Well, after almost ten months, I made it to October. It is exciting to be here. I was having such severe sciatic pain last week that I thought there was no way to make it to the 11th, and I had asked my doctor if I might be induced at 39 weeks. But, I am thrilled to say that the pain has gone away. I am so thankful and feel that I can make it to 40 weeks, or so! Every time I do something “special” or go to bed, I wonder if that would be the last time for a movie out or will I wake up having contractions? Such a mystery.

John is well on his way to graduating in December. He found out he passed another exam he took, in lieu of writing a thesis. So now all he has to do is finish his classes. He filled out his paperwork and sent in a check to graduate. We are both excited about this end being near. We will have to celebrate for sure when he finishes. Such hard work.

It is hotter than heck here this week. There is no sign of Fall whatsoever…I keep looking, but can’t find it. The only sign is the fall colored leaves wreath that is sitting on our dining room table. It seems strange to need to run the air conditioning in October. Next will come the Santa Anas and hopefully NOT wildfires this year! We don’t have time for that with a baby on the way.

Perhaps the next post will be about a sweet little babe that’s arrived!!

Well, it seems that a couple of people actually DO read this blog, and we’ve received two requests this week to post. So, I will come out of retirement and fill you in on the last ummmm almost 4 months!!

We’ve had a nice summer. John took a summer course that was pretty intense I stayed busy with various projects. I helped lead our vacation bible school at church. That actually took more time and energy than I’d thought. But it was a great week. John’s parents came to visit that week, his mom has taught the past couple of years with Anna, John’s sister. I’ve had some work that has kept me busy. Mostly, I’ve been working on setting up the nursery and just getting ready for baby to make her entrance. I had a lot of fun sewing several things for the room. I had a friend that tutored me in sewing and it all turned out great. I had 2 baby shower’s thrown for me at the end of summer. They were both so much fun and full of many wonderful gifts that were such a blessing. We have some wonderful friends in our lives that blessed us with those events. John put together a stroller, a pack n play, built storage in our garage, moved my office into our guest room and helped install window treatments in the baby’s room. He’s been busy!

John has started his LAST semester of his Masters study. We are both so excited. John has enjoyed it so much but is excited to be finished so that he can enjoy having this new little life around. We’ve gotten so used to his being out two nights a week for 2 1/2 years, so it will be interesting to get back to a new normal life.

There are just 4 weeks to go until this baby arrives, hopefully!! We are gearing up for this big change. I’m hitting the uncomfortable phase of pregnancy and having a hard time sleeping. We just finished up our childbirth classes and now must practice our breathing. We are going out of town next weekend for our last hurrah as child free. We’re going to a bed and breakfast near Venice Beach. We spent our 2nd anniversary there and had a nice, relaxing time, so it seemed fitting we go back.

Probably the next time I post, there will be 3 of us SDHatchers. We’ll be sure to let you all know of our exciting new addition!

May was going to be fun month for us. First we went to Colorado to visit my family and be with my middle brother, Adam, as he was graduating from the University of Colorado at Boulder. What a great feat for him. He is so smart! He graduated in Chemical Engineering and I couldn’t even begin to understand what he does or how he thinks. Not like my simple mind! But we had a nice time there and got to meet his girlfriend Rachel, plus it was Mother’s Day weekend and we all got to be with my mom. I’m sure that is special for her, especially now that 2 of her 3 kids will no longer live near her. The weather was very nice and I always enjoy the beautiful view of the mountains from their home.

