The main reason I've been offline is because we were out of town. It's been almost a week now that we got home. We were in Orlando, FL for K's Make A Wish trip. It was a wonderful experience and I totally plan on updating about that shortly. It's going to be a LONG post so I'll be breaking it up by days.

My main reason for posting tonight, aside from that I really needed to, is to update on my mom. As most of you know we moved her out here to be with us last November. She had lost her job and was losing her apartment when we decided to move her here. She had absolutely no income. She couldn't buy any sort of groceries so she was at the mercy of my brother and my grandpa to feed her. Half the time she didn't have gas money so she couldn't go to their houses anyway. She was also battling a really bad bout of depression. All of this added up and made me really worry about her. Being so far from her I felt helpless. So J, being the wonderful husband that he is offered to move her up here to live with us. It was only until she got on her feet. So she arrived here November 4th.

To date she still hasn't found a job. She did have a short work experience at the BX and at the base Burger King. But she hated both jobs so badly that she quit within a couple weeks of starting. She again has no money. Her car was repossessed in January. She is pretty much stuck in the house as long unless she goes somewhere with J or me. She has helped me quite a bit with the kids. Especially when K was first diagnosed with her brain tumor. She would take care of the boys while I took K for her early morning radiation treatments. She would also stay with K at the hospital so that J and I could get some rest and spend some time with the boys. But now that K is pretty stable, and I'm thinking about going back to work, my mom is miserable. She has such a pity party going on right now. She is depressed about not having a job but she's not doing much to better herself. She lives in our basement and refuses to come upstairs unless it's to eat. She swears my dog makes her sick but she was fine the entire time J was deployed. She's spending a lot of time worry about my grandmother since she had a stroke a few months ago. I've tried, many times, to plant the seed for her to go back to New Mexico. I know she hates it here. She doesn't like J and most of the time my kids annoy her. I hate seeing her depressed and honestly she is bringing down the rest of us. If we're having a good time, and she comes upstairs, you can feel it. The mood in the house changes. We feel bad for having fun when she is so miserable.

Yesterday afternoon I had a talk with J. We were talking about what we are going to do when mom's visitor pass expires in November. I don't want to put J into a hard place by having him renew her pass when he doesn't really want to. But at the same time I feel horrible kicking her out of the house when she has no where else to go. Then I think, maybe if we kick her out it'll force her to actually do something for herself instead of feeling sorry all the time.

This morning I emailed her. I am not a confrontational person and I was afraid she would take my words the wrong way. So I took the chicken way out. It worked. I acknowledged how unhappy she is here. And how I know she is really worried about my grandparents. So I told her, if she wants to, we will pay to send her back to New Mexico. I told her she could help out my grandparents and maybe that would give her life some meaning. Maybe then she could start to get over this depression she's stuck in. I told her to think about it and let me know. This evening, before dinner, she said yes. She wants to go back. So now we're in the process of finding the best way to get her there. I wouldn't mind flying her out, but then we have he furniture and boxes to ship out. I really don't want to pay a moving company a couple thousand dollars to ship less than one room full of stuff. It looks like my only real option will be to rent a truck and drive out there with her and then I'll fly back. I'm getting tired just thinking about it.

Oh did I mention I'm going to start working soon? Yeah that means that this long trip need to be done over the weekend. I'm so excited! (Can you hear the sarcasm?) Honestly I'm happy she's going back. I need to be able to take care of my family and raise my children without her chiming in.

First off I want to say I'm sorry for not updating sooner. With J getting home from deployment and the kids starting school I'm finding it difficult to get into a new routine that allows me my 15 hours of computer time. I know, I know excuses. But I promise as soon as I get my routine down I'll be able to update more often.

So I have a bit of an issue. It makes me feel OLD. I'm so not ready for this. Okay here's the deal. R is 10 yrs old, right? He's in fifth grade. He's been in school for a whopping seven days, well actually six because he missed today. So what's my problem you ask? He has FOUR girls hanging around my house from the time school gets out until it's time for them to go home around 730. That's four hours of girls at my house. FOUR HOURS!! He does have boy friends but none of them stay here that long. The boys are in and out of the house and they don't center completely around R. These girls are all about R. If R wants to go somewhere they follow him out. When he comes home they are following him back inside. Then today, since he missed school, they all walked here to make sure he wasn't dying. How am I supposed to handle this? Isn't he too young to be so involved with girls? Ugh, I never thought I would be stressing so much.

Okay not completely. Saturday was a really good day. We spent the ENTIRE day with no electricity. I got so much accomplished. I washed dishes, cleaned the bathrooms, clean the kids' rooms, I was on a roll. Then I ran out of stuff to do so I laid on the couch and read a book. While all this was going on the kids were actually playing TOGETHER. They were in and outside of the house, mostly outside. But it was so nice, they didn't fight once. I honestly felt like I was dreaming. They went to the park and made some new friends and then disappeared. It got dark and my heart dropped. My kids were no where to be found. They had not checked in for a LONG time. I loaded into the car and started driving through all the nearby neighborhoods looking for them. It was really hard to see. I told my mom to call me on my cell if they showed up. Ten minutes after I started my search R showed up at home. My mom called to let me know. The problem was K and A weren't there. R left them behind because they couldn't "peg". He dropped them off in a neighborhood that they weren't familiar with, IN THE DARK! Did I mention that K is 5 yrs old and A is 4? Yeah I was a bit freaked. I drove home to grab R and have him show me where he left his little brother and sister. On my way I saw K and A walking home with a little girl they had met earlier in the day. I can't describe the elation I felt when I saw them. Anyway, they got home and went straight to bed. No supper that night and I didn't even need to light any candles. Anyway once they were asleep, I was still wired from adrenaline, I was sitting in the dark. I couldn't read because I was scared I would knock a candle over and cause a fire. Sitting in the living room, in the dark seemed dumb. And it was WAY TOO EARLY for me to go to bed. So I turned on the TV and watched something. What's sad is now is I can't even remember what I watched.

Sunday, the kids were grounded so they couldn't leave the house. They weren't near as nice to each other as they had been Saturday. I spent most of Sunday morning breaking up fights. It was horrible. So I broke down. I turned on the TV and popped in a movie. It was pure bliss. The kids sat quietly the entire 2.5 hours. In that time I was able to do all of the laundry (since I wasn't able to do it the day before). The kids seem to be more appreciative of what they have now. It's not as extreme as I had expected but it did help. I'm hoping that we can try it again and hopefully make it the full two days next time. Then we can move to three days, then four, etc.