Before School Begins Again

This was my last week this summer to have the boys before school begins. It has been an emotional but wonderful week. In the past week and a half I have been given opportunities to spend quality one on one time with each of my three kids and as a result, I feel closer and more in tune with all of them.

My daughter took a vacation to Florida with some of her friends for a week and I honestly didn't want her to go. But she did. And it all turned out really well with me taking a half day off work and spending some "me" time shopping and then going to Chicago to pick her and her friend up at the airport. It did me a lot of good to get away for awhile.

This week the boys were here for the week and we had to do the school registration thing and all that fun back to school stuff. But it went well.

The youngest and I went and did some shopping and out to eat together and had some great conversation. He is getting excited to play football this fall and I think he is ready to get back to school.

My oldest son and I had a rough week because we had to return to mediation to figure out where he is going to live, with me or his dad. I started off telling the mediator that I truly wanted to come to a workable solution that would keep my son from ultimately having to choose which parent he wanted to live with. I didn't want him to walk out at the end of the day feeling as if he had let one of us down. Surprisingly we were able to come to a good agreement that divides his time between us somewhat evenly and gives him the flexibilty to say at anytime he wants to spend a night with the other parent. Once the decision was made a huge dark cloud disappeared over his head and my head and we had a great rest of the week.

Yesterday morning I took my oldest daughter to Fort Wayne to register for beauty school and we did a little shopping, it was a good trip and we were able to talk without getting mad at each other. Then in the afternoon the kids had friends come over to play on the lake and we had an impromptu cook out in the evening and it was really nice. My parents even joined us!

And now, I must finish this post and go play on the lake with the kids on the jet skis, where else should we be on a day like today????