Schnackenberg's

James a few months older!!

2011-10-28T14:17:00.000-07:00

James growing up!

2011-05-10T14:10:00.000-07:00

10 months!! Through the eyes of James

2010-09-19T15:40:00.000-07:00

Here are the stairs I fell down when I first started crawling. I had a real bruise to show for it!!

I may not be big enough to go to school yet, but I can still play on the playground.

Yumm!!! Jello!!!

I love when dad lets me hang upside down in the air. It is really funny!

Look how big I am. I can climb up anything that will let me climb up it.

Fall is here, which means I am 10 months old!!

Help me!! My parents think it is cute to stick me in itchy, crunchy leaves and take way to many pictures.

James in the summer!

2010-08-10T18:54:00.001-07:00

James met his Great Great Grandma!

His first of many trips to the Lake!! I hope you like to swim!

Bath Time!!

James LOVES to swim!!

His first trip to Yellowstone. He loved the Geyesers.

James at Chris and Bri's wedding at Jackson Lake Lodge!!

Here we are late to the wedding. If you look in the top left corner you can see where the wedding is taking place.

James taking his first ride on our new boat!!!

James at 6 months

2010-06-04T04:49:00.001-07:00

James at 3 months!!

2010-02-20T13:34:00.001-08:00

James is growing so fast!!! I can't believe he is already 3 months old!! We are LOVING being parents!! He is such a great baby!!! He is cooing and smiling all the time now!!! Karl and I are back to work now and James gets to go to a wonderful babysitter!! We miss him a lot while we are at work, but it makes it that more exciting to see him after work each day!!!

James went on his first walk outside on Valentine's Day!!! It was a prefect way to spend the special day!!

Thank you God for giving us this special gift of parenthood!!!

James smile!

2009-12-14T10:45:00.000-08:00

Here are James's first few smiles captured on camera!!

Baby James is here!

2009-11-30T08:54:00.000-08:00

James Samuel Schnackenberg

7 lbs 13 oz. and 20 inches long

James

2009-10-10T05:28:00.000-07:00

Dear James,

Waiting for you has been long, but worth it. Your dad and I cannot wait for you to come into this beautiful world and join us. Everyday we pray for you and for us to be the best parents we can. We are excited for the new adventures to come with your little body in it. Our hearts are filled with joy thinking of how wonderfully and fearfully made you are in mom's tummy!! One of God's greatest mysteries. Creating you from nothing, molding you, and shaping you. Until we meet face to face keep growing and moving. We love you so much!!

Love,

Dad and Mom

33 weeks

2009-09-19T16:14:00.000-07:00

I cannot believe how the time has zoomed by. 33 weeks and 7 to go!!! He is a active little guy. It will be interesting to see if he is hyper active.

I feel great for 33 weeks. If you are pregnant I highly recommend water workouts. It works like magic on your body.

Anniversary Gift

2009-07-30T18:09:00.001-07:00

So my husband is amazing! For our anniversary he built this beautiful breakfast nook for me!!! He worked very hard and it paid off!!! It is absolutely wonderful and just perfect for our home. I wish you could see it in my house. The pictures don't even come close to the real thing!!

25 Weeks Pregnant

2009-07-30T17:54:00.000-07:00

Baby James!!

2009-07-10T12:05:00.000-07:00

Here I am at 23 weeks.

Here is baby James at 20 weeks!

Baby Update!!

2009-06-21T19:39:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I have put off announcing exciting news. I was hoping to downland the exciting picture to go with this news, but I honestly have been to busy to think about doing it.

So the exciting news is we are expecting a baby BOY!
In order to get ready for the baby boy we had to paint the baby's room. My friend, Shannon, helped me out on this project. Thank you!!! So here is a taste of what the baby's room is going to look like.

Here I am 20 weeks pregnant.

17 Weeks Pregnant

2009-06-03T17:13:00.001-07:00

Here I am at 17 weeks. I honestly feel blessed because I really did not have any morning sickness. Watching my friends go through that awful phase had me pretty freaked out!!! Thank you Lord!!! The only thing that is really going on is my belly is doing all that growing and itching stuff. I have not yet felt the little baby J do anything yet. Waiting for that day seems never ending. Anyways less then 3 weeks left until we find out the sex (we hope). We will keep you all posted!!! Boy or girl???

Are you ready for the answer????

