School is done, finally. We had to drag Nat across the finish line, almost literally at times. We recognized that two weeklong inpatient stays and the crushing depression/anxiety have gotten her to the point where she is so far behind she would never catch up, so Beth and I met with the guidance counselor at the school on Wednesday to plan out where to go from here. The teachers are willing to work with us, so some of the assignments are being voided for her, and she will not pass algebra so so will have to retake it, but summer school is full already so she will take it next fall and we won’t worry about putting her in summer school at this point. We’re just going to hope next year goes better. Nat said the other day that she feels better now than she has in years…..however later that same day she had another anxiety attack at school, brought on by talking to the counselor and telling her about suicidal feelings. Beth and I rushed in and talked through a lot with them both, which ended with us both feeling that another inpatient stay was not necessary and the counselor agreeing with us. It seems (to me) to have been brought on by feeling guilty about still being depressed even though her situation is good. In the end we took her home. But she still needed to get some homework done…..Softball won again on Tuesday, we played a team that hadn’t scored a run yet this season and crushed them, even though they did score a few. They had a lot of bad breaks though, I thought they were better than how they were playing. They did make a lot of mistakes, however…..Wednesday was the last FCC Kids of the year, which I've been looking forward to for a while.....Thursday there was a big thunderstorm overnight and power was knocked out to more than half the town, including the high school and Zimmer Biomet building 5. Things were dark and quiet when I got to work, although my computer had a full battery and the intranet was working. I was able to get some work done but by about lunchtime I was hearing it wouldn’t be back for “quite some time” so I gave up and went home. School was also cancelled (second to last day…fortunately they don’t have to make it up next week). The Harrisons came to our house for lunch since their power was out, and since they are on a well that meant no water either. They picked up some groceries and we had a hot dog cookout. I’m not sure when the power came back at work but the Harrisons got it back around 1:00….We had a pretty chill Memorial Day weekend, Alex worked a couple days including a marathon shift on Saturday to get someone to take one of his shifts when we’re camping next week (I also got pulled over and given a warning for not having the license plate in the van displayed correctly...the bracket I got from the dealer covered up the name of the state...go figure), Sunday we went to Black Pine Animal Sanctuary and went to see "Aladdin," we got some of Beth’s flowers planted, on Monday I ran the Memorial Day 5k in Winona Lake (26:44, 12th overall, won my age group) and we all went driving (Alex was driving) up towards Nappanee to do some geocaching, we found 7 overall before heading to Rocket Science for some ice cream.

We met with the agent from the adoption agency today, she came to our house to do the home study. It went well; she asked us all a bunch of questions that seemed pretty general to me, about our families, activites, our relationship, parenting style, the home environment, and the like. She seemed to like us. The home study should be done early next week for our review, then it’ll be put onto letterhead and submitted for official approval. Then I think all that will be left is a court date….Tuesday the softball team won our first game of the season. We won the game 8-6, and successfully put down a late rally by the other team. Nice that we don’t just fall apart in games like that anymore…..Friday Missy’s Chinese class went on a field trip to Chinatown in Chicago. She had a great time, wants us all to go visit there next time wo go to Chicago.

