It has been a week of setbacks. Beth and Natalie had a huge blowup again, over a boy this time, and all the who and what and history that Beth didn’t know about, and Nat saw some text messages on Beth’s phone about him that set her off. I had to leave work early on Tuesday to get home so Beth could go to her counseling, which didn’t help her much (and I think was counterproductive). Beth was a wreck again after that like she hasn’t been in a few weeks. So was Nat. So were Alex and Missy. Nat had her own counseling on Wednesday, at which time her counselor recommended she be admitted to the behavioral health clinic again. I found this out after getting Alex and Missy back from youth group Wednesday evening. Beth and I left them at home to get to bed themselves, and took Natalie to Fort Wayne to the ER to get her admitted. We got there at around 9:00, and it wasn’t until around 3:00 am that she finally got to the clinic and Beth and I could head home. The next day everybody was pretty tired. Alex and Missy did get to bed but didn’t sleep well, especially Missy. Beth went to visit Natalie for lunch Friday, didn’t get much out of her then. Later Friday, Beth and I had our own counseling session, which lasted almost 3 hours and ended with Beth feeling incredibly better about things and much less panicky. Saturday, Alex and Missy had mall derby with the youth group, and while they were away with that, Beth and I went to visit Natalie again. That was a much better visit, she just wanted to play cards with us which we did, until it was about time to go pick up Alex and Missy (we decided to pick them up at the mall instead of racing to get home) after which we went to visit Mom at her place. She was not very present. I think she knew she recognized me, but didn’t know who I was. I asked her about Laura and she didn’t know who that was. We did find her glasses, which have been missing (again) for weeks now and it made her very happy to get them back. She smiled a lot more after that and she seemed to recognize us more. The nurses are going to keep her glasses with the medicine cart at night now so she doesn’t lose them again. So that was good, anyway. There just seems to be less and less of her left every time I see her. Sunday was family counseling, so we took Alex and Missy back to the clinic for a session (we had to miss church) which was also very good, a few things got out there which will be helpful. And it came out that the gotcha day was a big disappointment for Natalie, she thought it was a special day and not much of a deal was made over it. I hadn’t realized it was as important as it is to her. So we’re going to get better, and maybe she can come home Monday or Tuesday. Late Sunday, Marve and Beth were passing through on the way home from vacation in Alabama, and they diverted to pass through Warsaw so we could meet for dinner. That was a nice visit.
Also this past week: I’m 0-for-4 on the Final Four again. I got some more work done on the storage loft in the garage (I should be done by now, but I’m not).

Alex’s birthday was this week. This weekend he wanted his go-to birthday, which was to have a sleepover with a bunch of friends and play video games all night. So that’s what we did, on Friday a bunch of his friends came over after school and the girls bugged out. After I got home from work the girls left, picked up the pizzas and dropped them off for us, then headed for a motel with a pool to stay overnight. I stayed home to monitor things but they were all pretty self-sustaining. They barely even took the time off from the video games to eat cake and ice cream. Or pizza, for that matter, we had over half of it left at the end. I stayed in the kitchen most of the time on the computer, or watching some of the NCAA tournament (including seeing my bracket get busted early by my champion UVA getting knocked off by a 16 seed in the first round). At around midnight I went to bed and just told the boys to go to bed sometime. I woke up at around 3 and all was quiet. They started stirring by around 8 and were all gone by 10:30. Alex had been fretting all week that he was going to have to cancel the party because he was getting sick; he made it through the party ok but the following day he had lost his voice big time because he couldn’t stop shouting all evening. Saturday and Sunday were both days of rest, especially for Alex…I left everyone home from church Sunday, I only went because I was scheduled to drive a van in the morning.
Earlier in the week: Monday Beth went shopping on Clicklist because she couldn’t face going out into a crowd…but accidentally sent the grocery list to the Kroger in Columbia City, which didn’t make things any easier. She had to go out there to pick it up. But the list also included a cake for Alex’s birthday, which they did not provide, so she asked me to go pick it up after work. When I got there, there was no cake. Seems the cake had not been ordered after all. But…there were giant cupcakes, so I got 5 of them before heading home. We did a fairly simple family birthday in the evening. Alex got some sort of fancy game controller and some video game or other (and Natalie’s new phone arrived too, since hers has gone completely dark), plus a pre-order form for some new Kirby game that was being released on the coming weekend and he wanted to play with all his friends at his sleepover. Tuesday was a middle school choir/band/orchestra concert, we all went to that since Natalie was singing. It was also the date of the coaches meeting for church softball, so I missed that but no big deal…and this year the church is paying the league fees, so woo hoo! Saturday (after Alex’s party) Natalie had a school field trip to Mishawaka or somewhere for a choir concert competition. She had forgotten her shoes so she had to wake me up when Beth took her by the house in a mad dash, because I had locked her room overnight just in case. The concert went really well, they earned a silver award but it should have been gold, only the director hadn’t realized that one of the songs was supposed to be a cappella, whoops.

Alex had a rare honor this week...he was nominated by one of his teachers as the Warsaw Breakfast Optimist Club student of the week! Not sure exactly where that came from or the details, but he was invited to come to their breakfast last Wednesday and receive a certificate of recognition. He was nominated as an excellent student who always has a good attitude and helps out fellow students. I think it was the robotics teacher who nominated him, but I'm not sure. Anyway, I got to go to breakfast with him. The Optimists say a lot of pledges and sing a lot of songs, it seems...but anyway I saw several people I know from Zimmer there and it was really exciting for Alex. How cool.