2009-04-20T16:47:00.000-07:00

Okay, so for awhile now I have been thinking about moving to Green River to teach. It has been a hard discision because I love where I work. Well, the reality is that some day we are going to have child and traveling 15 miles and having a baby isn't going to work out. So....I applied and got a job working at Harrison!!!! I am really excited!!!
However, something else happened through this whole job search. Looking at the guesses I would say that you were all half right. Except Valerie, everyone already knows you are one of the coolest friends I have, there is no guessing about it. That is old news. So here it is......YES WE ARE EXPECTING A LITTLE BABY November 4th!!
We have tons to praise God for, a new job and a baby Schnack!!! Now you know that whole story!!!!

GUESS WHAT????

2009-04-16T19:48:00.000-07:00

??????????????????????????????????????????????????
I would tell you what the guess is about, but I think it would be more exciting to hear what everybody else thinks. ???????????????????????????????????????????
I will post the answer in a few days.

A Beautiful Voice!

2009-03-15T17:34:00.000-07:00

A short clip from Maegon's song.

Taste of Micah and Holly's Wedding

2009-03-15T17:07:00.000-07:00

Allie and Kole having an important discussion.

Our cousin, Maegon, sang "Be Unto Your Name". It was beautiful!

Bridesmaides: Katy, Trina, Jessica, and Me!

Baby showers mean baby shower cakes!!!

2009-02-08T18:19:00.000-08:00

It turns out that pretty much all my friends here in Green River are pregnant, which means tons of cute babies, but before the babies there must be baby showers. My friends and I are getting pretty good at making cakes for these baby showers. If you would like to reserve a cake for a special occasion made by my friends and I, just let us know. We might be able to make an arrangement.

!!

This is the cute ducky cake Shannon and I made for Fay's baby shower. Can you tell what the pink and blue frosting is??

2009-01-15T20:20:00.001-08:00

A new year brings new beginnings!!!

1. Karl and I have a roomate for a couple of months. She is a student teacher at Washington, Elementary. We are enjoying her company.

2. Karl is turing 25! Lower insurance, HURRAY!!!

3. This year we are taking on high school FCA. They meet with us every Tuesday evening. We would appreciate prayer for the youth to come fellowship with us and grow in their relationship with Christ.

4. Karl's parents are heading out to China!! They are going to teach English for six months.

5. I am pretty normal, not to much changing here. Except maybe my hair is getting a little longer, so there's that.

I am convinced that the best blogs to look at and read about are the blogs with cute little baby pictures. So I applogize that we do not have little babies to look at yet. That may be awhile. Ali and Natalie, our nieces, will have to do for now.

FaMilLy

2009-01-10T16:18:00.000-08:00

Here is my Sibert family. All together on Christmas Eve!!! It was a blast. top left: Shayne, Wes, Sid, Mary, Hayden, Ashlee, Holly, Micah, Bobby, Karl, middle left: Dad, Mom, Taina, Chase, Jenifer, Jolene Bottom left: Morgan, Maegon, Grandma Sibert, Ali, Brittany

Christmas Morning!!!

Here is my niece Ali with her awesome snowman she built. Notice that her snowman has floppy ears. According to Ali, all floppy ears are mandatory on all snowman.

Aunika, Karl, me, Hauns, Natalie, Amy, Kip and Ed

Over Thanksgiving we went to Cody to spend Thanksgiving with his family. We went out in the wind to attempt a family picture. Not to shabby.

November: An Unexpected Surprise

2008-11-30T19:24:00.000-08:00

First week of November- Went smooth sailing. Parent teacher conferences were a breeze. Praise the Lord!!! Also, Karl and I both had an extra long weekend!! That is always exciting!!

