My Georgia Life

Lying here in bed feeling the baby kick...actually I can even SEE him kick now. Fun to know that he is a he indeed...Crockett Samuel Smith. Unsure how I feel about knowing the doctor's going to want to do the c-section at 38 weeks. That leaves just 16 weeks to go, which is nice, but I like my babies to come out "fully cooked". We'll see...God's in control. In other news I've been trying to make a bigger to-do out of Easter this year...really want to revel in remembering what Christ did for us. Kids are loving it. We have an Easter tree. It's a dogwood branch cut from the neighbors tree which hangs over our fence.  :)  We've decorated it with pretty plastic eggs numbered 1 thru 24 and filled with candy so the kids can count down (or up?) to the big day. (Actually #24's empty...sshh! Empty tomb...get it?) Then we added some cut outs of verses and symbols of Christ's ministry from King's history lesson. Then we'll had the artwork from th...

The women's group at my church recently finished a study through the book Lies Women Believe by Nancy Leigh DeMoss .  Honestly, I didn't enjoy it much at first, but I kept going because I needed the fellowship.  Little did I know that God would really use the study to make a small but very impactful change in my life. It was the second to last week of meetings and I didn't finish the reading.  I skimmed it well enough to have the main ideas ready for discussion.  The group time went well with one or two of the ladies doing most of the talking.  (This does sometimes annoy me but not when what they're saying is worth hearing. :) ) The chapters we were discussing were about life's circumstances and being controlled my your emotions.  At first I thought I would be more impacted by the chapter on circumstances because of what all we've been through this past year, but I was wrong... When I got home that evening I felt very uneasy...no peace.  I starte...

Today King, my six-year-old, was talking to me...as usual. I was attempting to read my newest Runner's World magazine and take a little mental break. It wasn't working. Finally, after King once again required a response to another too-in-depth analysis of a cartoon character's action, I replied sharply, "Okay, that's great." Too bad King's too smart for that. He looked at me, obviously disappointed,  and said, "Why are you never happy?" Shot through the heart. The sad thing is I knew exactly what he was talking about. I tend to, unintentionally, run my "mother business" in a very focused way. I'm not overly strict or structured about anything but it's my state of mind that's the controlling factor. I know there's a certain order and a certain way that things must be done so as not to cause a breakdown of any one person or the house itself. I think by constantly having this "control switch" on...though it...

Now that the stomach bug has finished its work in our household we've got more time to enjoy the new life that's springing up in our home. We have the first sprouts of our soon to be garden! We've got three trays full of little seedlings and enough seeds to fill three more! There's cucumbers and collards, which are growing the fastest, some corn, tomatoes, carrots, squash, watermelon, and a few different flowers. We're learning as we grow and it's actually very exciting to see what happens! It was fun today to show the kids how the plants were reaching toward the sun in the window. Of course they asked, "Why?", and the only answer I had was, "Because that's how God made them." They were satisfied. (For now!)

The only real problem we've had with our new Georgia life (besides missing Dad :( ) is the fact that someone has been sick almost everyday since we got here!  It started with Ace, 15 months, having a bad cold, then King, 6, had it a little worse,  then I had it (seemingly) worst of all.  That was three weeks in a row of sickness. We had a few days break with only Lottie, 2, having the sniffles, but then on our way home from our Louisiana roadtrip I developed a painful sinus infection. If that weren't enough, two days later King comes down with a nasty stomach virus out of nowhere!  Praise God it was short lived and not too messy. (At least not at our house...the first major spew came at Grammy's. Yikes!) No one else seems to have picked it up. I'm praying it stays that way. Now if this sinus infection would just end!

A few points that I haven't mentioned yet but are very important to "my Georgia life": •Ace DeSaussure Smith joined our family on November 05, 2009. Our fourth child. •I'm now pregnant with our 5th child. Due August 12th, 2011. •We homeschool and we love it. It works perfectly with our lifestyle and IV's erratic work schedule. •Hmm...I'm sure there's more but that's all I can think of for now. I'll include the rest as it comes up. Okay, now that I've given you the background on how we got here I'll be able to write about what our new Georgia lives intel ...it's never boring!

What was suppose to be a couple weeks stay with my mom and dad turned out to be sooo much more. As IV searched for jobs in Athens, Tennessee, we searched for a house, an apartment,  a duplex, SOMETHING, but nothing came through. IV did find a job...working loss prevention at a busy store, which he enjoys. There was not, however, anywhere to put our family. After months of searching, IV's mom and dad offered us a rental house they own in Covington, Georgia, for cheap rent. We put it off for a month.We continued to pray hard. We prayed God would make room for us...somewhere.  We wanted to make sure we'd tried every option in Tennessee,  but once again it was fruitless. Therefore, in mid January we packed up our few belongings and headed south. It was a breath of fresh air.

The bankruptcy was final in March 2009.  At that point we made a quick dash to a rental house in Dayton, stayed for a few months, then packed up to move to Manchester, TN.  IV had been in law school in Nashville for a year and a half and we hoped to move closer to the school so he could finish faster and easier.  We found a cute little farm house surrounded by cornfields for cheap rent and thought we'd struck gold.  We were there for about a month when we started seeing spiders, and more spiders, and more spiders...Brown Recluse spiders.  We quickly vacated the premises and moved back to my mom and dad's house.  We made a couple of attempts to gather our things from the house but spiders were coming from every nook and cranny.  We left about 90% of our stuff behind.  It was not fun, but it was very cleansing.  Once again the Lord was doing His work in us.  {A small sampling of the spiders...there were more than Brown Recluses but those ...

{Duke and King in '08} This isn't the first time we've lived in Georgia. Way back when, October 2005, my husband (IV), son (King), and I moved from Arlington, Texas to Covington, Georgia...into my in-laws' house.  I was about 5 months pregnant with my second son, Duke.  When the nesting instincts sunk in I ached to be in our own home.  We ended up in a perfect little house, which I quickly set up to be what my husband and I both agreed was our first real home.  Too bad it didn't last. IV worked a few unsatisfactory jobs til landing something he loved.  It was dangerous and he wanted the kids and me far away from it.  Therefore, we moved to Tennessee...in with my parents.  That was June 1, 2006.  Once again I ached to be in our own home.  We rushed into a crappy apartment and spent the next four months trying to get out of there.  Finally, we found relief in the basement apartment of my uncle's house, which my mom and dad...