Good Saturday

Today has been a pretty blissful Saturay right up until nap-time. Nobody woke up until 8 a.m., which doesn't usually happen. Usually everyone is up at like 6 or 6:30, 7 at the latest. Everyone played well together for the most part between episodes of X-men. The boys are addicted to X-men these days and ask to watch it constantly. This is fine with me because I get to clean or read while they are watching. Today I worked really hard on the kitchen. It's still not perfect, but it's much better than it was. Maybe this evening I'll take a stab at the living room.

Nap-time was another story. Since everyone slept in, the boys didn't want to take a nap. I threatened, I had them sleep on the living room floor and eventually they did take a nap. They HAD to nap today so that I could take a shower since Brandon worked so late last night that he just stayed in Roanoke. That's me with the kidos for at least 36 hours by myself. If I didn't take a shower during that time...well, I don't want to contemplate that. However, I am pretty excited that Monday I'm off, but daycare isn't closed and my awesome mother-in-law wants to keep the boys with her on Monday and take them to Chucky Cheese's! Fun times!

Mixed Feelings

I knew this day would come, but I didn't really want it to - our social workers are talking about sending our foster kids back to their mom. Being a foster parent has been frustrating and tiring at times, but we've developed a real bond with these kids and we love them like our own kids. It's been a real delight to see Sahara thrive and learn to crawl, to see Ariyana learn new words and discover running, to see Noah learn his colors and develop manners. It's going to be difficult to see them go, espcially when I'm not completely sure that it's the right decision to send them back. I don't know - maybe I'm trying to exert control over an out of my control situation by thinking that they'd be better with us. I just need to trust that the right thing will happen for everyone involved. I need to remind myself that even if they don't get to stay with us, we've taught them some valuable skills and given Sahara a decent start in life. At any rate, I don't know why I'm so worked up about it now...it will be months before Noah goes back and even more months before the girls go back. I think I'm just mourning ahead of time and I probably just need to snap out of it.

Melson Family Heritage

I went to go visit my parents last weekend. It was nice because I'm not sure if we've been to visit since the summer. Of course I've seen my parents here and there because they care enough about us to come visit occasionally. But I really enjoyed getting to see my grandparents. I don't know if many of my readers know this, but I am highly interested in my family's heritage and love to know where my family came from. I had traced a part of the family (not the Melson's) back to Germany and had been unable to get past the early 1800's with my family. Well, while I was home visiting, my grandfather showed me the work he'd been doing using Ancestry.com and a lot of their census information. He had worked the family back all the way to England to the mid-1500's! It turns out that the Melson's came to the "colonies" back in the late 1600's practically on the heels of Jamestown. It's really neat to see how things worked and how I came into being all these generations later. I hope one day I'll get everything together in one location and maybe even make a book to contain it all.