Grandparent visit

We never did come back and post how the grandparent visits went. We'll go chronologically and start with the weekend with Grandma Linda and Aunt Peggy.

Grandma had an extended week off from teaching because of the July 4th holiday, so she planned a surprise for the children. She picked them up on Saturday and they went back to her place in San Antonio, had pizza and watched movies. On Sunday morning, Grandma and Peggy took the kids to the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus. They had a lot of fun with that. After that, they went back to Grandma's to watch more movies. On Monday, Grandma and Peggy took them mini-golfing in San Antonio before bringing them home Monday afternoon exhausted.

Gary and Susie, their maternal grandparents, flew in Tuesday evening along with Gary's parents, Bud and Midge. They called Wednesday morning after breakfast. We went to their motel room and spent several hours getting acquainted and reacquainted. Afterwards, we went to Fuddrucker's for lunch and then parted so Bud and Midge could nap. We went back over to their motel an hour or so later and went swimming with Gary and Susie. After the pool, we went back to their room and socialized for several more hours. On Thursday, we went over at lunch time and we all went out to Ryan's (a buffet place) for lunch. After lunch, we went back to the motel and socialized for awhile before going swimming. We swam until dinner time, then went to Whataburger for dinner. After dinner, we went back to their motel room where we stayed until nearly midnight because they were leaving on Friday.

All in all, it was a great visit. Gary and Susie got to see that the kids were doing well and express how impressed they were that the kids are doing well mentally/emotionally without the aid of medications. They thanked us several times for taking such good care of the kids.

What was most satisfying about this visit was finally hearing from some of the people who have fought us for years over the kids that we are good people, who are more than capable of providing a loving, stable home for children. We got along with them quite well and the children were quite happy to see their grandparents.

Glad you enjoyed your visits grandparents!

Kosher

We need to give a public apology for the last post. We thought about editing it, but decided that would be dishonest since we expressed in the post that it is supposed to be a forum for us to express ourselves honestly and the link is sent to all those we love to see our honest feelings.

That being said, we did upset some of our loved ones with the post and were asked not to express such intense emotions about them on the web anymore. To the person who asked that, we will not name you with such intensity again.

In the end, All was Well

Turns out that we accomplished much with our conversation with Shane. We are going to be allowed to keep an open dialogue with him from now until we see him next. We still plan to take our trip west in 2009 after Shane graduates and hope to see him then.

We are very excited about this from a familial perspective, because it means that everyone will be able to begin healing the big rift that was created when the children were separated nearly a decade ago. We definitely have new topics for therapy and we expect to see some great strides in all of us soon.

What a month July has been for us. Here it is coming to a close and we've made great communication strides with so many members of the family. All in all, we're pleased and intend to follow up about the grandparent visit in a further post.

Talking to Shane!!

So, we know we've been remiss in posting lately. We keep forgetting to come on and tell everyone how we're doing.

Today, as you can tell from the title, something so exciting is happening that we have to come on and tell you all about it right now. Sam's mom called this morning to return his call asking how she was doing. Shane has been staying with her because she is recovering from surgery. While Sam was talking to his mom, he asked if he could talk to Shane. She asked Shane if he'd like to talk to his dad, and of course, he did.

We've been on speaker phone with Shane for over an hour now. Everyone is so very excited to talk to Shane and Shane is very excited to hear from us. We talked to Shane about our planned trip to Oregon and Minnesota (for the Mall of America) and he still wants to come with us! We hatched the idea to go to the Mall of America when Shane was 11 or 12 and we used to plan with him taking the trip. We haven't gotten around to it yet, but he's still excited about it!

Well, long story short, we're excited to be talking to him, so we're going to go back to our conversation with him now, but we'll post again later. Hopefully, we'll be able to keep an open dialogue with him until our trip in '09. It's just great to hear from him again.