Foxes, Friends, and Growing Girls

Time is going so quickly. Every time I turn around Ella has grown or has added another four words to her vocabulary. She's quickly gone from our sweet baby to our spunky toddler. 

This week she's in Arizona with my mom, grandma, and grandpa enjoying some more warm weather and time with family. Last Friday before she left as she sat on the couch sleepily waking up from her to short nap I grabbed my camera and took a few pictures of her just being her. 

She loves watching Daniel the Tiger cuddled with her fox and Mickey and drinking milkies almost as much as I love her. 

Almost A Year!

Woah! It's been almost a year since I blogged. That is absolutely nuts!

Honestly I dislike blogging. It's super vulnerable for me to put my thoughts and feeling and grammatical errors out for the world to see. I also know how important it is though for me and our family to capture this time of our live in a way we can look back on it. 

Sooo.. I guess I'll do a quick picture recap of what almost the whole last year has looked like for us. 

Ella celebrated her second Christmas with a few of the classic things!

Like Christmas Train and learning to play piano. 

 She kicked off Spring Trips by joining me in Miami and had an absolute blast with the school who came to serve from Texas and the church we worked alongside of.

Ella met her best friend foxy in aisles of Hobby Lobby which coincidentally is also where I like to hang out with my best friends. 

Ella and I hung out with our partner churches in Chicago. She loves Pastor Thompson so much! 

We celebrated my sister-in-law's wedding!! Ella was the flower girl and nailed it. 

And most recently we've spent our summer our serving and adventuring. 

Ella went on her first mission trip to Costa Rica. She worked hard everyday and loved hanging out with her friend Jose and so many others. 

She helped Alyssa coordinate a week in Chicago amazingly. She even helped with some prayer training. 

Our whole family got to go on vacation to Destin with my family. One night we got to go check out some Dolphins and Ella loved hanging out with grandpa and trying to see how many she could spot. 

And this week Ella has been practicing racing daddy outside! She's pretty quick for an almost two year old. 

So now let's pretend like we're mostly caught up on the past year. I might go back and highlight things from the past year like big trip or important moments, oh like Baby Noah will be here anytime now!!! 

Crazy!

Alright now I'm ready to get back to actually blogging. Whew. 

Happy Tuesday. :)

Time Flies

Yesterday I woke up early and headed to the Airport in Raleigh,NC. I was tired. The drained in every way I could imagine tired. I grabbed my coffee and prepared to sit in silence on the plane. I love airports for just that reason. You can opt out of talking to people if you want, pretend to be busy working on a project or just to tired to talk. 

As I walked on the nearly full plane I headed to the back of the plane hoping to snag a seat on the aisle with no one in the middle. I managed to do just that. Almost everyone was seated on the plane and I was silently rejoicing on not having to sit next to a stranger and engage in small talk. Just as I thought I was in the clear a man was standing by my side asking if he could sit in the middle seat. 

A tall 40 something well dressed man now sat next to me. The woman sitting by the window kept her head down. She appeared to be a well educated women seeking the same thing I was after on the plane, silence.  The plane hadn't even taken off when I remembered what my husband had been trying to encourage me in, speaking to strangers. He's always reminding me that each opportunity I have with someone is a chance to share my life with them. 

I took a deep breath, and said hello to the well dressed man in the middle. The conversation flowed from there. The well dressed man now has a name to me, Abe. The educated woman clinging to silence by the window Carri. 

Our conversation flowed throughout the whole flight. There never was a moment of silence between the three of us. We shared our hearts and our lives with each other. We prayed over each other and thanked God for introducing us. 

Abe said to me as I got off the plane something that rang so true to me. He told me while support with finances is important what I truly am striving for is support from people's hearts. 

It's true.  What we are truly seeking for is your heart. We want you to stand up next to us and say I believe in what you're doing. I want you to let our family know that you are praying for us. Covering us with prayers and love. 

If you are willing to share your heart with our family let us know. Send us an email or Facebook message us. Let us add you to our list of prayer supporters. 

Also for those of you that share your heart with us already. Thank you. I can't tell you how much your prayers, love and support mean to us. 

