Well Spring is finally here so it means its time to clean out all of the closets. But before anyone throws anything away this year make sure to check and see if what you intend to throw away doesn't have any value to it. I have seen a lot of history end up in the trash when I was a child and I hate to see that happen now as an adult. Please make sure everyone checks the batteries in all smoke detectors in the house. If you don't have one please contact your nearest fire department; they are willing to give you one free and will even install them for you if you can not do so yourself. This should be on everyone's must list.

For those of you who go out to all the cemeteries to document them and take pictures; please take extra precaution with you; the mosquito are bigger and hungrier this year and plus this is the season that snakes come out and about. Also try to take someone with you on these trips. There is no telling what can happen in a cemetery.

If anyone plans on taking a vacation this year, I would like to recommend taking it in Louisiana. Louisiana has so much to offer anyone. You can find all kinds of history in every little town in Louisiana. You don't have to go to big cities to find it. I, myself, plan on taking my family down south (Houma /Baton Rouge/ St. Francisville area) this summer. I want my children to learn how life was on a real plantation. I think this will be a great learning experience for us all.

My youngest child Alex was born five years ago, and since he was my fourth child my husband and I decided not to have any more children. This being said, just two months after the birth of Alex I had my tubes burnt and clipped (and whatever else the Doctor did to them). For the last five years I have had no problems; until recently.

The last part of August; just before Hurricane Gustav hit I was laying on my bed talking to Alex. He told me something that blew my mind away. His exact words to me was, "Momma when daddy gets home, you two are going to have sex and you are going to get pregnant. And Momma it's going to be a girl." So I told him he couldn't watch Family Guy anymore and besides if I did have a baby then he wouldn't be the baby anymore. So he says oh never mind you can't have sex. Since I knew I had my tubes fixed I knew what he was saying couldn't happen.

Around October 9th I started getting worried. I usually write down in my calendar when my "friend" would show up and how long my "friend" stayed but this time I forgot. So on October 9th I asked my husband does he know when the last time my "friend" came and he said he doesn't remember. I told my husband that I know I couldn't be pregnant because of the my procedure and that I am probably just stressed out.

October 12 I woke up early and started cleaning the house. I was excited because I thought my husband was coming home today (he works offshore); but I got my days messed up. I sat down in the living room with the kids and started watching ET. My right side started hurting while the movie was on. But I thought nothing of it. After the movie went off the kids started making their dad a welcome home poster. At one point I got up from where I was sitting and went to the bathroom. By this time the pain I was having intensified. AJ (My oldest son) comes in to complain about Alex and I told him that I didn't want to hear it. When he looks at me he sees that I am crying. He asks my if I was ok and I just say I'll be ok, it just hurts. Then I tell him to run and get me a trash can. So at this point I am thinking the food I ate just 30 minutes before is making me sick.

Shortly afterwards I tell my son to run some hot water in the tub. I'm thinking well hot water will make it better. I get in and five minutes later I am telling him to call his dad. He calls his dad and I tell him what kind of pains I was having so he tells me he will call me back. He calls his mom (she's a CNA) then calls me back and tells me she is on her way. When she gets to my house I am laying on my bed curled up in a fetal position because I am hurting so bad. My husband calls back and she tells him that I need to go to the hospital. This is around 1 PM. On the way to the hospital she tells me that it sounds like I have a bad case of GAS. But once we get to the hospital she tells the nurse that I might be having a miscarriage.

I told her about my procedure that I had five years previous and that I do not know if I am pregnant or not. So she gives me a pregnancy test. Test results are fast now-a-days so the results were almost instant. The outcome: PREGNANT. I cried my eyes out. Here I am in the hospital Emergency Room all alone crying (my mother-in-law had to stay with my children). The ER Doctor sent me upstairs to OB-GYN to meet with the doctor up there. He did an ultrasound on me to see if the baby was where it should have been (in the uterus) but did not see any baby. He sends me back down to the ER Department and said as soon as my blood test results come back and can move forward. By this time the pain has double from what it was when I arrived. I asked the ER doctor if I could have a bed so I can lay down. The pain started to shoot up my right arm as well as my right side.