Nat is home. Another week spent in a behavioral health clinic, another round of meds changes. Here’s hoping things are better now. Beth and I were impressed with Memorial much more than with either of the other places she’s been; a psychiatrist actually took the time to talk with us about her and gave us a lot of insight. We were also hoping that they would see one of her episodes where she can’t stand up or control her limbs, and apparently they did. Beth and I drove all the way to South Bend every day last week, and spoke to her on the phone at the designated times every day as well. She was incredibly angry with us for leaving her there, at least at first, so much so that she had a big production for us “I begged you not to send me here,” “I never ask for anything,” and all that, and she didn’t believe us when we told her that we didn’t really have a choice. It ended with tears and “I don’t want to see you.” She’s scared that we’re going to leave her there or that we won’t want her any more, I think. The next few times we went to visit she seemed better, mostly she wanted to play Uno or color with us and she seemed cooled down. But we went back every day to make sure she saw us every day. She was discharged Saturday morning….In other news, the softball team had our first game of the season on Tuesday. We jumped all over the other team in the first inning but let it get away from us down the stretch, eventually losing 17-11. We played with 8 players so took an out in the 9^th spot until a friend of one of the Swihart kids joined us for a few innings. Losing our MVP from last year hurts us….. We went shopping for Mother’s day today, once again at Menard’s for flowers. Beth’s present is more work for her but she likes planting flowers in the front yard so that’s kind of her thing. I also went to visit Mom again today, not much change. She was lying in bed, awake mostly but also nodding off several times, just looking around a bit with no recognition of anything or anyone.

It has not been a good week. It started off as a not-unusual week, not the best but at least meh….. Tuesday was supposed to be the first softball game of the season, but we were rained out…… I went to a junkyard in town Wednesday to find a replacement spoiler/third brake light for the van, since the new price for them is like $150. They had 5 junk vans that matched ours, but only 2 had the rear spoiler still on them. So, I suspect that it’s not uncommon for them to break, go figure. I got one off before realizing it also had two broken hold-downs on it, so I left it and went for the last option. It had duct tape residue all over it but it was intact and I got it off ok. It cost $32…..Natalie had cheer tryouts this week. She has wanted to try out forever but I never saw her practice anything for it. Anyway, she said the first practice tryout went horribly, but she was committed to doing it. She said the second practice was a little better. But then,. Friday she had one of those terrible panic attacks at school that leaves her unable to move her limbs, and I had to go help Beth get her home and she slept the rest of the day, missing the 3rd tryout, which was mostly for the gymnastic kind of stuff so the coach said it was ok for her to miss it. Saturday was the final tryout; she spent hours getting her hair and makeup just right and was all set for it, but she had another panic attack at the gym before it even started and ran away. She said it was too loud and people were yelling and clapping and there was fast counting and it panicked her so bad all she could do was run. She called me to go get her (I’d been painting the ceiling at home, second and hopefully last coat) around 45 minutes after I had dropped her off. She was crying out in front of the school when I got there, mascara all down her face. Beth and Missy had gone to visit Black Pine Animal Sanctuary but hadn’t made it there yet, and Beth had Nat’s emergency pills in her purse, so they didn’t get there. Afterwards, I think Nat wanted to get away because she called every one of her friends to hang out and they were all busy, but after a while Cara came to get her. Beth and Missy headed out to do some shopping. A bit later Cara comes pulling up into the drive and says Natalie collapsed at Wal-Mart, she was reclining in the front seat and couldn’t move. I tried to help her up but she screamed and cried when I touched her hand to try to get her out of the car. Beth pulled up about right then as well. We didn’t know what else to do so we took her to the ER. It was a couple hours before she was all the way back again, but she told a social worker she was suicidal so she was at that point going to go inpatient again regardless. She did not want to. She begged us not to send her there. But she was going. It took hours to find somewhere for her, since Michiana was full and so was Parkview. They were looking as far away as Anderson. Eventually they got a space for her at Memorial Epworth Center in South Bend, but it was a while before we could go check in. And they needed both Beth and me there to check her in, so Alex and Missy were on their own for pretty much all evening and late into the night. We didn’t get to SB until around 11:30 at night, got her checked in, and didn’t get back home until well after 2:00. The average stay there is 6-10 days, just like the others, so we’ll see how it goes. This is the first time she did not want to go, though. But we’re hoping the doctors see what kind of issues she’s dealing with and can get her some relief…..The church picnic was today. Beth and I were out incredibly late taking Nat to South Bend but we thought it was important to go since the Boschains will be leaving soon. Beth had planned and gotten the ingredients to make several dishes but there was no way with all the other stuff going on. So, we freeloaded.