Wow, Joel is 4 months!

What a precious blessing this little one is to us! Joel is such a happy and contented baby. He smiles constantly now, well, except when the camera is out. For some reason he's very intrigued by the cameras, so he stops smiling and stares. Ahhh.... we still think he is pretty cute. :)

This past month has been quite full for our little family. In the beginning of May we traveled out to Illinois to visit the Schroeder side of the family and meet our new neice Hadessah. We had a wonderful time together! We spent the first week up in Wisconsin to have a family vacation where Justin grew up at Victory Home for Boys. What fun it was for me (Katelyn) to see and experience Justin's childhood! After that week Justin flew back home to CA and I stayed out with Joel for a week longer. We spent much time together and took lots of pictures!

Great Grandpa Schroeder

Great Grandma Schroeder

Papa & Mama Schroeder with their grandkids


the Schroeder family...as it continues to expand

the new family of three

the other new family of three

Katelyn learning how to shoot skeet

The cousins hanging out :)

Waking up Uncle Caleb Joel hiking with Dad

Celebrating Katelyn's first mother's day

Joel & Uncle Jared

Good afternoon to everyone out there in cyberspace - family and friends. Here are more pictures of little Joel. We are enjoying every moment with him (well - almost every moment). This first picutre is the little guy taking a nap - something which he does very well doing!

These next pictures are from Joel's first day at the Beach. We all took a picnic down to a lake near us here in CA - it was so very warm outside! The water was quite cold; Joel was not impressed. But, he soaked through his outfit as soon as we got there so he lived in his diaper (yes - we do put clothes on him at times). We are conviced that we have one of the cutest babies ever - but then again, every parent is.

Thanks for enjoying Joel with us! We are so thankful for him, and so thankful that God has given him to us to raise and care for. Continue to pray for us as we endeavor more than anything to point Joel to Jesus Christ. Our longing is that He will one day confess Him as Lord and Savior - truly that will be a great day!

Well, once again I have been deliquent in my blog posting. I thought for some reason I'd be doing this every other day. . . it seems I'm lucky if I do it every other week.

Joes is well and growing. We had to retire a few outfits last week because he has grown out of them :(, but we are thankful he is growing. He continues to make more and more noise; he is definitely not a quiet baby! He is a good baby, but not to quiet.

We hope you enjoy this video. We will try to post more pictures in a few days. We did have some very cute ones, but alas there was no memory card in the camera (sorry about that).

Have a great day! (Justin/Katelyn/baby Joel)

In this video, he was supposed be making lots of noise. However, as soon as the video camera came out, he got quiet. However - he's still the cutest kid in the world :)

Here is a view of Joel being "not so happy" in his bouncy seat.

Joel is doing well & growing

Well, as you probably would expect, we love being parents (and Joel to:). He is such a delight to our hearts. We are learning about being tiredness, but we really can't complain. Not only is God's grace more than sufficient in any weakness, Joel is a pretty good sleeper over all. It is just that when you are not used to waking up a few times at night, your sleep feels disjointed. But, that's okay. If it comes with the territory, we'll gladly take it!

Joel received his first "piggy back" ride a few days ago. He seemed to not mind to much.

Below are pictures from yet another bath. He's just to cute to not take pictures of. . . and so we continue to take pictures.



Below are more pictures of our cute little man getting ready for bed. . .

Our First Blog Post/Video

So I finally figured out how to do video :) Actually, it was just taking the time to do it. Hopefully, this will be a regular occurance now that I know how easy it is.

We hope that these videos will allow those of you (espcially who are far away) to share in the joy that we get each day with little Joel.

More Pictures

Here is Joel with his Mama & Papa Schroeder for the first time. . . again, Joel is very excited to meet his grandparents :)

Below is Joel meeting his Great Grandma and Grandpa Hougham for the first time. . . even though you cannot tell by his expressions he enjoyed the occasion very much :)

Joel's now 5 weeks old!

It is hard for us to believe that our little boy is 5 weeks old today. It is remarkable to think how we waited and waited for this little guy to come, and now he is here and the time is flying by. He is gaining weight nicely - and filling out all of his "skin roles." The used to be "skin roles" are becoming "fat roles." However, this is the stage of life where it is cute to have roles upon roles :)

This morning Joel surprised himself. He was laying on a blanket, on his tummy, in our living room squirming as little ones do. As he was kicking with his feet he rolled himself over! It was pretty funny because he didn't just role, but he rolled completely over and did another half role onto his back. Needless to say he started fussing for he did not know what had just happened.

Let's see, another exciting event in Joel's life (or maybe I should say his parents lives) was he slept 7.5 hours on Saturday night! He has always been a good sleeper, but it was pretty wonderful to put him down at 11:00 and not have him wake up till 6:30. It's not quite a pattern yet by any means, but now we know he can do it:)

Katelyn and I are so thrilled to be parents. It is still very serele when we stop and consider that God has entrusted us with caring for this littler person (Joel). However, we are overjoyed at this stewardship. We know that we are going to learn very much through this entire process as well. As much as we know Joel will grow, we realize that he will be very instrumental in his parents being conformed to the image of Christ Jesus. We look forward to both him and us being made more and more like our glorious Savior and Lord.

Below are more pictures of our litte man:

This is Joel not know what do with his hands:)

The Many good uses for a nursing pillow. . . (above)

This is Joel's first "snow" experience. We thought about doing snow angels but we didn't want to traumatize the poor child:)