Christmas and a New Year!

I love Christmas, but at the same time it drives me just a little bit "Crazy"! The anticipation for it drives me nuts, then it gets here, and is gone in the blink of an eye! This year Christmas was FUN though, having a almost two year old to celebrate it with was just exciting!! Oh what fun it is to play Santa! We got to spend time with lots of family and even though Daniel had to work Christmas day we were blessed in that "business" was slow  allowing him to spend some time with us even though he was at work.
You know I'm going to have to show you "What a difference a year makes" but I always love to go back and see how much Ella has changed in a year.... Here ya go

                                                        

Today while Ella was napping I sat here reading all my old blogs from this past year. What a year it has been. Even though my child is almost 2 I feel like this year I really grew into being a Mommy. I learned to value all the little things with Ella.  Although it was a scary year at times with all the Hospital and Ambulance rides, and Personal Battles.. I feel like it was a good year. What makes it a good year to me is that I've learned something from all the Good, and all the Bad... I'm so ready for 2012, starting with celebrating Ella 2nd birthday party next weekend!

HeartBroken

I can finally sit down and write this blog with dry eyes. As for the last 3 days for me have been hard. It may seem funny to some of you especially the ones who don't love dogs as Daniel and I do, but to us she was not just a dog she was apart of our family. The loss of our 8 month old Saint Bernard Sash was heart wrenching. She was such a fun loving dog and did nothing but love Daniel, Ella, and I.  Our house has been quite and seems just a little bit empty without her here anymore. What made it worse was how fast she passed. Saturday she was fine, and Monday morning she was Dead. This is a huge loss to our little family. I've enjoyed looking at pictures of ALL the fun we  had together over those short 8 months... Enjoy... Love you Sash :(

Baptism as an outward witness of an inward faith in Jesus Christ alone for salvation

Today Solomon was Baptised along with his Step Dad Trent. What a special day it was. The Pictures speak for themselves.

I can't think of a More Special Day to share with a Parent

How Precious for a Grand Father to Baptise his first Great Grand Child

Deputy Daniel even Made it!!

Giving Thanks Times 4!

1 Chronicles 16:34 O give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; For His loving kindness is everlasting.


       We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year. Besides the fact that I hate so much over a 3 day period that I'm refusing to step on the scare for at least two weeks in hopes that when I do all that extra weight will be gone!
  

Wednesday: Ella had so much fun playing with her 2nd cousins at Daniel's Moms.

Thursday: We had a great time having a family football game....Although Ella was not a fan. She kept thinking everyone was trying to hurt her Daddy. :)

Later Thursday: Such fun at PaPaws playing with kittens and petting Henry.

Friday: We finished off our 3 days of Thanksgiving with a visit to Daniel's Dad's house. Ella so much enjoyed playing with crazy PawPaw and Tammy. Most of all that girl loved seeing all the ANIMALS!!!

This year more than ever I am so Thankful for our HUGE family. We are truly blessed to have each and every single one of you in our lives! What a Blessing it is!

Is Reflux back to haunt us......

When Ella was a baby she had reflux... I like to refer to reflux as being of the devil... lol. Its awful and if your a momma that has experienced with you child you know what I'm talking about.  Well for a little over a Month now, I along with Daniel and a lot of our family have realized that something was off with Ella.  She has been VERY fussy and ill.  I'm sure I have taken her to the doctor 4 times in the last month thinking that she must have another ear infection because of how awful she was acting and sleeping. All those times the doctor would say that her ears look fine! This last week Ella starting having a little spit up and her breath would smell sour. Shes also has the worst diarrhea I've ever seen... its been non stop for the last month. Feeling pretty desperate ,Daniel and I took her back to the doctor this morning. This time I needed some answers as to why Ella felt so bad. I even wrote all her issues out on a sheet of paper about a page long.. lol Anyways the doctor thinks that Ella might have REFLUX again.   So were putting Ella back on the same medicine she was on as a baby , and I'm sending up BIG prayers that this is going to be the fix she feeds to feel well again. If not the doctor wants to do further tests to see if Ella is maybe lactose intolerant and so on. So it you don't mind keep the little gal in your prayers. I want my little girl to feel like herself again, weve had enough sickness. :)

Hand Foot and.... that's just werid!