After that trip, we were having our anatomical ultrasound of the baby, where they check out how everything is developing and if you want and they can see, tell you what kind of baby you are having. Of course, mostly we wanted to learn that everything was developing “normally” and healthy, and if we could, wanted to learn the sex. We needed to see if the baby’s room was going to need to be re-painted and be able to agree upon a name! The tech said everything looked good, it is amazing how skilled those people are. She was pointing to the kidneys and stomach and it all just looked like blurred t.v. to me! I finally could see the profile of the face/body and at one time she turned it on 3-D, but that looked even stranger to me. She said at this point (18 weeks) they are mostly bones and not much fat is on them yet, so they look a little bony. I didn’t appreciate that view until I got home and looked at all the printouts and then I did see a little baby face in 3-D. But you really do have to laugh, because it is so early on that it really does look funny. Maybe I can get John to post it. But anyway, the exciting part was when she said, “you’re going to have a little………….GIRL! Yeah, the moment I’d been waiting to hear. Just think of all those cute little dresses and clothes out there, and baby dolls, and dance lessons! It all makes John’s heart swell with joy!! He’s excited too, but I think he would have liked a boy to do all those boy things with…but I hope he still does sporty things with her, teach her to throw a ball, how to play golf, etc. The good news is we don’t have to re-paint the bedroom, or do we???

And now, we are on vacation, enjoying lovely Hawaii. It is a place neither of us has been to, and I think my expectations were so high of what I pictured this glorious place to be, that I’m not quite sure it measures up. Don’t get me wrong, it is beautiful. We are on the island of Maui right now and staying in Lahaina. Next we’ll go to Oahu and stay in Waikiki Beach. Yesterday we left this small town and drove south to the beach resort area called Wailea and snorkeled there. It seemed much more lush to us there and I guess more fancy and upscale and not as kitchy. Lahaina reminds me of Panama City during high school! But, we really enjoyed the snorkeling and seeing that underwater world. You get to swim out by reefs and beforehand we read all the warnings about not to touch them because they are living and if you touch them they die. So at one point we got stuck out on top of a shallow reef and all I could think was that we were going to kill all of this coral! I sort of panicked and finally we got in deeper waters. To me, it was a lot of work. I felt like my brain was in high gear thinking about breathing, my breathing felt very forced and the fins you wear keep your feet in a certain position so that it hurts after while. I had to take a break long before John. He loved it. It was certainly cool to see all the fish and at one point I saw a giant sea turtle and that was awesome. It’s neat how God created it to blend in with the sea bottom. But the whole time I kept wondering if a shark was going to swim up and I was going to be eaten or watch John be eaten to death. Living in San Diego and having had that happen at our beaches a couple of weeks ago, keeps that fresh in my mind. Today we are thinking to do some hiking in a National Park that has a crater. We will alternate beach days as the sun is quite intense here. We also will drive the famous “Road to Hana”. That should be beautiful and twisty turny.

We had a lovely day at Disneyland yesterday with John’s sister’s family. This included 4 of their 5 kids. They were so well behaved considering it was in the 90’s and we went from about 7am-11pm. We rode lots of rides. A friend told us of a cool website that will look at the exact day you are going and calculate which rides you choose to ride and tell you in what order to go to them. The website is www.ridemax.com. It worked really well. If you don’t follow exactly the plan, at least if you can choose to follow the bold typed lines and those are the items they highly recommend doing at certain times. I really enjoyed the good old jungle cruise. You just can’t beat it. The scariest ride of the day was Indiana Jones. I didn’t ride it, being an expectant mother and all, nor did Toby the 3 year old. But everyone else rode it. Afterward the adults said it was a nightmare and that all 3 kids were terrified and burst into tears. Meanwhile Toby and I had a very innocent and fun time on Tarzan’s treehouse (the old Swiss Family Robinson) and Jungle Cruise. I also always enjoy Peter Pan’s Flight. It was sweltering and I was afraid with my lack of energy I would not enjoy it quite as much. But, I really had a great time and felt quite good all day. Today is another story entirely!! Headache, tiredness….need I go on? We wondered all day, is Disneyland REALLY the happiest place on earth. Upon asking Ellie, the 9 year old, she quickly responded NO!

Our next event is my brother’s graduation (Adam) from the University of Colorado. I am very excited to spend time with my family. It is hard to believe how time goes by so quickly. He’s no longer a little kid. He will be moving to Texas at the end of the month for his first “real” job. We are excited to see his new life unfold.