Second week of November- Things get a little hazy here.
Monday: Started out on the right track. It was a professional development day at school, which for anyone who is not a teacher, this means no students and lots of sitting and listening, just like our students do everyday!! I am not a good student!!
Tuesday: I woke up with a sharp pain in my side, which led to looking into the toilet for the next few hours. I figured it was the flu. Why wouldn't it be? I work with 23 children everyday!! Next, I took my temperature, perfect! Then I realized I was not achy in the joints. Each time I spewed the pain increased incredibly instead of decreasing. Poor Karl, he was working so hard to figure out what the matter was before he went to work. I only got worse. He decided to take the morning off to take me to the doctor. At this point I could barely stand up and I was hunched over from the extreme pain. None of the doctors offices would take an early appointment so we had to head to Rocks Springs ER. (By the way it only took them about 5 minutes to get into the room and within 20 minutes they had examined me, AMAZING!).
Well, as they tested me my pain only increased in my side, which led to morphine. WOW! Relief of pain! At this point we had a good idea that it had to do with the appendix. However, since I am a lady they had to check all the bases. I had to get a nice CT scan. When they were finished they had found nothing. Nothing? How does this explain my pain? The nice doctor gave me a choice. He said, "Since we are pretty sure it is the early stages appendicitis you can stay in the hospital and wait for it to get worse or you can go home and wait until it gets worse and come back in." Well, these are great choices, wait for more pain or wait for more pain. The only difference is where do I want to wait for more pain? I decided I would wait for more pain at home. He gave me a strange look like that was a bad idea. Then he told me he would go get the surgeon.
When the surgeon came in he decided with in 1 minute I needed to have surgery. He also said many other things about why I needed the surgery, even though he was not 100% sure. Thank you doctor! and thank you Lord! Please take care of this pain.
A few hours later I went into surgery, and 30 minutes later I was finished. Of course not remembering thing! The doctor said it was definitely appendicitis. Hurray!!! and there was no more unbearable pain in my side!!!
Wednesday: we stayed one night in the hospital and everything went smoothly except we didn't get hardly any sleep. We checked out mid-morning and headed home. Yes!! Now it was time to sleep and rest. Karl slept 4 hours straight and I probably caught a good 2 hours. Yes, I would say Karl needed the rest more then I did. Poor guy tried to fall asleep in the chair at the hospital all night long!!
Thursday-Tuesday: A whole bunch of sleep and rest!!! By Tuesday I was about sick of the sleep and rest.
My students were well taken care of during this time!! They had an amazing sub!!! She is a retired second grade teacher and the best part was 1/3 of my students she had last year!!! I couldn't have asked for anything better!!
Wednesday-Friday: Back to work!!!! I was tired all week, but it was great to be back at it!!
Thanksgiving Week: First we went to Mountain View for a pre-Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday and then we went to Cody and had another fabulous meal. Family time was also exciting!

Praise God for taking care of me during all this!!! Also, I am so thankful for a husband who sacrificed two whole days from school to make sure I was taken care of!! Without him it would have been so hard to go through all of this alone. Instead he stood by me holding my hand, telling me everything was okay, getting me more pain meds when I needed them, and he even tried to braid my annoying, long hair to keep it out of my face!!

Run run as fast as you can...really!!

2008-11-02T20:05:00.000-08:00

Halloween is always an exciting part of the year. Especially when Karl comes in the day before Halloween with a long roll of brown paper and a fantastic idea! He told me that the Ginger Bread Man would be a lot easier to create than Waldo, but he would need my help. I will admit, when he told me what he was planning I looked at him in disbelief. How could the Ginger Bread Man be easier than Waldo!?
Three hours later (11:30 p.m) after lots of cutting, crunching, stapling, and coloring we came up with this exciting costume. Does this look more like an innocent Ginger Bread Man or a horrifying kung fu clown?
Note to self, when Karl comes in with a great idea right before Halloween, tell him how I really feel about the idea before we get started.

note from Karl, I did say that she could leave, and she didn't have to help. It was an awesome idea in theory, but maybe not in practice, or the day before the event. :) Lesson learnedThe students loved whatever we created and after all the hard work that is what it is was really about. I admire Karl's attitude to connect with students and his passion to make them enjoy coming to school.

Teaching Life

2008-10-28T19:36:00.000-07:00

Teaching life most the time is a blast, but on a rare occasion it can really test your patients and stress level.
This year I (Jolene) have the best class ever!!! It is full of students who continually follow the rules; be safe, be respectful and be responsible. It is not the students that are testing my patients and stress level. It is the adults! Hum... you would think that it would be the students that sometimes lie, cheat, fight or my personal favorite...blurt out while I am talking that push me to the limit. No, it is the adults!!!
I was really pushed to my max last week. Some adults got into my head and made me believe I was this horrible teacher. I began thinking, well maybe I did say that, I did do that, or should be doing this? Wait a minute!!! No, I am doing what I am supposed to be doing. God, thanks to you, you woke me up!!! Yes, with you, Lord, there is nothing that can break me. You have my back not matter what trials come. Thank you Lord. I have never felt so much freedom and confidence in you as I do now. I truly feel at peace knowing you are in control!