There is one thing I've come to realize is that this is the year of sickness for the Weathers. We started off the year with strep..then stomach virus...Roseola, about twelve ear infections, and now Hand Foot and Mouth disease. First let me say they totally need to "Rename this disease". It's not a disease at all... its a virus. A virus that causes sores and blisters on the hands feet and mouth. So officially I'm renaming it Hand Foot and Mouth VIRUS! LOL.  It's been challenging too say the least. I have had to pray for patience more than anything this year. It's been very difficult. Were making it threw though.... as I always try to remind myself it could ALWAYS be worse. 

Were finally officially into fall. We took Ella to a local Pumpkin patch the other day to pick out pumpkins. The whole time all I could think about was how little she was this time last year. I always love to go back and compare pictures of her a year later.  Now were gearing up for a trip to see Daniel's brother and his wife and their two little girls. Can't Wait! We have been needing to get out of Georgia for awhile now!!!

Daniel's newspaper article...

A couple months ago Daniel came to me and said a lady from the local paper had been asking him if she could write an article on what happened to Daniel (when he was injured in Iraq) for a 9/11 special report thingy. He didn't want too... I practically had to beg Daniel to agree to do the article. Daniel is such a humble person, and never wants people to think hes bragging on himself.... So I will brag on him for him. LOL  Here is the article that was in the paper this last Sunday... WARNING its long...


