My liiiiifffffe!!!!

Hey y'all! So, I am going to give you a little taste of some high points of my life. These are things that make me happy. :)


Watching my step sons play sports is so fun! They love playing baseball, football and soccer and are actually pretty good, lol! This picture of Bryce was last Spring during the All Star playoffs. He was 8 at the time.

Stepson Bryce <3

This picture is of my lovely, amazing, perfectly imperfect, hilarious and redonkulous family. I love all of these guys (dogs, kids and husband included!) more than life! I am so dang lucky to be married to the funniest, sweetest and most honest guy in the world and my step sons are so great! They crack me up and love me ALMOST as much as I love them!

My love: Byron, me, Mason, Bryce, Rocky (the beagle) and Hero (the lab)

The picture below is of my brother modeling. We are so silly together and he likes posing while I TRY to be a photographer! But I actually think he could be a model--or maybe it's my spectacular photography skills... ;)

My super fantastic and hilarious brother, Ross

The next few pictures are of the trees turning at my dad's house/land. His house is one of my favorite places to be in the whole world! It was built with love and is so peaceful and beautiful.

My dad's land

Dad's land

Dad's land

Dad's land

Dad's land

Now the last few pictures are from our New Year's Eve extravaganza! We dressed up and went out with our closest friends, Jake and Lisa and had such a good time! We drank, danced, laughed and I (accidentally) broke basically everything in the bar--glasses, bottles, my dignity...you know, the normal stuff. :)

Me and the love of my life!

Girls just wanna have fun!

And more fun!!

 

New Job: Saving the World

So, for those of you who don't know, I work for a state agency called Child Protective Services. For the past year and a half I worked with families whose children are currently in foster care in the hopes of reuniting families, if possible. Although I absolutely loved working with the kids on my case load, I didn't have much patience for the parents. I was understanding of the bad situation these families came from (usually) but what I couldn't fathom was the lack of effort And concern most of the parents put forth in working services and regaining custody of their kids. It was simple in my mind, this is where we are-the beginning, a fresh start-now is the time to put on our big girl panties and deal with this situation like adults. Or don't. But don't waste my time or worse, your kids'. I had a hard time biting my tongue when parents gave me excuse after excuse for why they haven't done services or made appropriate changes in their lives. I was as blunt and honest as possible with my clients while maintaining my professionalism (which was extremely challenging at times) but this became extremely stressful for me. After a lot of contemplating and soul searching I decided to apply for a CPS Investigator position. This was a hard choice to make because of the potential emotional stress involved in being an investigator (high turnover rate, emotionally charged situations, listening to and witnessing evdence of horrific abuse and neglect as well as quite a bit of on-call hours) but I knew that I would not be able to hold back my anger and frustration with the parents forever. Being an investigator, I will only be involved with the family for about 30 days, depending on the situation whereas before I worked with a family for a year to 18 months. I will no longer be spoon feeding the parents services or listening to them tell me why their paramour is appropriate even though the paramour is often the perpetrator. After reading the intake report I will investigate allegations and come to a conclusion on the disposition (Ruled Out, Reason to Believe, Unable to Determibe). This is an over-simplified explanation but it gets the point across. I am currently in Austin for Investigation training. I am here this whole week and next week and toward the end of the month as well. So far I have learned a ton of information (feel like my brain is going to explode) and everything is very interesting!! I can't wait to finish and get out in the field! Ok, time to watch my shows! Goodnight! -J. Pin It