Where Do I Begin?

The last 24 hours have seemed like two weeks. I have 15 minutes to blog about them.

Mike's graduation was impressive. 7 young men, all who had already committed crimes, some as young as 13, reading speeches and talking about the changes they had made. We left feeling hopeful as Mike seemed so confident and changed. He said he was leaving "blaming others" behind and taking on "accountability for his actions" as he left.

We had a great first 2 hours of the trip. But by the time we started talking about what he wanted and how we could help make it happen for him, things already started to go downhill. A lot swearing, a lot of the same things as always -- he can't possibly live in family like ours because WE are too strict, WE don't relate well to him, WE have too many rules, WE don't buy him things, WE don't act like normal parents. I made him talk it out after letting him shut down for about a half hour. I figured we had a 7 hour trip, we might as well talk. What he was hoping for was the past completely erased because he had been in detention. Life doesn't work that way, son.

When we got home, everyone was really excited and wound up. I was greeted when I walked in by a call from the Rock COunty Sheriff's office saying someone had been making prank calls from that number. We had left Dominyk's PCA in charge at house, instructing her to supervise Dominyk because the other kids could take care of themselves. But apparently, Sadie was being a relentless attention seeking drama queen and completely captivating the PCAs attention, while Dominyk and RIcardo sat in the basement and cussed out some unknowing innocent person in our former hometown. Dominyk, unfamiliar with the concept of Caller ID, is still scratching his head trying to figure out how they knew that the calls came from our home.

The older kids stayed up very late and based on some experiences of other adoptive parents, it made me very apprehensive having Mike back home. Thus I woke up almost every hour all night long. I woke up to take Tony to football, and found that his jersey was missing. The electricity was off, so we had no light to look for it. His pants and pads were at Kari's, his shoulder pads and helmet supposedly in the old van... I finally gave up. WE drove up to see if there was a game to know if Ricardo's was cancelled at 10, even though Tony still didn't have his jersey. As we got there, everyone was leaving because of the rain.

I then went home and told Bart I would come to the church (since almost everyone else in our city has electricity but our neighborhood) and work on the announcements for church tomorrow. But, by the time I got here, the sun was out. So now, I'm sure Ricardo's game is back on, so my fifteen minutes of blogging are now up and I have to head back home to take him to his game.

I'm glad the sun is out though, because I didn't want to have to cancel the SNACC picnic.

So, those are the facts. See why the last 24 hours seem like 2 weeks?