Weathering the storm: War changed life for former Marine, U.S. military

When Daniel Weathers left for Parris Island, S.C., in July 2001, his future as a United States Marine was one of any 18-year-old’s dreams — foreign ports, women, alcohol. But Sept. 11 changed that future.
The Sept. 11 attacks transformed not only Weathers’ life but set the stage for two long and costly wars that reordered the way the American military fights.
Weathers, a graduate of Cass High School, was two-thirds through boot camp when hijackers flew airplanes into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and, after being overtaken by passengers on Flight 93, a field in Shanksville, Pa., instead of the intended target believed to be in Washington, D.C.
“We got up that morning, nobody said a thing. We marched out to the range, thinking a normal day, ya know,” Weathers said. “Before I went it was like life was normal, there were no threats or anything. I didn’t go in thinking, ‘I’m going to go fight.’ I actually went in thinking I was going to get to go see the world, go to different liberty ports. So I was thinking I was going to have a lot of fun.
“That morning we marched out to the thunderdome, you get your morning briefing on what’s going on at the range that day. And the first thing the instructor said was, just out of the blue, ... ‘Well, men, we’re not going to tell you what has happened today. We know that some of you are from the area of concern.’
“We went back to the barracks thinking, ‘What in the world has happened? Have we been invaded?’ The wildest things go through your mind. ... Our senior drill instructor asked for a show of hands of who was from the New York City area or who had family and friends in the area. The guys who raised their hands, they pulled them aside, took them outside. I guess they let them try to call home at that point but all the phone lines were shut down pretty much. Then they told us about the attack, about what happened. They didn’t show us any footage. We listened to the radio … I remember George Bush had a broadcast that night on the radio that we listened to as a platoon.”
The problem was not peace on 9/11. At the time, the military was focused almost entirely on external threats. Air defenses kept watch for planes and missiles that might strike from afar; there was little attention to the possibility that terrorists might hijack domestic airliners and use them as missiles.
Terrorism was not a new challenge in 2001, but the scale of the 9/11 attacks prompted a shift in the U.S. mindset from defense to offense.
The U.S. invaded Afghanistan on Oct. 7 in an unconventional military campaign that was coordinated with the CIA. That heralded one of the most profound effects of 9/11: a shift in the military’s emphasis from fighting conventional army-on-army battles to executing more secretive, intelligence-driven hunts for shadowy terrorists.
In March 2003, Weathers was among the first wave of Marines to enter Iraq, spending three weeks in Mosul securing the airport there. He returned for his second tour in summer 2004, this time to Haditha, as part of the humanitarian effort.
“Basically our mission was to, it was near the Syrian border, they were having terrorists, foreign fighters coming in from Syria using this one main road that went through the area. It was like one road in this whole hundreds of miles to use, and they were using it to come down from Syria into Iraq and down into Fallujah,” Weathers said. “So they wanted us to shut off the road, patrol the road, and also to do, like, humanitarian-type assistance with the local villages.”For the majority of Weathers’ four months in Haditha, the area was quiet. In early August, he was sent to Camp Fallujah on a special detail.
“Our whole mission was to patrol these canals, these waterways outside of the city, deter them from planting IEDs, find out where rocket attacks were coming from,” he said. “It was kind of a normal day, you’d be walking down to the chow hall and hear, ‘Weeeeeerrrrrr. Boom!’ You’d hear it just off in the distance a little; it happened every day.”
When his unit returned to Haditha in late September, activity in the area had increased. Weathers, who was living in the abandoned Haditha Dam at the time, recounted with clarity the day everything changed.
“First week in October, and on Oct. 4, actually two days before that on Oct. 2, we were sitting back at base, we had just come in from being out for four days. ... All of a sudden it started going crazy in the dam, command staff and stuff was running around. You could tell they were frantic,” he said. “And apparently what had happened is, the other platoon that took our place out there was on post and they had a recruiting day at the police station, the local police station for Iraqi police. … There was roughly 200 people out here in front of this building, waiting to find out because of the jobs. … A terrorist, I guess, had drove straight into the crowd and detonated a vehicle bomb and killed like 30 or 40 people or something.”
A second police station was bombed the following day, putting U.S. military in the area on high alert.
“I remember how strange that day was actually because … at this point I had been four months with no rain, clear blue skies, no clouds, I mean just what you’d think of the desert,” Weathers recalled. “After that went off, it was strange, we came back to our post and then all of a sudden a sandstorm blew in which was the first sandstorm in four months. And it was like a sandstorm, like a blizzard here, where you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, just covered everything. Then after that it rained, which was wild. … I look back now and think, ‘I wonder if I was being told something.’”
On Oct. 4, with only six months left on his military contract, Weathers’ world was turned upside down. As part of the quick reaction force, the mission that day was securing the targeted police stations.
“It was, like, 7 o’clock Oct. 4 ... We were closing up shop; we had been there all day. Nothing happened. The way it was set up, me being the driver of my squad, and the platoon that was already out there sent one of their drivers down from one of their trucks. It was just two truckloads of Marines, some sitting on security outside the building watching, while the others were inside securing, clearing out the building. I was sitting with my truck and the building was in the middle. .
“There was a side road … that led out to the main road. Well our trucks, we pulled our trucks in pointed in either direction on that side road to block anybody from coming in there. … I had my machine gunner up on the turret on my truck, and I was talking to him. ... I had just taken, you know it was the end of the day, it was hot, we were getting tired, and I had a neck protector on my vest and I had unsnapped it. It was hanging down. I had taken my Kevlar [helmet] off and set it on the dash of the humvee. My M-16 was still where if I was sitting [in the driver’s seat], I had it leaned up [beside the seat] so I could grab it if I needed it. ...
“I had the door open, my back to the main road. … I’m talking to the turret gunner. I don’t remember what we were talking about, we were just talking. All of a sudden I saw this look on his face. He got real serious and ducked down behind his gun ... And I turned around just to see what he was talking about, and at the same time I turned around, I had my hands up on the steel-plated door there. There was a Suburban coming down the main road. It was, like, a ’72 model, it was like a 1970s Suburban. I could see this Iraqi driving it. He was the only one in the car. He was coming down the main road, and as I turned around is when he was getting in the dirt off the side of the road. He wasn’t slowing down. ... That was about 30 yards to my left
“I didn’t even have time to react. I just turned, looked and he was coming off the dirt, off the road, plowing through the dirt. He cut in that little side street there where we were at and right in front of me, probably from here to the door there [a distance of about 15 feet], it just disappeared, detonated, disappeared. It was the most immense heat I ever experienced. The only thing between me and it — and I was the closest to it which is amazing I’m not in pieces — was that steel door.
“On the back side of the door were bolts, exposed bolts [about an inch-and-a-half long] that plated the door together. I think that’s what happened to my arm ... That’s the only injury I knew I had at the time. I was standing at the door and all of a sudden it detonated and it knocked me, it knocked me 15 feet back and I landed on my back. ... And, of course, my ears, I couldn’t hear. It felt like I was in a fish bowl, just that ‘whoooooo’ you see in the movies. That’s an accurate depiction of what you experience. And this immense heat, I thought I had lost my face cause of just the feeling of that heat on my skin.
“But when I landed on my back I looked up in the sky and all these car parts are falling out of the sky on fire. And I thought, ‘Man, one of these things is going to fall and hit me.’ I thought any minute, any second an engine block is going to come flying out of the sky or something, so I rolled to my right side and [my right] arm wasn’t working, which is why I knew this was an injury.
“...I just rolled to my side and pulled myself up under the back tire of my humvee where the tailgate was and I laid there. Of course, you know, you start screaming or hollering. They pulled me out from under the truck, and I kept saying, ‘My arm, my arm.’ The doc started working on me — he didn’t even touch my arm — he started working on my neck. That’s when I realized something was up because
 they were working on my neck and I was on my back. Then another one came running over and started working on my leg, and I guess I was bleeding pretty good. It was wild though.”
Weathers suffered an injury to the neck, right arm and the leg, where shrapnel remains lodged near the wound.
“It was actually like a mushroom cloud like you see in the movies, and when it went off, we disappeared in the fire. [The Marines who witnessed the bomb] thought basically all of us were wiped out. ... But nobody was killed except for the Iraqi,” he said.
Weathers was evacuated, along with the other humvee driver, 45 minutes back to the Haditha Dam, where a field surgeon began the initial treatment.
“At that point, I was asking about a buddy of mine who’s dead now,” Weathers said through tears. “I kept asking if everybody was OK. I remember asking about Ski, and I asked so many times — and I hadn’t had morphine at this point ... I kept trying to raise up and look, and the surgeon said, ‘Son, if you raise up again, I’m going to have to stick you with this morphine to get you to calm down." He eventually was given pain medication and medevaced to Al Asad, where he was given the one phone call he made home to his now wife. It took Weathers almost two weeks to return to the U.S. He received an honorable discharge and was awarded the Purple Heart in February 2005.

