Another Weekend in Paris

   I usually don't go home twice in a month, and I considered staying in the boro for the 1st Fish Fry ever. Once I heard that Charlie and Ashley were going, I couldn't pass it up. We hadn't seen them since Christmas. Thanks to the massive amount of tornado damage they didn't have any power and weren't expecting any for another week in Huntsville. So they escaped to Paris, and Charlie brought along a friend, Paul, who was also escaping the power outage. By the way, I think there were close to 250 killed in Alabama alone. The video of the tornado is amazing, to say the least. I've seen an F4 first hand, but the one in AL looked way more powerful. So, anyway, it was great to hang out with them again. I went without Daniel since he was working. Charlie and Ashley also brought their three dogs with them, two wheaton terriers and 1 yorkie. AnnElise was entertained by them the whole time. There were a couple of times I was scared for Cola's (the yorkie) life, but she squeaked her way out of AE's grasp.
      My other two brothers and sister in law were off running in the Music City Marathon. I heard they rocked it. It was Damon's first 1/2, and Joe ran the entire marathon without training. I hadn't heard his official time, but I think it was pretty good for even a trained runner. I really missed hanging out with all of them, but there's always next Christmas for everyone to get together.

   I know AnnElise had a really great time despite all of the oopsies. She tends to be clumsy when she's sleepy and it just ends up being one fall after another. She also learned several more words. Its a lot of fun. It doesn't take any effort on our part to teach her new words. She's just a little bit away from saying complete sentences that are more than two words long. She loves learning and is very intent on watching then repeating what we say or do. She's also really good with animal noises. Everyone asks her to make a rooster sound. Most of the noises she came up with on her own which sound way better than anything I could teach her. I feel like every month is more fun than the one before. Here's some photos from the weekend. Eat your heart out and be very jealous that she has a skullet AGAIN!

  

Update on Belly... Its Big and moves a lot!

Easter Puppy

We added another animal to our farm Saturday! We also lost a chicken, looks pretty likely it was smothered by the much bigger chickens. I was thisclose to giving up on finding a great pyrenees puppy. All of my leads were dead ends, and it was frustrating. I checked craigslist just 1 more time in the farm section, apparently people were flagging the adds so they couldn't sell for some reason. I was happy to have found it and picked him up the next day. His name is Duke, and he is going to be BIG. This is them playing. Every time she got up, he bit on to her butt ruffles, and she giggled like crazy over it.

    This morning Daniel was headed out to work on his garden, and just like any good farm animals, Bubba the rooster, and Duke the pup were following perfectly behind him. If AnnElise hadn't been playing on the slide and me watching we would've been right there with them. This is Daniel's afternoon following, AE and Duke. The rooster was hanging back.

We also had a great Easter! Went to worship with our church family, hunted eggs with hundreds of other kiddos, got a picture with the EB (she was surprisingly scared though to sit in its lap). It was AnnElise's 2nd Easter Egg Hunt. I thought I would have to show her how it was done again, but she knew exactly what to do. Every egg she picked up she gladly put in another kid's basket. The little boy followed her around until his Dad made him get his own eggs. So she found other baskets to put them in. It was just AE and me on Easter, but it was still great. Its nice to reflect on the resurrection while my little girl takes a long nap.

The Weekend...

  This weekend we were both finally able to head to Paris, TOGETHER with AnnElise to celebrate a marriage and 60 years of my mother's life with friends and family. It doesn't happen very often that we both are able to go. More often, its AnnElise and me visiting and leaving Daniel behind to work. Daniel really enjoys visiting, but his work schedule gets in the way of our plans.
   AnnElise got to have some great quality time with her grandmother, Nana, while Daniel and I went to my good friends' wedding reception. It was also my mother's 60th birthday, and wow, she looks great. Its weird to think about her being 60. I always wanted to quit counting at 45 b/c thats when she stopped aging! (Am I getting some major points yet, Mom?) Seriously though, she looks great. So for her birthday, we let her babysit AE for us. There are very few times that we actually leave AE behind. I would almost rather just take her with us, since that's our life now, as long as it doesn't keep her up too late, this time it would have. Thank you, Mom, for taking care of her and putting her to bed. AE loves her Nana. Though she doesn't see her often, I don't think she's ever forgotten who she is.
    Rachel and her daughter, Emmaline, at her wedding reception!