I am in my fourth month of pregnancy. I am starting to feel somewhat better. I am exercising several times a week with girlfriends again. There is still a little bit of quesiness in the afternoons and evenings. We will find out what kind of baby we are having May 14th….we are really excited so we can start making decisions! Stay tuned!

As usual, it has been too long since posting.  I think my techie husband is over the blog era.  So, if this is continue, it will be me!  Let’s see, our most exciting news is that I am pregnant and we are having a baby in the beginning of October.  We decided we were ready to take the plunge of parenthood and see what might happen.  A few weeks later we learned that we would be soon finding out!  These first 3 months have gone ok.  I haven’t been too sick.  I’ve definitely been nauseous and generall not feeling like myself.  But as I was reminded last night, I’m not myself, I have a new resident in town!  It was a lot of fun telling our family and friends.  My parents even were coming to town so we got to tell them in person.  That was great fun and then we made a zillion phone calls.  We’ve seen an ultrasound and heard the heartbeat, all such good and positive signs. 

So now begins the long process of trying to figure out which room to have be baby room, do we keep an office and guest room?  What gizmos do we need to buy?  When will we do all the “honey-do” items?  So, we just take one day at a time.

We planned to take a “big” vacation to Hawaii in the spring to do a big “last hoorah” before baby comes, only to wake up this morning to find out that Aloha Air went bankrupt without much news and now we don’t have tickets there.  So, I’ve been working on that much of today, trying to figure out what we can possibly do and if anyone else will accomidate us.  It’s pretty frusterating. 

I had a fun vacation to Maryland to visit my friend Sue who just had twin girls.  I was able to lend her a hand for several days and see what babyland was like.  Fortunately I’m not having twins so I think I can handle it.  I also got to see 2 other girlfriends while I was there.  It was a great visit.  Washington D.C. is such a great place to live and be.  So much going on and so much history.  And free!!

Hope the weather wherever you are is getting warmer and spring-ier!

Today as I was driving on the 15, I looked east and what did I see but snow capped mountains!  It was so beautiful!  I took a picture and need help putting it on here.  We got a “surprise” rain storm yesterday and it was COLD!  So, we were thinking there would be snow in some parts.  This morning on the radio they said that the major highway 8 that runs east-west had to be closed at Alpine because there was ice on the road.  That is crazy.  Alpine is about a half hour drive!  See, we do have 4 seasons here!  Right!!

It’s been awhile for us, I see a trend forming here. 

We had a wonderful Christmas with John’s family.  We were in Augusta for almost 2 weeks.  We saw a lot of family and friends there and did plenty of visiting!  It was a well needed break from life for us.  The Hatchers have a lovely new home that sits on a lake and it was just a perfect Christmas setting.  The weather was even great, cool and rainy off and on most of the time.  The last 5 days we took a day trip to Athens and reminiced about our college years together.  That is only the second time we’ve been there together.  We walked around looking at the beautiful old buildings, bought our token UGA souveniers and ate a wonderful lunch at a restaurant downtown.  The name is Harry Bissett’s and it might be owned by Michael Stipe, I can’t remember for sure which restaurant he owns.  Anyway, it’s funny, because I never ate there during college because I always thought it was expensive and more of a “date” restaurant.  Well, I had london broil with a couple of sides and it was $8.75!!  I couldn’t believe it!  It was delicious.  I guess that showed me how things can seem skewed at certain times of life. 

Then we went to Atlanta and stayed with several different friends.  We hit up Lenox mall for some after Christmas bargains.  We saw a family I used to babysit for many moons ago, their son is going off to college next year (that I mostly sat for).  Hello, old!  That was a great visit.  We learned about the difficulties of getting into GA universities and in general what high school is like today.  That was an eye opener.  We were lucky to have gone to UGA when we did!  Don’t think I could pull that off today.  We spent our 5th anniversary with my dear friend Jennifer and her husband Jason.  It’s always like the good old days of high school when we get together.  We went out to dinner and played a fun game called Whoonu.  I highly recommend everyone owning this game.  It’s a great game for getting to know people.  Then we watched the infamous Sugar Bowl with a buddy of John’s from college, and his wife and family.  That was a lot of fun too.  We are blessed to have such great friends!

