1-1 Premeier Issue FINAL PROOF.pdf Holiday 2013 | Page 30

FAMILY H continued from page

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and four little Great Pyrenees bred by
Chatham’s own Jessica and David Battlestein that were exactly what Disney
was looking for. Disney was wonderful
and accommodating, agreeing to care for
the dogs while filming in the same manner as Jessica and David would. The pups
were flown to Los Angeles for two weeks,
and then to Canada for six, the film being
released in November of 2012. And so
that Christmas the Battlesteins got to watch
their very own puppies starring (and saving
Christmas, by the way) in a Disney film.
This would count as the second most significant event of 2012 for the Battlesteins.

That same year, the family traveled to China to adopt a daughter, Abby.
This year they’re doing the same, traveling
to China to bring home their second adopted son, Jonathan, age two.

So in the end, as Christmas stories go, theirs is a pretty good one—not
because of Disney movies (which are admittedly a nice ancillary benefit), or flights
to Canada, or, for that matter, traveling to
China, or coming from Texas. Rather, the
Battlestein family did what makes lots of
Chatham County special. That is, when
they needed milk they found goats, when
they wanted a farm they built one, and as
their family—both human and animal—
grew, they welcomed all with love. In the
film, their puppies’ names—Noble, Hope,
and Charity— speak volumes about the
family from whence they came. Jingle is the
name of the fourth pup in the film, and while
the Battlestein’s singing voices are as of this
point undetermined, their place in the community as a bastion of familial resourcefulness and generosity is most certainly not. H

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