     This is what 90 years age difference looks like.

    While we were home, we also got to see Mama Dot, AE's 91 year old great grandmother. They are almost exactly 90 years apart in age. We don't always get to see her when we come to town. It depends on naps and timing, and its never as long as I would like it to be. While we were there, Daniel was looking at a book with pictures from farms all over, and spotted his great Aunt Ruth (his dad's aunt) sitting on the porch in one. His Aunt Ruth married Jack Daniels' great nephew.
    This is a picture of Daniel's great aunt in the book he was looking at, I think its produced by Farm Bureau called "Tennessee Country."

Here is a picture of AnnElise's 1st Easter Egg Hunt. I only had to show her once how it was done, then she had it down. She found about 6 eggs with my help, of course. We arrived back in Murfreesboro just in time to host our small group Easter Egg Hunt.

AnnElise's future best friend

Lil Bean meet world, world meet Lil Bean! You are looking at our new addition to the George Family. Here you will see a good profile and a perfectly formed heart. Today we went in for our 20 week ultrasound and were focused on the health. The doctor said everything looked normal, organs all great, and spine was good as they could tell, and baby was growing and big as expected. Praise God! There are just too many babies born with abnormalities or problems to not be incredibly grateful for a perfectly healthy baby, and even more so to have 2 of them.  Our baby also has a gender, but its not for us to know yet! We had to turn our heads to avoid seeing anything. Daniel said that he was hoping to see it during the rest of the ultrasound, but he never did. I tried not to. I'm really excited about waiting to find out, but now we have to come up with 2 names! We still haven't even decided on 1 and are having a hard time even getting 1 name on the list for girls. I will tell you that I "feel" this time we may have a boy. I never had a "feeling" with AnnElise. We may even dress up the baby as the opposite gender to throw some family off at first. Its so much fun waiting and I so look forward to finding out in the delivery room. This is probably our last baby (if we can control that) especially if Lil Bean comes out a boy. I would really like to adopt our 3rd, but we'll see what other plans God might have for us.

Farmer's Wife

   The George Farm is growing really fast. We just moved over 7 hens, mostly laying ones (possibly another rooster in that group, but not certain yet). The day we brought those home, Daniel bought 2 more at about a week old. We had the heat lamp on them in a small box, and Daniel thinks that we roasted them. He later checked it with a thermometer when they were found lifeless and it was 110 degrees, oopsies! So we went back to get 2 more to replace them, so far they have survived. One actually fell out of the coup we put them in, but was fine. I spent a good while today calling a million people trying to find a breeder for a great pyrenees puppy. For some reason, they are really hard to find around here. I wouldn't think it, but all of these farmers that have one, have just happened on an ad or someone wanting to get rid of it. I really want one. 1. Because they are big beautiful dogs. 2. They are the best livestock guardians. 3. They are very protective, gentle, and loving dogs with kids! Every farmer that has one raves about how great they are and just so natural at guarding their livestock and family. So after tons of calls, I finally found 1 breeder close by, but they don't have puppies yet. I have to wait for them to be born to reserve one. I hope that we can get one soon. Our pediatrician offered us his goats that he's going to be selling out of in June. If we have a good fenced in area for them, then we'll have some goats before long as well. We also have three gardens going on. I've planted my flower garden so we can have fresh cut flowers in the house, and Daniel started on his two veggie gardens. As for new trees, we got about 23 new ones to add to the loads of mature trees in our yard and field. Looks like a lot of work for us this summer. I'm pretty excited about the animals, veggies, and kids to fill up the space.
   Tomorrow, we have our 2nd ultrasound in this 2nd pregnancy. I'm half way there! This time we will not be finding out the gender. I just want our focus to be on a healthy kid this ultrasound. With AE, all I thought about was the gender. The technician took about 45 minutes checking out the organs, chambers of the heart, etc, and I didn't even have 1 thought about whether we were going to be blessed with a healthy baby or blessed with a not so healthy baby. All I could think about was the gender and its the last thing they check. I don't want to think about gender this time, and just focus on the baby! We are excited and anxious about waiting to find out until birth. We know what it feels like to find out at 20 weeks, so now we'll know what its like to wait! I'll post again tomorrow to let everyone know how it goes.