Last weekend I traveled to Illinois to spend time with my mom’s family as it was my grandma’s 80th birthday.  I went alone and met my mom, brother, aunt, uncle and 2 cousins at O’Hare where we met up with another cousin and then some of us rented a car and drove the 2 hours to my grandparent’s farm.  Grandma knew everyone else was coming, but supposedly not me!  Anyway, we had a great time.  There was lots of eating, as usual with the Heinkels.  Lots of card playing, and unfortunately I don’t really play.  I did learn a new card game.  I tried to catch onto Pinochle, but my brain wouldn’t go for it!!  We saw snow several times, that’s fun for a SoCal girl. 

Now I’ve had a birthday, John’s had a birthday….and now there is nothing exciting going on!

John is back to class as of tonight.  He is setting his goal to graduate this year! 

I love new year’s and new beginnings and am looking forward to seeing what exciting things will happen this year!

Life has gotten back to normal for us here after the fires.  There is life pre-fires and post-fires.  And I’ve noticed most people think in those terms, including me.  Fortunately there is not a lot that we’ve had to adjust to.  It’s funny how every several days when we walk outside in the morning, depending on the wind, etc. we might smell the aftermath of the fires.  It’s weird.  We were able to help volunteer at a relief center that was set up around the corner from us.  It was amazing how much stuff people donated.  FEMA was set up there along with all of the major insurance companies.  So people could go file there and then come across the street and shop for needed items.  One Saturday several of us from church volunteered and we were to make order of the children’s book table.  I mean, you just wouldn’t believe all of the books there.  Some were brand new and in packaging.  That was fun to be able to talk to a family, find out what ages their kids were and what they were into and then find books for them.  Eventually that closed up shop.  Now every once in awhile you will here something about someone who lost their home. 

Now we start to get into the holiday season.  We spent Thanksgiving here this year and were supposed to eat dinner with the Hitchcocks, but unfortunately they got sick.  So, we had our guests over to house, exchanged the food we had agreed to cook, and then met them in a park near our house for dessert.  It worked out splendidly.  Anna made a delicious turkey and potatoes and I made several side dishes.  It was fun to be able to set my own table since we don’t usually do holidays at our house. 

I am trying my best to keep all of our December events in order.  We have several Christmas parties and our big church event every year is called Bethlehem Village.  I am charge of the Market this year.  I lugged back $800 worth of stuff from Uganda and my friend Kathryn is a stellar superstar for working along side me.  We’ve worked hard at sorting and pricing items and then we decided to incorporate a silent auction into it this year.  I have become the queen of networking and asking for donations over the past two years!!  All of the money raised goes back to Uganda in the form of our Uganda Children’s Sponsorship Program.  We are so hopeful that we are able to raise a lot of money!  Today we went out and solicited our community.  We were delighted with the positive responses.  And then, of course, there was the brief run in with our very own Chargers linebacker, Shaun Phillips.  That was very exciting.  We stopped to have lunch at Subway, and we could tell someone important was sitting at the table next to us.  We just had to figure out who it was…so I ran inside and asked one of the employees and sure enough, he confirmed that he was a Charger.  Then we just had to approach him and ask him for a favor…but how?  Kathryn stood up to talk to him, but she was in an awkward place, so I stood up and asked if I could talk to him for a moment….then I proceeded to stumble all over myself and hardly get out two words that made sense.  Kat picked up when I stopped and we got his publicist’s name and number, so we are hopeful that he will be willing to donate something!!  How cool would that be?  Go Bolts!!

I broke out our Christmas decorations this evening.  It was very cold in our house so we had our roaring fireplace going.  I about died when I saw the Missouri vs. Kansas game and the cold icicles hanging off of each players’ breath.  I really don’t think we’d last anywhere else in our country.  After all, it was in the eighties today!! 

Tomorrow night we are hoping to take our nieces and nephews to Balboa Park to see the lighting of the Christmas tree.  I’ve never seen a big event like that in person.  We are actually going to try to take all 4 walking kids!!  That will be an adventure. 

