Life Intrudes On My Gathering Time

Several people have remarked that they haven't seen me around as much.  When I was off work with my broken arm, I had a LOT of available Gather time.  Now that I am back to work, I have a lot less.  I only work five evening shifts every two weeks but when you add that to my Monday through Friday babysitting, I get pretty tired.  I worked the last five evenings and they were VERY busy at the hospital.  I was exhausted each night when I got home.  Today I tried to get caught up with stuff here at home. Tomorrow I am taking my three grandkids here, ages four, six and eight to the coast for their cousin's fourth birthday.

We are going to order a cake for her and have a party at Chuck E Cheese.  The cousins only get to see each other twice a year and have a lot of fun playing.  Hopefully, this visit to the coast will be better than the last.  I did rent a hotel room for two nights so the kids could swim in a pool.

Now an update concerning my five grandkids that I wrote about recently:  I hadn't heard from them in the 10 days since we met at the fair.  No word of thanks or sorry we missed saying goodbye.  I got a call from them this morning, just to chat.  Sounded like the 3 girls were home and bored so were calling people.  We talked about 10 minutes. They didn't directly ask for anything although the oldest girl did mention she was hoping to read the latest Harry Potter book soon. It may not have been a hint to buy the book for her, but if it was, I didn't respond.  After we hung up, they sent an e-mail telling me to please e-mail them every day! I can't blame them totally as they have not been taught any manners.  They are old enough, however, to be learning some manners on their own.

My daughter had said that Caty, their six year old sibling who is in the permanent custody of my daughter, could talk with them whenever Caty was ready. So this afternoon, I called them and Caty talked with the three girls.  I got the feeling that their grandmother and the two boys were still not at home. All the girls were excited to talk; Caty got very shy once they were on the phone so I had to prompt her with conversation topics: cats, dogs, summer school, etc. They talked about 10 minutes and then Caty was ready to hang up. She had lived with them for three months in 2005 before we found out she was there and had her taken away. The Georgia court had granted my daughter and her husband custody in Feb of '05, but we hadn't known where she was.  It turned out that my oldest son, his wife and Caty were hiding out at the home of his wife's mother. His wife's mother has custody of the older five kids.  So this is probably another step to closer contact.  I am not going to become a "money tree" for those five kids, though.  Been there, done that already.

Anyway, I won't be around Gather at all after tomorrow morning. If you feel so inclined, would you say a prayer that things go smoothly on our trip to the coast?  I was extremely hopeful this morning but had another 'downer' thrown my way this evening.

Have a good weekend.