Snap Beans and an Adoption Story

I have a lot of cousins. And, I think like most families I have some favorites. One cousin in particular is one of those favorites, we'll call him E. E & his brother, through some unfortunate circumstances, were brought to live & be raised by my Grandma when they were little boys. My mother & her younger sister were still living at home at the time & so the 4 of them were raised together in an old farm house without electricity or plumbing. E is just a few years younger that my mama.

He worked for one of the local farmers, Mr. V, all thoughout the growing seasons for many years. He eventually joined the service & moved away. He met a very lovely woman, M, who became his wife & they had a son. After the service he got a job as an iron worker building skyscrapers. His job took him from city to city where ever the company he worked for needed him. There were a couple of summers that they lived close enough that they would come get me & I would spend the summer with them baby sitting their son.

He eventually was able to settle down & not move around anymore. They moved to a rural suburb just outside Atlanta (bet it's not so rural anymore!). At that time Atlanta was a very fast growing metropolis. Then they added a daughter to their family, P.

His dream was always to retire & come back south which he eventually did. His children were grown by the time that happened but his son & wife decided to also move south. His daughter & her husband moved to the Carolinas.

He & his wife actually live only 2 short miles from the property where he grew up, although the old house isn't there anymore.

About 5 years ago his daughter & her husband also decided to move south. They lived with my cousin for about a year before they were able to get some property of their own. E's son had married a woman with a son & they eventually had another son but E's daughter, who wanted to have a baby very badly wasn't able to conceive. So they started looking into adoption but that wasn't going very well either. She is a nurse at a local hospital & one day one of the other nurses, an older black lady, asked P what was the matter. Well, P had not shared any of her worries with any co-workers but she broke down & confided that she was just so sad about not being able to have children & it didn't look like adoption was going to work for them either. The co-worker told her not to worry that she would go home & pray & she just knew things would work out. That was on Friday.

Well that co-worker came in on Monday & shouted I HAVE FOUND YOU A BABY GIRL! P didn't believe her but when she told her what happened she broke down & cried. You see, the co-worker realized that she hadn't been to her church for over a year & decided if she was going to pray for P to get a baby then she wanted to do it the the Lord's house. When she got to church one of the other church ladies was holding a beautiful 8 month old little white girl. The other lady was a Foster parent & for some reason or another the mother of the baby had abandoned her & no adopters had worked out. The lady was thinking about adopting her herself but she already had several other kids & didn't know if that was the right thing to do. Well, long story long, P & her husband met this precious child & got started on the adoption right away. The adoption was final on the baby's 1st birthday.

My cousin E called this last Saturday & told me he had some snap beans for me & to come by & pick them up on our way home Sunday. P & that precious little girl, now 4 years old, were at E's house visiting. She is such a cute little one with the personality to match. Very inquisitive & silly but minds her manners as her grandparents & parents are teaching her to do. When is the last time you heard a parent say, "Don't interupt them, they are talking, that's very rude." The little one shrugged her shoulders & said oh, I'm sorry then went on to play with whatever she was playing with. So happy when situations have a happy ending.

Oh, and that little boy that I used to baby sit ... turned 48 on Sunday! Wow, where did the time go?

I brought those 2 huge bags of snap beans home & processed 1 batch last night & decided to stay home from work to process the next batch. 16 qts. total, yeah!

14 of the 16 qts

Oh and on a totally unrelated note. Here's a pics of the deer family that is living in our branch. Greg puts out feed corn for them, in front of the game cam. They have been living on our property since early March. This is the first day time pic of all of them together. There is also a buck but he's wasn't dining with the girls on this day.

I can't wait to be able to spend more time up there!