Here in Southern California, as the world knows, we had a horrible week last week.  The Firstorm of the year descended upon us while my parents were visiting.  We had a nice time with them, while John was busy, we took a couple of local hikes.  We played some games, much to John’s chagrin.  Went to a pumpkin festival with all of the Hitchcock kids, where my parents ended up volunteering!  Enjoyed a relaxing Sunday as a family, and while playing games, realized it was getting awfully smoky in our house.  Mom and I thought it was the burnt caramel corn we were making, but soon realized it was the outdoors on fire.  We closed up our windows and noted how “ashy” the table top was already.  My mom came to Pioneers with me, after all, it was crazy hair night.  Then my parents left to go to a community concert.  As John and I were driving home from church, we were noting how windy it was outside.  Wind like I’ve never heard before.  We were surpised to see my parents home before us and they said that the school where the concert was being held, was being used as an evacuation site.  We thought this all to be so strange. I even remember commenting to John how glad I was that we bought our house on the west side of 15, because after all, a fire to jump a 10 lane highway, no way!! 

As we went to bed, we were trying to figure out what sites we would see in the morning, thinking that it might not be the best to be outside.  John planned on taking a half day off of work.  At this point, we knew fires were burning out east, but I don’t think we’d thought that they would get to us by the morning.  I didn’t sleep well at all due to the heavy winds.  I thought the windows were going to blow in.  Finally at 6 I turned on the radio.  What I heard stopped my heart for a moment.  “If you live west of the 15, east of the 5, north of the 56 and south of Lake Hodges, you need to be evacuating.  I woke up John and told him I thought we might be needing to leave our house.  Then I knocked on my parents door and woke them up, almost crying, I think we need to be leaving our house!

We all ran downstairs and turned on the news and sure enough, we needed to go.  At that point it was a mandatory evacuation, they were doing reverse 911 phone calls.  We are still unsure if we got one of these or not, I erased our messages too quickly when we returned home.  I immediately was trying to figure out where we’d go, most of our friends are north and inland like us, but our dear friends, Nick & Angela lived southwest of us, pretty close to the coast and I thought this would be perfect.  You can call a true friend at 6:30 a.m. and not be concerned of bothering them!  They said yes we were welcome!  A neighbor we’ve never met rang out doorbell to make sure we were leaving.  My parents packed up their things and then started to help us load up our truck with our most prized posessions should our house burn.  John was not pleased that I was pulling things off the wall.  It is amazing what is truly important.  Mostly I grabbed photos and some of my business files, John grabbed our computer.  Sadly, Skipper decided that he wanted to hold down the fort.  He thought it would be too strenuous to be a refugee, and decided that he would take the small chance of dying a fiery death.  That was sad to me and my mom.  So, as we hugged in the living room to say our good-byes, not knowing if we’d be coming home to a house or not, my mom and I burst into tears with much uncertainty.  It was very eerie to be pulling out of our neighborhood, thick with smoke, it looked like the movies when the world is about to end.  Cars loaded with things and kids and pets and slowly meandering through the streets, inching along trying to get to the coastal highway. 

Eventually we decided to risk going inland by jumping the curb and turning around.  We moved about a mile in an hour and fifteen minutes.  We were low on gas, my parents car was almost out of gas, so they needed to turn around in hopes of finding a gas station.  My dad called us to tell us that going inland was like a ghost town and we’d be on the highway to head south in no time.  And it worked perfectly.  We got gas and then were on our way to Nick and Angela’s.   When we got there, we were glued to the t.v. for the next 12 hours or so.  We talked to many friends to make sure everyone was safe and sound.  So far, so good.  My parents made it to Los Angeles safely.  We kept calling our answering machine to make sure there was still electricity.  But it was horrific to watch t.v. and see fires completely engulfing homes, just a short distance from ours.  Everyone time we saw a house address, we would googlemap it to see how close it was.  We knew so many people living in these neighborhoods where fires were “randomly” burning. 