Child Abuse Prevention Month

If there's one thing that I'm passionate about besides my faith, its protecting innocent children from the evils of this world. April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month! I want everyone who reads this to hug their kids tighter, protect them, educate them, and BELIEVE them if they say someone is hurting them. Also, in the state of TN you are required to call the child abuse hotline if you suspect it. I've spent several years in social work and it never fails to surprise me of all the things that have happened. Check out these stats. They are shocking. Three children die everyday as a result of abuse. 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys are sexually abused before they turn 18. 84% of prisoners were abused when they were children. More than 20% of children are sexually abused before they turn 8 years old!!! These are just a few shocking ones. I dealt with this everyday for several months at DCS, but I am shocked at these stats. Even more so since I have a daughter to protect. While working at a local Child Advocacy Center that deals specifically with child sexual abuse, I noticed that every single one of our victims were abused by a TRUSTED family member/friend, mostly step parents, or step brothers, some uncles, one female caretaker at a daycare, several at church, etc. I'm not telling you to not trust your family members or friends, but be aware of any changes in your children, listen to your gut, educate them on safety and touching rules. It makes a difference if they have that knowledge. This should go without saying, but if they tell you, BELIEVE them. I can't tell you how many times a child's MOTHER walked out without them b/c they refused to separate themselves from the abuser while an investigation could be done. They left their own child crying on a strangers lap, going home with a foster family after admitting they were abused. I couldn't imagine the courage it took for young kids to tell a stranger they were abused in detail, then have your own family reject the truth b/c they didn't want to believe it. Its up to you to protect your kids. This is mostly happening where you trust is the safest place for your kid. This is one crime that is reported equally at all socio-economic levels all over the world. Please EDUCATE for prevention. We all know someone who has been abused!
I have been on some of TN's worst physical abuse and neglect cases where kids were probably a day away from dying, for some it was a miracle they lived. I only saw 2 parents serve time for putting their nearly newborn into a dryer causing major damage in the brain. Three years after that, she is still receiving therapy and probably will for the rest of her life. I also had the end part of a case where 3 children were called in on suspect of abuse from a random patron of WalMart who could tell the kids were poorly taken care of. The children, all under 10, were chained to their beds, given cat food to eat, laying in the own defecation and urine, slowly dying, all being sexually abused daily. I've heard stories on Oprah, stories on the news, but its totally different when you see these kids come in grungy, smelly, hungry (eating whatever you put in front of them in one bite), and barely able to survive. It seems so simple, but parents really need to be educated as well on how to walk away when they get angry, or to call some reinforcement for help. Child Abuse CAN be prevented.

This is an example of corporal punishment in the school systems. Now, its not really popular to let the schools handle corporal punishment and its evident in this picture. How bad was this child to deserve such punishment? This why Daniel and I won't allow others to spank our kids. We're not opposed at all to spankings, but its my way of protecting our kids from an angry spanking/abuse. Too many people loose control when they spank, and then it ends in abuse. Kids can't trust their parents when they see them loosing control and beating them over and over again. This kid was obviously hit a lot of times and each time causing bruising. 

This is a picture of a young girl whose father beat her. She was returned to him after he followed the court's recommendations. This is very typical. Most kids get sent back to their parents unless its sex abuse or the parents don't follow the court's orders, which is usually Parenting Classes, Anger Management, Alcohol and Drug Assessment (even if its not a problem), Counseling, and a Mental Evaluation.


These are public images of actual abused children. I could not imagine AnnElise being one of these! If you suspect abuse, PLEASE call 1-800-4ACHILD. There are so many kids that have been saved by just someone taking notice of them at a store, and writing down a license plate number. Its not hard. If you don't, they can become one of the 3 kids that die everyday.