I know that I am a good teacher and I am kind to my students. Certainly I am not perfect, but at the end of the day my true desire is to see students succeed with God's help!!!

"In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence."
Ephesians 3:12

Life in Green River!

2008-09-30T18:54:00.000-07:00

One wonderful year in our home!! Life in Green River has zoomed by quickly. Our new life has been nothing but fabulous. Each day we spend here we find out how much God has blessed us in this wonderful place. Teaching is going well for the both of us. Our new found friends are so encouraging with our walk with God. Also, we have built a strong church family to worship with. Praise God for all the wonderful things that has transpired this last year!! Even fall is beautiful here. Just look at the leaves in our front yard.

Sunday outing

2008-09-28T20:54:00.000-07:00

After church we have this awesome family that invites us over to have lunch at their house. This Sunday we decided to go out and play around on the bikes. This is the just some of our church family!! We love you guys!!

left to right: Jared, Ethan, and Valerie Bundy, Jerrid and Shannon Washburn, Kendra, Avah, and Terry Kellhofer, and Karl and I. Barb and Larry Crowell are taking our picture.

Karl and I have been living in Green River for almost two years and we have not spent a lot of time traveling the back roads of this area. However, this weekend we spent some time exploring. Here we are at the top of Pilot Butte!!

Wyoming's amazing summers!

2008-08-12T13:44:00.000-07:00

We went camping with Karl's family. We had a great time. The weather was just perfect and the scenery was breath taking. Thanks GOD!

This is at Green River Lakes just above Pinedale.

Karl is trying his best to be a pro fisherman. The fish were not cooperating.

Hauns, Karl's brother, is an excellent painter. Here he is painting the view from Green River Lakes. I wish I would have taken a picture of what he did or had something to share. I guess if you are that interested drop by the Big Horn Art Gallery in Cody.

Here's Amy, our sister-in-law, catching some rays.

Grandma (Karl's mom, Kip) is just enjoying her time playing with our niece Natalie! They look so cute!
Here is Ed (Karl's dad above) and Kip (below), also trying their hardest to catch the big fish. Ed finally caught a huge one, about 5 inches. I am sure that would have filled us right up.

Natalie is happy to be hiking along on her uncle Karl's back.

This Eagle let us get up real close to take a nice quick snapshot. It had just finished eating a mouse we believe.
Look at these crazy lumber jacks. Be careful Karl!

Ed pointed out to me how the raindrops looked like diamonds on this plant. I thought it was so neat how the plant made the raindrops ball up in the center. Another God thing! Thanks again!

Camping Near Pinedale

2008-08-04T08:02:00.001-07:00

So it might appear that Jolene does all the work on this blog, and well really she does. But I thought I would try to help out while she is at class this week. We went camping this past week and look to hopefully go to the same spot this next weekend with my family. There does happen to be a fire up there that has burned 9000 acres right now, but the smoke should be going the other way. Anyway, we went with our friends the Kelhoffers and did about 100 miles on their four-wheelers. It was an experience that I really enjoyed. So here are some of the photos.

Just a little taste of what we saw up on our trip. Fields and fields of flowers.

Summer Fun!

2008-07-23T10:18:00.000-07:00

My awesome friend, Corinna, showed up for a few days to hang out with me! I haven't seen her since the wedding, two years ago. I was so happy to be able to spend some time catching up!

on Every summer my family (Jolene's) goes to the Flaming Gorge many times to have a whole bunch of fun. This is my favorite place to be in the summer. I love the water and swimming.

Ali (Jolene's niece) first real ride on the boat. She loved it so much that she fell asleep.

Brittany (Jolene's cousin) is only seven years old and riding the knee board like a pro!

Holly (Jolene's sister) and Corinna (Jolene's friend from MV) fighting to see who can spray each other the most.
My niece Ali having fun in the water.

Wes (Jolene's brother) thinks he is pretty funny and that Ashlee (Wes's wife) won't notice how good he sun screened her already burnt back.

Here is my two cousins; Maegon and Morgan paddling around. Maegon was screaming back to the shore, "Mom, Morgan is being a wuss."

Here's Karl at the BBQ cooking up a storm and talking on his cell phone at the same time.

Today I will try something new!

2008-07-15T13:19:00.000-07:00

My friend, Valerie, told me that in order to be cool I needed to have a blog. Well, I decided I will try it out. However, since Karl and I do not have kids it probably won't be all that interesting right now.