On the other hand, Jake loves the chickens!! He cries at night when he has to come in the house because he wants to stay outside and feed the chickens. Rhyne, however, is not too fond of them. We were going to have chicken (to eat) for dinner the other night, and her Daddy asked her if she liked the chickens. Her reply was (pointing to the house), "I want that chicken". She's a girl after my own heart - Eat More Chicken!!
A few of you know that my dear sweet 83 year old Granny is very special to me. For years
she has loved to knit hats for small children, and she would send dozens to the state children's home (aka orphanage) at Christmas time every year. Now, she has a special place in her heart for Russia, seeing that two of her great grandchildren recently came from there. She is continuing to knit hats in hopes of getting as many as she can sent to the orphans left behind in Russia and neighboring countries. Here's her story and why the orphaned children are so
special to her.
When Granny was 10 years old her Father passed away. This was in the early 1930s and
during the Great Depression. She was one of five children (two boys and three girls). Being that her Mother was now widowed with five children (youngest girl was 18 months old), she did not have the money at the present time to take care of all of her children. She decided to send the boys to the state orphanage and then in two weeks she would send the two older girls (my Granny would be included). Then once she was able to get a job in the mill and get the money saved up, she would send for her children to come home. Well, during the boys first week away tragedy struck, and one of my Granny's brothers drowned in a small pond at the orphanage.
My Great Grandmother was devastated that she sent for only living son to come back home and she would figure a way to work and raise four children on her own.
This story is why any child in an orphanage is so near and dear to her heart. She knows what
it is like to almost be sent away to an orphanage, and does not know what her life would have been like if things had turned out differently. To date, she has sent about five dozen little hats
to Russia through me and some close friends who were so graciously to take the hats on their trips (or one special one that I'm able to mail the hats directly to Russia!).
Here's the Project - if you or anyone that you know is traveling to an orphanage and would like to take some hats as part of your orphanage donation, please e-mail me at the link on the side, and I will mail them to you (I will pay for postage). I normally send a dozen hats at a time, but
I can send you more or less if you want. Since she normally uses yarn that she finds on sale or at yard sales, colors do vary.
Thanks to everyone so far that has helped to Cover The World, and thanks in advance to everyone that is going to be emailing me (I hope).
**Update 10/26/06 - due to the wonderful overwhelming responses we have received,
we are getting lots of hats off to some wonderful children in Russia!! Unfortunately,
Granny is a little behind in filling all the orders (and for some reason we can not get Papa motivated to learn how to knit - go figure?). I dare say we will not be able to take any new request until after the holidays. If you are not planning on traveling until 2007 and want to
be put on the list to receive hats, please email me. To those who have already e-mailed me,
I do have you down on the list to mail you the hats as soon as they are available.
Bless all of you who are willing to help my Granny get these hats to as many children as she possibly can. Thank you!!
I am currently trying to get all the thoughts over the past two months out of my head and into blogger. I've just been so busy with spending every available moment with the kids these days since we are working so many hours and seem to have so many social events going on. And can I just say congratulations to Elle and D for finally bringing Pickle home, and all the others that have received wonderful news over the past few weeks.
Stay tuned, more updates to come . . .
Oh Mc . . . had a farm, E I E I O. And on this farm he had CHICKENS!!!! Yes, we finally got some chickens! We went from a dirt farm, to an ant farm, and now we have a chicken farm.
It all started when someone told dear Hubby that guineas love to eat ants. We seem to have an ant problem this year, so he decided that it would be a good thing to have a few guineas around, so he took off to the Jockey Lot yesterday (to those that do not live nearby, the Jockey Lot is a huge flea market, and a local landmark to this area). Well, it's never a good idea for a Georgia boy who grew up with most of his family raising chickens to go to the Jockey Lot "just to buy guineas". He found this beautiful game rooster that started talking to him, just asking him to take him and his two girl friend hens home. Of course he obliged. Now we have four guineas, one game rooster, a black sexlink hen, and a game hen.
They are beautiful and we'll see how long they last around here with all the fox and other animals around. I don't think our dog Sambo will be such a threat since he is almost 12 years old and really just wants to lay around and be a yard dog these days. The first time I get flocked though, it just may mean someone will be Sunday dinner though!
Oh my gosh! Did we have a blast at the beach or what? Rhyne and Jake's first beach trip was so much more than I would have ever expected.
