I know... I know... it's been FOREVER since I posted. We have had quite a year to say the least. We've had a lot of good times and a lot of not-so-good times since my last post. I have to say that during them all, even the bad ones, we have been blessed to have the protection of God, the love of our family and the prayers and support of our extended family and friends. There are no words to adequately express our appreciation for those three things.
On January 22nd, Justin was burned in an accident. He had mostly 3rd degree burns on 12% of his body (the backs of his legs and tops of his feet.) It required a trip to the burn unit at Doctors Hospital in Augusta, GA. That is a wonderful hospital. The doctors, nurses and all of the staff are extremely knowledgeable and very compassionate. Justin had surgery the day after the accident to have donor skin, pig skin and synthetic skin placed over his burns. We followed up at Crossgates River Oaks Burn Center in Brandon, MS. Thanks to the Good Lord, his doctors and nurses he is doing fine now. It is truly a miracle that he has so completely recovered. The doctors were even amazed with his progress. In March, he was released from their care and told he could resume all of his usual activities. Now, you may be asking “How was he burned???” Well, that’s a story for a whole other post!
Justin and Hunter both had February birthdays. My oldest sweetheart-darlin-angel is now 18, and my youngest sweet-darlin'-angel is now 6. Both birthdays hit me hard. I think as parents we all tend to have an unshakeable image of our kids that never ages. For instance, my parents have always told me that in their minds I am always 2 years old running around the house with my hair flowing behind me singing Dolly Parton's “Jolene”. LOL In my mind, Justin is about two years old with his ear to my tummy when I was pregnant with Phillip. Justin was fascinated with Power Rangers back then. Each time Phillip would kick, Justin would look up at me and say "Mama! He say 'Koowah'!!!" (For those of you who missed the Power Ranger craze of the early nineties... Koowah is what the power rangers said whenever they kicked or did a really awesome move.) Now my little Power Ranger is 18, and technically a man. We celebrated Phillip's 16th birthday in April. I still think of him being 4 years old, watching "Blue's Clues" and eating weenies and cheese. When the show would end, he’d sing, “We just figured out Blue’s Clues because we’re really smart!” Obviously, he was a HUGE Blue’s Clues fan. He had his own handy-dandy notebook and everything! In June, Christian turned 9. Finally! (For some reason I’ve been telling people that he was 9 the whole year he was 8!!! Am I a bad mom???) Anyway, when I think of Christian, he is 2 years old and always reaching up for me to hold him shouting “Hold he!!” When he was that age, he never referred to himself as “me” or “I'” it was always “he”. And, I’ll always remember Hunter when he was around 3 at our cat’s funeral. After all of his brothers had wiped their tears and said a few words about “Scratch”, I asked him if he wanted to tell Scratch goodbye. He replied, “I’m gwad Stwatch is dead. Stwatch stwatched me. Bye, Stwatch!” I had been so worried that the untimely death of Scratch would scar him for life (which is the whole reason we had the huge funeral in the back yard complete with eulogies). Boy was I wrong about that one!
Phillip won two awards at the Benton Academy Athletic Banquet this year. Justin had his JR/SR prom. The Raider baseball team made it all the way to North State. Christian finished third grade, and Hunter graduated kindergarten. Christian and Hunter also played Dixie Youth baseball this year, and Brandon helped coach Hunter’s team.
In April, our house was hit by a tornado. It was the scariest thing I have ever experienced. Being a delta girl, I was calmly sitting out on our back porch listening to the tornado sirens from town. Brandon told me to come inside… couldn’t I hear the sirens? I told him I could, but that in Greenwood my family always had a joke that if you hear the sirens you’re okay. Long long long story short… I did come inside and we all ended up in the hallway scared senseless and praying. It’s almost impossible to describe the feelings and the experience of the tornado. When we came out of the hallway we were shocked to discover that all the metal from our roof had been stripped off… the under-roof had actually been picked up and sat back down again. We had a big rip in our living room ceiling, all of our kitchen and laundry room cabinets had been loosened from the ceiling. There was insulation all over the living room. The back porch was completely gone. The gazebo was almost completely destroyed. All of our beautiful old hard wood trees were either snapped in half, completely uprooted or terribly damaged. We were without: power for four days, water for about a week, telephone for 2 weeks and cable and internet for almost a month. We hired Johnny Sanders Construction to do our repairs, and they did an awesome job! Our house is back to normal, and we’re still working on the yard and acreage. There are so many people to thank for all their help that I cannot begin to name them all. I’m to afraid I’ll leave someone out. We have seen the best in people during this challenging time.
.For more tornado damage pictures... click here.
Here are just a few pictures from this year…
Watch for more posts… now that I’ve caught you up, I’m going to try to write regularly.
It’s been a long journey. Most everything was completed back in January, but today was our final hearing on Brandon’s adopting the boys. The judge granted our petitions and wished us well. We are so thankful to my friend, Steven Cookston for handling the case for us. Today he made the six of us and our families very, very happy. 
Hunter, Christian & Hammond