The military grew larger over the past decade, but the growth was uneven. The Army expanded from about 480,000 in 2001 to 572,000 this year, and the Marine Corps grew from 172,000 to 200,000, although both are to begin scaling back shortly. The Air Force and Navy, by contrast, got smaller. The Air Force lost about 20,000 slots since 2001 and the Navy lost about 50,000.
In the past two months, the U.S. military has marked drastically different milestones in the two-front war: August marked the deadliest month for U.S. forces in the almost 10-year fight, but it was also the first month with no casualties in Iraq. The death toll among American forces in Iraq now stands at 4,474. The total for Operation Enduring Freedom is 1,741, with 1,643 of those coming in Afghanistan. The only Bartow County casualty was U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Seth Sharp, 20, of Adairsville, who died July 2, 2009, in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
Loss of life is not the only obstacle facing American troops and the veterans returning home. Troops are growing weary from war, committing suicide at an alarming rate and training less for conventional warfare.The Army and Marine Corps in particular — both still heavily engaged in Afghanistan — will struggle to retrain, rearm and reinvigorate their badly stretched forces even as budgets begin to shrink. And the troops themselves face an uncertain future; many are scarred by the mental strains of battle, and some face transition to civilian life at a time of economic turmoil and high unemployment. The cost of veterans’ care will march higher.
Weathers, who admits to nightmares after being injured, talked candidly about his dramatic
exit from the Marine Corps.
“They don’t give you classes or anything ... We took a written pysch evaluation. ‘How many times do you see bodies in your dreams? How many times in a live scenario have you seen a body?’ stuff like that. ‘Do you have feelings of beating women?’ Just stupid questions, but it was, like, that was the extent of preparing you for civilian life.”
Alcohol became the answer.
“When I got out, it’s fair to say I pretty much was an alcoholic. Drinking every day, I drank a case of beer every day,” said Weathers, who thanks God for a wife stayed through the toughest times. “Thank God she stuck with me, but I don’t see how she did it.”
He said he would become angry for no reason at all, but it took almost a year for him to realize he had a problem.
“New Year’s Eve we had fireworks, and [they] wouldn’t let me play with the fireworks because I was too drunk,” he said. “And I took it personal because, you know, nobody would let me touch the fireworks, because I was so used to carrying grenades and stuff, and now no one’s letting me play with fireworks. ... I want to say at that point I remember probably realizing that there was an issue.”
Weathers’ answer came through the Bartow County Sheriff’s Office, where he has been a deputy for five years.
“... Probably the sheriff’s office is what brought me to the point I am in my life. I feel stable,” he said. “I have a beer every now and then, but I’m not an alcoholic. I’m a loving husband and a great father, everything I ever wanted to be.”