I told this to the doctor so he obviously took it seriously because he called for the OB-GYN doctor to come down to ER. The test results came back and said that I was 2 months along and that the baby should have been normal size. By now it is around 5 PM and things are starting to get worse. The doctor informed me that I had three choices. 1 have emergency surgery and have both my tubes removed, 2 take a pill and end the pregnancy, or 3 do nothing and hope it resolves itself. I took option 1 because I wanted the pain to stop. I signed all the paperwork that I was asked to sign for the surgery and was informed that it will take the surgery team at least 25 minutes to get to the hospital.

I was able to talk to my husband and tell him what was about to happen, and my mother-in-law was informed and I told her to go ahead and take the kids home to get them fed and that I will be ok. Another doctor came in and told me what he was going to do to put me to sleep for the surgery and ask the usual questions. Shortly after he left a male nurse introduced himself and told me he was about to wheel me up to surgery. It's about 6:30 PM. When I get to the surgery room another nurse informs that I will have to take my wedding band off or they will have to cut it off, so after a little nuddging at I was able to get it off. The nurse then informed that after the surgery she will put it back on my finger for me.

When I woke up I was a little dazed and confused because I did not know where I was. The male nurse that had took me to surgery was in the room and I asked him how long I was there and he said for 45 minutes and that in 10 more minutes he will take me to my room. After I got to my room I called my Mother-In-Law to ask about the kids and told her I was in my room and what room number I was in. Five minutes later she showed up. The doctor that did my surgery came in to check on me and to let me know how the surgery went. He told me that the reason I was in so much pain besides having a baby inside of my tubes, but my tubes actually ruptured and that I was bleeding on the inside. The doctor said I had lost 500 cc's of blood. I don't know if that's a lot but it sure does sound like it.

About  10 PM the door to my room opened. To my surprise it was my husband. His work had let him get on the first flight off the barge.  My husband took care of me the whole time I was told to stay off my feet.  Alex asked me why the baby couldn't come home when I did and I almost cried. I sat him down and told him that "she" wasn't meant to born and that she was in heaven with the Angels. So he says "I know Angel is an Angel, she was following me around the house today." I had to go in the bathroom and cry because I didn't want him to see me cry. I cried everyday for almost two weeks when no one was around.

I had a dream about my dead Grandmother and my dead Aunt. In the dream my Aunt was holding a baby and she told me not to worry about anything. Everything is going to be ok.

What I don't understand is how I ended up pregnant five years after having a tubal? What lesson am I suppose to learn from this? Am I suppose to do something special now? How does a person really find out the meaning to unexplained things such as this? How is it that some small children know things before it actually happens? Where do I go from here? Could things get better or are they going to get worse? I would have loved to have been able to save the baby, but I guess God had better plans. I just wish I could have seen her and held her just for a little while.

Angel I love you and will miss you dearly. I can't wait to be reunited with you in heaven.

Everyone gets a little frustrated sometimes and have been able to get over it. But can a person actually stay frustrated for a long period of time. Well for me, I have been frustrated for the past eight years. That is how long I have been searching and searching for something on my grandmother (mom's mom) and her side of the family. I am determined to break down that wall. I have tried everything that is available to me on the internet and still come up empty.  I lived with this woman for 18 years of my life and still have no idea about her side of the family. I know more about my father side (In the last eight years have found my father and his family). Where does a person go to search for one's loved one when there is nothing out there? I don't know but when I find out I will difinately will share what I know with everyone.

