke up that day and knew I wasn’t going into labor any time soon….so I went to go work at the orchard and picked apples….and wouldn’t you know that evening around 10:00 the contractions started and didn’t stop and we had a babe in our arms the next morning! She’ll forever be connected to the orchard and Jonathan apples!

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A baby in a camper you say…..

So at this stage in the game in looks like we are going to have a baby in the camper….no siree…I don’t mean literally give birth in the camper but this will be where she comes home to! We didn’t know if God would have lead us out of here by now but seems like we’ll be in here in 6 weeks so here we go!!! 

We’ve made a few little adjustments to make room! 

I rearranged/ organized/ built more storage above Merrick’s bed. I used to know where everything was but it was not pretty….in fact most of the time we had it hidden behind a curtain 🙈 In the updated picture, all the little tubs in front will be for baby items…blankets, wipes, diapers etc etc. 

There is a closet space that had Mac’s shirts and Merrick’s PJs…but we did a little rearranging and now all of Merrick’s clothes are under his bed or hanging by his bed. Mac now has two drawers with all his clothing items. That freed up the tiny closet for us to start putting itty bitty pink hand-me-downs in! Had to put some hooks on the door to hang up all the bows! 🎀

We have a little moveable bassinet type item that she’ll sleep in for the first few months!

I really wanted a rocker to be able to rock in….we were looking for tiny real ones and even thought about getting rid of the love seat to make room for the rocker we had with the boys….but it just wasn’t going to work. So we opted for a folding rocker, I’ve thrown a blanket it over and it’ll do the trick just fine!

We don’t plan going joining the minivan club…..so its three in the back seat for us. Mac in a booster, Merrick in the high back and baby in the infant rear facing one! We tested the seats all in the back and the boys were begging to go for a ride using their new seats… so hopefully that excitement lasts 😉 

Mac has sown a double sided quilt with tacked down basting and all! He also has made a little rag doll from fabric that he picked out for her himself! 

Its just been little small updates here and there but we feel pretty ready to add another little to our tiny spot!

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Jonah

I’ve been studying Jonah with a few ladies and it’s just been so good! I would say I knew the story of Jonah but more from a children’s Bible story type perspective. I’ve had some take aways I never saw coming and it’s just been such a gift…

Previous take away…don’t be like Jonah…do what God says. 

New…. 

The sailors on the ship with Jonah have melted me. They were terrified. They did not know God. And here they were going through all of this…because of Jonah. Makes me ponder….Who else am I causing turmoil for when I do not obey?

They cast lots and Jonah is the reason for what is going on. Jonah tells them who God is. He tells them to throw him over, that is the solution to the sea storm problem. Even after this, they try with all their might to row the boat and get it under control. They do not want an innocent man’s blood on their hands but they have no choice but to throw him over. 

Walk with me here…from their perspective…I assume they think Jonah died, they have no clue how the story ends.  Maybe they saw him get swallowed by a fish or maybe they just saw him sinking into the sea but either way he is gone. After they throw him over the storm calms and they worship the Lord. Crazy, bad, insane things happen that we do not understand…. but we can still worship God.

The thing I want most in life is to know my babies love the Lord. These sailors did not know how Jonah’s story ended. They did not need to know it would all be okay, they did not have to understand God’s plan…..they worshipped the Lord. Period. I do not need to know the answer to how it will all unfold. I just need to worship the Lord. 

There may be people in your life who’s disobedience is bringing a storm into your boat/life…it’s okay to toss them out. Your relationship with God, your head space, your heart  should not be wavering, let it go and turn and worship the Lord. (God is still in watching over them too!)

How many times have I tried to row my boat through the storm when I just needed to give God the problem and let him calm the storm? 

Ahhh so much to Jonah! 

And another nugget….without Jonah’s disobedience we do not know if these sailors would have ever gotten to come to know the Lord. This just shows us how BIG God is. He can use our mess ups, our disobedience. How beautiful and amazing is that!

(Throw back pictures to that one time lived on an island for a few months)