Another departure from the things I love about my house unless you bought that line yesterday about the location of it being so great that I could include the beach as one of the things I love. LOL Along the same lines though I got to go to one of my favorite nearby cities and eat at my all time favorite restaurant for dinner tonight. Saugatuck, MI is one of those ‘on the water’ type towns with all the neat shops and great restaurants and a-buzz with people. ‘Interesting’ people at that. It’s one of those great people-watching places. I love places like that where you can look at the different people and try to figure out what their all about without ever even talking to them. Wierd, I know. But Saugatuck is a great place to do that in. All the fancy people with their fancy yachts and their fancy drinks with their fancy clothes and their fancy friends. Most of them having had a few too many of those fancy drinks which tends to make them that much more interesting to observe. LOL

Had dinner at my favorite restaurant for the first time this year too. They actually close for the winter when all the tourists are at their fancy homes ‘cuz it’s too cold to stay on their fancy yachts. (Are you getting the picture here?)  So anyway, it’s great that they’re open again and it’s great that it’s only a 20 minute drive so again, location location location is one thing I love about my house. :) But seriously, if you’re ever in Saugatuck, Marro’s is the best meal in town. Gotta start off with their Garlic rolls (with melted cheese on top). They’re the puffiest softest bread you’ll ever have and the cheese…mmm. If the wait is too long you can order their pizza to go (don’t forget the rolls) and it’s the best pizza. Find a picnic table near the water or if you’re one of the fancy people you could take it right back to your fancy yacht. Can’t beat it! :)

Bet ya thought I forgot to count my blessings today, didn’t ya! I was just waiting for a good pic to put with it. :) Tonight I have my niece Celena overnight & we went to Lake Michigan and took pictures as the sun set. I LOVE the fact that we live only 15 minutes from beautiful Lake Michigan. I don’t get there as often as I’d like during the day especially now that my sister has a pool but I love going to see the sunset and walking along the water. Guess this isn’t quite within the theme for this week of the things I love about my house but maybe it counts anyway because it’s the location of my house that’s so perfectly situated just a short drive from the lake. :)

Sticking with the theme this week of my blessings at home I’m adding a picture from my kitchen. There’s a big tree (probably too close to the house) that I love because it gives us privacy in the summer from the road and we get all sorts of birds right up by the deck because of it. Standing at my sink I can look outside and see this tree, I can see the roman shades I made for the window when we first bought the house in one of my favorite fabrics that I’d found. I see the little tin potted herb plants in the window sill and I see one of my favorite things that we did to the house when we bought it which is the tin-ceiling material we used for a back splash. I love how it turned out and I think it gives so much character to our kitchen where it was TOTALLY lacking. I should post what I’m doing with the cabinets maybe tomorrow ‘cuz they started out the most boring colored oak cabinets you’ve ever seen. LOL But that’s another day. For today this is my view at my sink. :)

New news yesterday on the Wendy front. Apparently they’re getting married tomorrow down in Georgia and the plan is to come back up here next weekend to pick up the kids. Found out yesterday that she actually DID get pulled over for drinking and driving awhile back and has a court date on June 7. Now I’m under the belief that she has no intention of showing up for this June 7th hearing and that this is actually why they’ve decided to up and move out of state. My guess is that they plan to pick up the kids on saturday or sunday and then get out of Michigan before she has to be in court. At that point there’d be a warrant out for her in Michigan but it wouldn’t matter as long as they stay down in Georgia. How she thinks she can just rip these kids from everything they know here and from the grandparents who have basically raised them since they were born. Who knows! But my plan is to offer to take the kids to a hotel for the weekend so that they’re not able to find them. They won’t be able to stick around because she can’t be in Michigan past the 7th. Which means she WON’T be able to show up in court to contest the permanent guardianship that my MIL is fighting for on the 13th. So just when you think God isn’t listening, maybe he is. :) I’d been praying specifically that she’d get pulled over for drunk driving before she kills someone and so that she’d actually have to deal with some consequences of her drinking. Lo and behold she HAD and we didn’t even know about it.

Anyway, for anyone actually still reading my vent-fest hopefully this will all be over soon and I’ll have good news to report and then I can start asking advice on how to tactfully/effectively tell my in-laws that they’ve gotta make some major changes in how they’re raising these grandkids before they wreck ‘em like they’ve done to their own kids. Pretty pathetic skills in the parenting department, let me tell ya! *sigh*

Today I am most thankful for my Wednesdays off. About a year ago or maybe longer now I took the opportunity to go to a 4-day work week at my job. I’d been wanting to do this for quite some time. I’ve often wondered why just because you don’t have children how that means you have to work full time. I mean in many ways, NOT having children should give you a little more financial freedom because lets face it, kids are expensive! So with all of my sisters having kids and working either part time or not at all outside the home I really love that I have an extra day each week to do things with them. I work about 20 minutes from home so I love being in town one day a week to be able to go to lunch with the people I love since it’s difficult for them to make it out to Grandville very often. It’s also great to spend an afternoon at my sister’s pool with the kids when it can be much quieter than on the weekends. :) So without a doubt I am blessed to be able to take Wednesdays off. :)

Just finished trimming the rose bushes (‘cuz it gorgeous out today) and now I’m off to pick up pizza for my sisters Tammy & Manda and their kiddos and my mom & dad. Get to spend the afternoon holding my new niece and working on her birth announcements with Tammy. :)

So I’ve decided that in light of the chaos going on in my life at the moment that I should make a concious effort to really count my blessings each and every day. I have so much to be thankful for and I’m going to make it my goal to post something new each day that I’m blessed with. Obviously my family and friends are a given. Might actually try to do a LO about one of them each week (not just the nieces and nephews) but my sisters & brother & parents & in-laws (although not the abandoning mom sort).