It started off with us chasing Hurricane Ernesto off the coast of Myrtle Beach. I tried to find a blue windbreaker so I could like one of those Weather Channel storm chasers, but no luck. I did however, call my family and friends back home saying, ''Live from the beach, this is Action 12 News". We did have a news crew staying at our hotel, and yes I did go out on the balcony a few times to catch a glimpse of my first hurricane up close and personal. Of course this was more of a wind and rain show - we saw worse weather during our 2004 cruise where we were close enough to reached up and slapped Hurricane Ivan on the butt. There was quite a bit of flooding though to close most locals down, so we settled on pizza in our room for dinner.
On our way down, we did stop at one of the many Tourists Informational shops. I wanted to pick up a few brochures about the aquarium and see what was new (I haven't been to the beach in several years). The guy behind the counter asked where we were staying, and when I replied, he lit up like a light bulb. "It just so happens, our company just bought that hotel. If you are interested in taking a 90 minute tour tomorrow morning, we will give you a free breakfast, four tickets to the aquarium, $35 gift certificate to eat at Planet Hollywood, and another free 3 day/2 night stay to come back again and visit with us.". OK! This was my kind of deal! Besides, it was going to be cloudy and rainy in the morning because of Ernesto, so why not. We would have the two best excuses (Rhyne and Jake) to say we were not interested in a highly over-priced condo that you could only stay 1 week out of the year in. Needless to say, we told the kids it was action time and let them have free reign. Of course, they were model citizens the whole time and never once got fussy - to our surprise. We ended up getting the salesman's blood pressure tore up (could tell this by the steam coming out of his ears when we told him that we were not interested in the condo). He politely asked us to step into the other room, collect our prize, and "please do not attend another timeshare siminar if you are not interested in purchasing a timeshare". Can you say RUDE? Besides, as you know, we love to camp and we can pull our camper anywhere we so desire - AND IT'S ALREADY PAID FOR!
OK, on to the fun stuff. We went to the aquarium, which I would have been disappointed if we had actually had to pay for the tickets, but the kids had fun. They had a carousel nearby, so we stopped and let the kids ride the horseys or round and round (as the kids called it). They absolutely loved it!!! As a matter of fact they loved it so much, we let them ride every day. The last day we walked to the amusement park from our hotel to let them ride all the rides that their little hearts desired. Rhyne just floored us with her excitement in wanting to ride all the rides that we just knew she would scream bloody murder about. This is our child that is scared of her own shadow sometimes, but loves to ride the rides that spin and go up in the air - go figure! Jake liked the rides too, but he is still more of our "entertainer". He's developed this "wink". Whenever he sees a pretty girl/lady, he'll wink one eye at her and make this clicking noise with the side of his mouth. Is he a flirt or what??? Yes, all the ladies just gooed over him and smiled.
The kids loved the water - ok let me clarify. Rhyne loved the pool and Jake loved the ocean - my kind of girl! I love the beach, but I don't like to get into water where I can't see what dangerous creatures are swimming around. We tried to get some professional pictures of the family on the beach while we were down there, but I'm not sure if we actually got one where the whole family is smiling. Rhyne as usually does not like to have her picture taken by professionals and cried most of the time. The only hope we have is that some nice guy, who was a tad over weight, was smoking a cigar and wearing a Boston Red Sox ball cap, got up and was doing this "jumping jack" waive behind the photographer to try and get Rhyne to smile. We'll see what the proofs look like when they come.
One thing that did surprise me was the number of Russians that were working at a variety of stores at the beach. A friend of mine, that also adopted from Russia, had mentioned this to me when she and her family went a few weeks before us. She said that she asked why they would choose to come over here and work and was told that they could come over here and work four months and make enough money to buy a car back home, which would take them over four years to make back home. It goes to show just how lucky we are to be living in America where we are free to make choices, make a decent living (compared to the rest of the world), and have so much more than we could ever dream of having. Apparently, there are over 4000 immigrants from Russia and neighboring countries that are working in the Mytle Beach area this Summer. We met a few that were working at the Krispy Kreme, Wings/Eagles (beach novelty shops that are on every corner), and the amusement parks. There was one nice lady that spoke a little Russian to the kids. Jake took no interest in her while looking like "lady, I have no idea what you are saying". Rhyne on the other hand had a terrified look on her face as if she was trying not to remember a time where she heard this familiar language. That was enough for me - no more speaking Russian to this child. I do not want her to feel hurt or remember sad times ever again. Yes, she still has her Russian memorabila in her room, her Ana doll that speaks Russian, and I ask her all the time, "remember in Russia when . . . ". However, I will refrain from asking anyone else to speak to her in the Russian language.
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