its been awhile . . .

so heres a little update -

sophia brielle smucker is doing great! i can tell she is very excited to meet all her family in PA soon. she cant stop talking about it! courtneys doing great too. i dont have much to compare it too but she seems to be doing really well after just 1.5 weeks since a loooong labor (21 hours). sophie sleeps at about 3-4 hours at a time and is awake for an hour or so. which gives court and i a good nights rest. i go back to work tomorrow after a good amount of time being off and i have a good feeling im gonna miss my daughter!

i would go into more detail but im not sure who all reads this blog and i think its just my mom and sister and they know everything anyway so lets get to some good pics!

life in a hut

so the whole HUT project thing started this past saturday - its been interesting thus far. Pastor Mike made a comment in every service about feeling free to stop by and honk your horn at 3am . . . so people have done very similar things. one beautiful thing about living in this brilliant idea of a hut is the number of people that bring us food. we have plenty of food brought to us daily. the conditions arent really that bad. last night i was pretty cold but all in all, its worth the fact that we have raised over 5000 dollars which is waaaaaay more than we thought. this is literally giving us the ability to pour concrete floors and dig a well for a poverty stricken area of the dominican. we have had so many people commend us for doing what we are doing which is great. our church truly understands that this isnt just for fun (cause its not fun trust me) and its not just because Noah and i are kind of odd, but its to help change lives and give us an avenue to share the amazing love of Christ to a people need a message of hope and love.

without further adu. . . check out the pics - the one is a picture of inside the church looking out to the hut in direct view of where everyone walks in and out of the church! its great!

our youth ministry - especially the staff - comes up with some creative ways of fundraising.

in april, we are going on a missions trip to the Dominican Republic. we are taking 14 students and 7 adult leaders including myself. well . . . this is a pricey trip as you can imagine, so we are trying to be creative in finding ways to raise money to keep the cost more manageable.

thats where the hut for humanity comes into play. Noah and i built a 'replica' of a Dominican hut and we are going to live in it starting oct. 11th. for every 500 dollars we donated, we will spend 1 night and 1 day in the hut. its just hanging out in the church parking lot, its going to be our home soon. its hideous and we are both a little surprised that administration is allowing us to keep this hut in the front of the church as advertising. we have an awesome church! look at this thing . . .

tiff and johns wedding

recently, court and i went to hilton head SC for courts sisters wedding. it was a destination wedding and it was awesome. we had soooo much fun. we stayed in a huge house right on the beach with friends and family. noah and steph nickel (great friends) followed us down on the long trip. we left right after youth group on a wednesday night and noah and i talked on our walkie talkies the whole time giving each other the strangest fight match ups between friends and people we never met and determining the victor. it made time go very fast. we couldnt make it the entire way without pulling over to sleep a little so we pulled off into a hotel parking lot that look fine at 5:30am but at 7:00 am in daylight it looked a little shady. oh well.

the wedding - right on the beach behind the house, gorgeous weather. the reception- right in the backyard, awesome sunset. it was a fun 4 days for us. the trip home seemed a little long but we made great time. at one point, a few of us were swimming in the ocean when a school of 30-50 dolphins started jumping 20 yards in front of us. kinda surreal. jordan yoder, noah and i were very tempted to swim out with them and then we realized ' these are wild animals'. heres a few pics . . .

baby pic

so you cant actually see the baby but you can see the belly that the baby is in. . . my sister took some awesome pregnancy pics for courtney and I and we think they turned out great. man my wife is hot! thanks jess!

this was our first project as parents . . . putting together our pack n' play!

Courtney had a staff meeting today where she was surprised to find that all the people she worked with pitched in and bought us this. Very very cool! Soooo . . . my wife is not very patient when it comes to opening and playing with gifts; as soon she got home she started to put it together. Now she is very handy but there was one part that she just couldnt figure out. I, however, figured it out with one hand (literally, i was on the phone with the other). I know, its a gift, im very talented!

I think our little baby girl will like this very much. since we tend to travel in and out of PA a lot she should get very comfortable with it.

Building a hut

Sorry. I tried to send this picture from my phone and it didnt work so well.

Ill update you more on this in the future but for now . . .
Our youth group is going on a missions trip to the dominican republic in April 09' and my friend and i are living in a hut to raise money. How, you ask??? well, we will have people sponsor us per night we stay in this hut. no showers, no change of clothing, living in a hut that we build ourselves (still building it as we speak, ill show pictures when its finished) right in front of our church. Our goal is to raise 2500 dollars and to sleep in this thing for 5 nights. we love our students!!!

this is funny . . .

so Jordan Yoder randomly came across this and sent it to me and i thought it was so very true. its pretty funny, you need to check it out -

http://www.offroaders.com/Destinations/Lancaster/Lancaster.htm

an email i recieved earlier -

Mike Guglielmucci is a worship leader for hillsong and is widely known through integrity music - God gave him this song the same day that the doctors diagnosed him with cancer. i thought it was inspiring and i thought everyone would enjoy. . . copy and paste the link
http://www.ccli.com/usa/Community/CCLITV/Default.aspx?v=ef9e450c-ee35-4bdf-935e-2f6dd60aa65d

this is my blog

the purpose of this entire thing is to share my life (i enjoy sharing my life) with my amazing friends and family in my neighboring & home state of Pennsylvania. it seems as though ive been on a journey for the last 2 years that some of the people i care the most about haven't been able to share with me. im not always the best with communicating whats going on in my life through phones so i thought i would give this a shot. im a transparent person - so family and friends - this is my way of sharing my thoughts, my days, and hopefully many pictures too!





our baby is getting bigger ---->