-Carissa

Weekend Recap 110914

Hello all,
Adam here for an update on what's going on in the Hildebrandt family right now.  Carissa has been gone for almost a week at a youth conference for work!  It was a bit of an unexpected trip, as we just found out about the possibility about a month ago, but it was a great opportunity for Carissa, and it sounds like she had a good time.  In the meantime, Ella and I got a visit from my mom to help out for the weekend.  She watched Ella while I worked Friday and Saturday, and then we got to spend some time Saturday evening and today.  She was a big help and I always enjoy the time I get to spend with her.

Football season is wrapping up, which means we'll have a break for a couple of weeks.  It will be really nice to have some family time where we aren't having to do games all the time.  On the other hand, basketball will start in a few weeks, which is really the busy time.  This will be our third basketball season, but the first when Ella is mobile, so prayers for energy and strength would be greatly appreciated.

Speaking of Ella, she can walk now!!! She doesn't go very far yet, but if she doesn't get too excited, she can move her way all through the room.  It's so much fun to watch her grow and learn! I think I can speak for Carissa when I say she is the joy of our life.

I'll be trying to keep the blog more up to date as we go along.  Thanks for tuning in!

--Adam

Goodbye Summer

It's crazy how fast the summer went this year. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around everything that I saw and did. It's weird to say that I'm having a hard time adjusting since I spent most of my summer only 5 1/2 hours from where I live but I am. 

It's so different to not get hugged by Pastor Thompson every morning or to sit and have coffee with Ms.Joyce, our friend that we stay with when we don't have teams, on the weekend. There's no excitement of getting to meet a new group that is traveling long distances to pour into a city I've fallen in love with. 

Don't get me wrong I love being home. Having my best friend by my side everyday, Ella kisses, a comfy bed, Zeke licking my toes, and my favorite local coffee shop but I miss my friends. I miss Chicago, PuertoRico, and Costa Rica. 

That's all I have for now I'm still trying to write out my heart. (Is that even possible???) 

If you all could be praying for Adam and I during this transition of me being home more and him being gone more we would greatly appreciate it. 

Family Mission Trip!

Hello all!

Adam here, and I'm very excited because next week is our family mission trip to Chicago!  Ella and I will be joining Carissa to serve and help lead a group in ministry.  We already know that a homeless lunch ministry and VBS are both on the agenda.

It will be so nice to get to experience a week of work with Carissa.  Obviously, she tells me about trips all of the time, but it will be much easier to know and understand her joys and challenges after I've been through them as well.  And of course we're very excited for little Ella to serve on her first mission trip.  She's already been designated the lead nap taker.

As we prepare to serve, things are developing quickly at my job as well.  We found out last week that I will get to broadcast CMU games this fall after all, and I'm very excited for the college reps to still be there.  I'll even get to call a game against a Division-I opponent in week one!

God continues to move in our lives, and we see it more every day. Thanks for all the prayers and well wishes!

-Adam

Life Goes On

Hello again from Adam:

I have been doing my best to get Carissa into World Cup fever.  I don't think it worked much, but I'll start working on Russia 2018 now!  I'm still recovering from yesterday's loss like the rest of the US, but I'll get over it.

Meanwhile, thanks to the generosity of some people at FUMCBA, we get to have our dishwasher replaced sooner than expected!  Ours has been out of order for a few weeks, which is a much bigger deal when we're handwashing dishes for the whole family instead of just me.  This is a perfect example of the things we can only accomplish through a fully funded ministry.  A big thanks to the folks that helped out with that.

We continue to work on the fundraising effort, which finally got underway over the weekend.  Continued prayers for courage while we try to raise 1/3 of Carissa's salary would be helpful.  For an update on where we're at on the annual goal, or to donate, visit http://www.prayingpelicanmissions.org/donate#support and find Carissa's name in the dropdown box!

Also, we finally get to get away as a family.  Carissa, Ella and I will join my family in Colorado next week for a little R&R before Carissa returns to the missions field for the following three weeks.  We're looking forward to some quality time before she heads off for her longest time span of the year.  On the bright side, we'll be with her for the middle week!

Thanks for reading.  God bless!