I grew up not knowing who my father was and not knowing how he looked. My mom only referred to him as "Sam". She never spoke about him when my grandmother was around. When I was young I never really asked about him. Then one day, sometime around 1987-1988 one of our neighbors died. I was about 10 years old at the time. This neighbor was close to the family. We actually thought of each other as family. I would call them Uncle Ted and Aunt Mary. My mom, Mary was good friends with their children Debbie Lee, Gwen, Catherine, and Ted. I would always play with their children. Well when Uncle Ted died we were all sad. Some people had come in from out of town and was staying at the house with Aunt Mary. I remember going over to her house one afternoon to play with the children when Aunt Mary told me she had someone she wanted me to meet. So of course I said ok. I followed her to her bedroom where a man was sleep on her bed. She woke him up and told him, this is Christi.

He jumped out of the bed and just hugged me. I didn't know who is was so I didn't hug him back. I asked him who he was and he told me he was my dad. Of course I told him "No the hell you ain't". Then he introduced me to his wife Susie. Susie was his second wife. Little did I know, but Catherine (Aunt Mary's daughter) was James' first wife. Well I started asking questions; like, why you don't come see me? His response was, well your grandma won't let me. She told me to stay away from you. Why? I asked. "It's too complicated to tell you. But you can always write me."  I never did.

The story I was told later on from my grandma is that while Mary was babysitting for James and Catherine, James came home early and raped my mom. The story that my mom tells me is that she did it willingly. Let me stop right here and give everyone a brief history on my mom so everyone can understand better. My mom is classified as having mental retardation and is hard of hearing. She has a mind of a child. Her IQ is around 76. She was 26 or 27 at the time this happened. Mary knows the difference between right and wrong and can make some decisions on her own. For example,  she can cook, clean, hold down a job, and she did have a boyfriend later on her life (after her mom died). It was like her mom was trying to shelter her from everything and everyone.

Ok, back to the story. So here it is folks. I was told she was raped and she tells me it was willingly. Who am I to believe? First of all if it was rape then why didn't my grandma call it in the police? Why keep me? I know my Uncle Charles (my mom's brother) and his wife Bonnie wanted to adopt me but she chose to keep me, why?  These are some of the questions I had.

As a teen I was rebellious and did what I wanted. No one could tell me anything. I dropped out of school when I was 16 joined the Louisiana National Guard Youth Challenge Program and got my GED (only because they paid me for it). My grandmother died when I was 18. I had always told everyone that when she died I was leaving and never coming back. She died May 16, 1995. I move out on June 1, 1995. I met my husband on June 16, 1995.

I didn't think about my dad anymore until I moved to Monroe in the summer of 1998. Monroe is where my husband is from. We got married in the Spring of 1999. By the 2001, I started looking for my dad again. I didn't find him but I did find my half brother Thomas Feroben. He informed me that James (my dad) died October 30, 1996 of Lung Cancer. No one ever told me. I had no clue.

Thomas and I lost contact over the years since he told me that James had died. Well on June 28, 2008 I decided to take a drive to Delhi, Louisiana to try and find my dad's gravesite. I had no luck but I did have Thomas's address and directions to his house on hand. I decided to go see my brother. I am glad I did. Thomas showed me where James is buried and I took pictures of his grave.

Sometimes, I wish things were different. I wish I had a normal mom and a dad that loved me. Now I will never know if James loved me or not. He never showed it in any way. It is Obvious I do care whether or not he loved me or not, or I wouldn't be putting myself through this. I missed out knowing who my "other" set of grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins. I want to know who my family is regardless of how we became family.  Most importantly I want to be able to have a relationship of any kind with my dad and his family and feel love and give love.

Thomas and I promised to keep in touch with each no matter what.

Christi and Thomas June 28, 2008 (Thomas looks just like James).

I want to thank everyone that has taken the time to read my blog.

I am doing research on my family. My maiden name is Atwood (I wasn't given my father's name). My father's name is Feroben. The other names that I am researching are Marlar and Harris (married name-but I don't have much on this name as of yet since it is such a popular name).

If anyone has a question about any of my surnames just don't hesitate to ask.