Tuesday morning we woke up early to turn on the tube and see what had happened over night.  More of the same, but we felt the threat to our area was over.  We got going and headed back north to spend some time at John’s sister’s house and distract ourselves with five kids.  We had fun over there and then we tried several times to get in our neighborhood, but every time the national guardsman holding his rifle would tell us NO!!  We ended up going out to dinner and watching a movie.  It was odd how many sections of the city were completely normal.  Businesses were open, people were out and about and unaffected.  Very strange!  We spent the night at the Hitchcocks.  Then Wednesday morning we were really itching to go home.  We tried again in the morning.  Still the guardsmen were there.  And they told us we would not get in at all today.  At this point we’re tired of being refugees, so we go and check into a hotel.  They allowed us to have an early check in.  It was only about 11 a.m.  We were able to shower, lay down on a bed, relax a little.  Then we turned on the news and they announced that our neighborhood opened!  So, we ate lunch and tried our re-entry again, this time getting access!  It was wonderful.  We were one of the first to arrive back.  We drove home, pet and loved on Skipper, were amazed that there was no smoke smell inside.  Then we decided to walk around our small neighborhood.  The mountains that we see from our balcony was completely charred and all of the mountains surrounding.  The park at the end of our street (where the pumpkin festival had been) had hay bales on it still, and those were burnt to a blackened crisp.  We could see burnt houses on the mountain about a mile from us.  It was pretty surreal.  Very quickly all of our neighbors arrived home.  We all stood outside talking and sharing stories.  It was great because we met neighbors that we had not yet taken the time to meet in the 5 months of living here.  About 4 hours after getting back into our home, my friend Selina, friend from Philly, arrived!  So life does go on!!

Since then, we’ve learned that none of our close friends lost their homes, no one in our church lost their home.  But we’ve driven around and seen the devistation, and there is much.  It is really amazing to see a house burnt to the ground and the neighbors on either side are perfectly ok. 

We had a great time with Selina.  Mostly we took it easy.  John had the entire week off of work since his office is in the heart of the fire area, plus many employees were evacuated and unable to work.  So that was an added bonus.  He was about to go crazy by Friday and drove up to work to try and go in, but it was chained shut!  I wonder how many desperate engineers were just dying to get to work!!!  Selina and I went to the “Bodies” exhibit.  It is real bodies and organs and parts that are really well preserved.  It was pretty cool.  We did a little shopping.  Saturday was the big GA v. FL game.  Go DAWGS!!  Big win!  While that was going on, Selina and I decided to have a service project and make cookies and brownies for the firemen and deliver them to the firestations.  Many hours later those were ready to deliver.  We picked out 3 firestations.  We visited the one in our neighborhood first.  That was the best.  The guys were super nice and ready to talk.  Then we went to two more, not quite as exciting and inviting.  But, nonetheless, it was fun and they appreciated them.  Of course, they all talked like fighting wildfires for days on end were no big deal, just their job. 

Sunday we had a nice lunch in Del Mar and walked around a bit.  It was beautiful out.  You’d never know of all the destruction that had taken place. Then we had to be lookey-loos and drive around a bit to see the devestation.  Like I said before, it was almost breathtaking, not in a good way. 

Selina left early Monday morning, and now we are just getting back into the normal routine of life.  It has been thrown off kilter quite a bit.  We are so thankful to still have a house.  We are truly thanking the Lord that He allowed our house to remain unscathed.  It was by His hand alone.  And now we are trying to help those around us that have needs.  Our church is trying to put together some ideas so that we can get our congregation involved and really be the hands of Christ.  I’ll be filling you in on how those efforts go.  If you are still reading at this point, thanks for taking the time to share in our lives. 

I know this is a little late, but one of my co-workers who traveled with me to Shanghai (2 months ago) just shared some pictures with me, and I had to post this one.  This is a picture he took of one of the dishes we ordered our first evening in Shanghai.  I thought it would be fun to play “What is that dish?”.  And yes, I did eat it, and no, I did not enjoy it…