— The Associated Press contributed to this report.

20 Months....Growing Strong.

My child is 20 months old today!? Is that not just nuts? It puts my in a total panic mode thinking that in the next 4 months we will be Driving to Daniel's brothers for a week, Celebrating Halloween...,Thanksgiving..,my Birthday...,Christmas...,New Years..., and then Ella's second Birthday. Sounds exhausting doesn't it, and expensive? LOL 

Manning Mill Park

This blog will be less words more pictures, but I must add it to my list of favorite memories and things we do with Ella. For those of you who haven't been to Manny Mill Park in Adairsville, you need too. Personally its so much better than Dellinger. Daniel and I love to go and hike the trail threw the woods and around the lake; Ella loves it too.  To her its much more interesting of a ride than going round and round at Hamilton Crossing. Plus all she does it sit back munching on gold fish while her Daddy and I walk our butts off! Here are a few pictures of Ella and her Daddy playing on the playground...

One true fact about Ella is that she LOVES Animals. Of any kind... While we were hiking the trails today a green snake slithered across the path. Daniel reached down and picked it up. Even with that Ella was breaking her neck and VERY interested in what this creature was. So you can imagine she loved the ducks at the lake today. She has no fear of them, even the BIG Geese that I run from. These ducks will walk up and eat out of your hand. She would hold her hand out everything to feed them, she loved it!

I will never take my Washer and Dyer for granted again!!!!

No this is not got to be a whole post about my Washer and Dryer.... well maybe it will.
2 weeks ago my Washer and Dryer both decided on the same day that they wanted to DIE! After calling 100 numbers and talking to 50 people, we finally got someone out here to look at them. After two weeks of them ordering parts..back and forth they are finally fixed!!!! I know this boring most of you but let me just say, It is SO true that don't really appreciate something until its gone. 2 weeks of house hopping from family to family to wash clothes... and even at some moments just buying new underwear or resorting to hand washing some stuff in my sink. I can say that I will never take my Washer and Dryer for granted again! Ella didn't seem to mind though she got to run around in a diaper most of the time!!!  Speaking of Ella look at what a HAM she was being tonight below....

Yet Another Medical Bill...

Oh boy what a day. Daniel and I had the idea this morning we would take Ella out to my Mom's pool. What we thought would be a "free, fun, day" for our family. I had the idea to take Sash our Saint Bernard with us thinking it would be nice for her to play with my moms dog. Heading out too my mom's house this morning we put Sash in the back of the truck like we always do. When we got on Macedonia Creek road Daniel was going 50mph and Sash just decided to Jump out of the truck. All I heard was Daniel yell and I turned around to see Sash sling no joke 50 feet on the asphalt. One lady ran her car off into a ditch trying to miss running Sash over. It was awful.... Daniel jumped out of the truck and ran to find her. She was on the side of the road and obviously hurt. Bleeding very bad from her back end where she had slid across the asphalt. We took Ella to my Mom's and ran Sash to the Vet. This is gross I know but the dog had clots coming out of her and was bleeding really bad. They took x rays of her and to the doctors surprise she had No broken bones or Fractures. The only worry is that they could not see her bladder on the x ray so that either means it was empty or it had ruptured... So were having to watch her to make sure she pees or she must have surgery. ( Which I'm just going to be honest wont happen... Daniel and I do not have $2500 to spend on a Dog.)  So two hours later we left with tones of medication for her and a $245.00 payment. Is that not just nuts! So much for a "Free, Fun Day"!  If you don't like blood don't look at the picture below.... If you look at the blanket that will give you and idea of how bad the for dog was bleeding, and that wasn't even half of it!