I’ve been spending alot more time at home over the past year and although it still needs alot of work both inside and out I truly love it. I love that it’s sooo close to all of my family. I love the little bits of character that we’ve added since we bought it. I love the colors on the walls. I love that it was my grandmother’s home and that we were able to keep it in the family. So for this week I’m thankful for my home. I’ve started taking pictures of some of my favorite things about it and probably my absolute most favorite is the view from my back windows and deck. My parents live next door and they have this beautiful horse. The beauty of this is that I get to see him out my window all the time but I don’t actually have to do all the chores involved with having a horse. :) Well, except when they’re out of town which can definitely get interesting as about all I know to do with him is look at him from afar. LOL They’ve also got 3 gorgeous willow trees which are my all time favorite trees. Now I just need to find a comfy outdoor chair to set out on my deck so I can sit with my wireless laptop and scrapbook on a beautiful Sunday afternoon like this one was. :)

Update on the situation with my SIL: Got a call yesterday from my MIL to see if I could get license plate information on the vehicle she assumed they had taken down to Georgia. My sister’s husband had done some work on the car so she was hoping he may have taken that down. She wants to be ready with all the information she needs in case she would have to request an amber alert for Andrew & Celena if Wendy were somehow able to get to them. She’s notified the school that they are not to be allowed to go with their mom but you just never know when that system could fail since obviously she’s their mom and they would probably go willingly. Well, according to my BIL they showed up with a new black truck to meet someone who was buying their car that he’d worked on. Fortunately we found this out or they would have been searching for the entirely wrong vehicle. Not sure if that was part of the plan or not but the new plates for the truck showed up at my in-laws house yesterday too so it wasn’t real bright on their part. The scary thing is that since we now know they have only a temporary plate on that truck they were probably planning on coming back for the kids sooner rather than later to get the permanent one before it expires. Kids seem to be handling it amazingly well so far and I’m hoping to maybe pick them up from school tomorrow on my day off to spend some time with them (and so that I know they’re not somewhere she could pick them up from).

Be back tomorrow with another counted blessing. :)

Well, the garage sale is over. Finally! I’ve spent every spare minute this past week preparing for and then sitting for hours at our garage sale. About $300 later and with a garage still too full to park 2 cars in I’m ready to officially say that I will not be having another garage sale. I can’t really complain about the $300 but man has it been alot of work and it’s so disappointing when you think about what you paid for something then barely used just to practically give it away for 50 cents because the garage sale pros told you it’s not worth the $2 you had on the sticker. UGH!

On top of preparing for this last official garage sale I’ve had an emotionally draining week to say the least. The past year has been an emotional roller coaster when it comes to my husband’s family with way more lows than highs. My SIL has an incredible addiction to alcohol that has consumed her life completely over the past year. She’s been taking off for 3-5 days at a time on drinking binges, driving drunk but NEVER getting caught somehow and basically sleeping her life away on the days when she IS home. I’ve been so tempted to call social services at many times throughout the past year but I’ve been afraid that the children would be taken from my in-laws and possibly given to their dad (which is an even worse situation since he hasn’t seen them in over 5 years). Well, apparently on Wednesday my FIL called and they started the process of getting temporary custody of the kids so that Wendy couldn’t take them anywhere. She’d been gone since Monday with no word and without her even knowing that they were starting that process she had apparently been planning to move with her boyfriend to Georgia where his daughter lives. On Thursday my MIL came home to a letter on the table saying they were gone and would be back for the kids when they got settled. No goodbyes to her children, not even a phone call from the road. It just breaks my heart to think what this has to be doing to those precious kids. They’re sweetness so far is beyond explanation when you look at their situation in life. Personally I am glad that Wendy is gone. I’ve gone through all the things you ‘SHOULD’ do in response to the problems she’s been having. I’ve been a friend, I’ve given tough love and I’d been used and abused and became fed up and basically given up. I’ve stayed involved with the kids on a weekly basis (not because I should but because I truly LOVE spending time with them) but I’ve pretty much cut off any involvement with the rest of his family up until this weekend. I’ve been sucked back in and my only hope is that my MIL stays strong and does not just allow her to come back and welcome her with open arms to disrupt their lives yet again. I just don’t think I can take that happening again. I’ve felt like everyone else has been so consumed with helping WENDY and I’m somehow the only one who sees how destructive they’re allowing her to be to her kids.

I guess I’m writing all this for 2 reasons. One, to record my feelings about things at this point but more importantly to ask anyone who happens to read this to please say a prayer for Andrew & Celena. The letter that Wendy left happened to be what made the difference in my in-laws getting temporary custody of the kids which was an important step. I think it was the first answer to countless prayers over the past year so I really hope the events of this past week (although incredibly difficult for the kids) is at least a step towards a better life for them. I know all kids need their parents but in this case I truly believe for the time being they’re better off without her. I know that sounds harsh but what kind of mother leaves for what clearly would be weeks if not months without even saying goodbye to her children?!

All of this makes me unbelievably thankful for the family I’ve been raised in. It feels so unfair. And as difficult as this week has been for me I have to remind myself that it has been MUCH harder on my niece & nephew and Scott’s parents. When it’s all said and done, I spend my Sunday with my family and get to see my nieces and nephews celebrate another birthday (Happy birthday Braelynn!) and I come home to my cozy little corner of the world where my garage is now clean and the spare bedroom bed that Andrew & Celena slept in this weekend is now laundered and remade. I wonder if they’re sound asleep in their beds right now or laying awake wondering when their mom will come home. Will they tell their friends at school tomorrow or keep it to themselves? What will the next few weeks bring?