A few events during the week. Monday Alex saw a psychiatrist for the first time. His anxiety (sounds familiar) is not near as bad as Beth's but it's been interfering with him sleeping lately so he's going to start on a little bit of medication for it. I think it'll be good for him. He was pretty upset after the appointment though, and kind of scared about what it means for him. But Beth thinks it's going to make a big difference for him. I hope it does.....Tuesday was Beth's birthday. We did low-key. I got flowers for her and picked up pizza for the kids on the way home from work, and took Beth out for a drive and sushi, then another drive and ice cream. Just around town; I thought about trying out another restaurant outside of town that we had never been to but she was feeling like she couldn't handle it. A calm and simple evening was all she felt comfortable with.....I had lunch with Matthew (our new minister) on Wednesday at El Arrierro. He'd wanted to get together since Mom died, to see how we're doing and all, but there never was a good time during break. We had a nice visit and chat, I like him and his family a lot. We talked more about everything else going on lately than about Mom, which was fine. There's been a lot with Beth and Nat and Alex to talk about lately, and I kind of unloaded. But he's a pastor, probably used to it.....Thursday there was a meeting at the high school about the trip to Europe that Missy is going on. Just Missy now, we broke the news to Natalie this week that we are not going to send her. We'd decided it was not a good idea quite a while ago, back when we pulled her out of school in November, but we hadn't told her yet just in case we changed our minds. I'd been dreading the moment that she found out she's not going but it went much better than we were expecting: she started tearing up and shaking but then just told us that she really wanted to argue with us but she couldn't. Basically, one episode like the kind she has (still, but much less often) and they will put her on a plane home. We won't get all of the money we've paid into it back, but we will get most of it. I agreed to buy her a new phone with some of the refund money, too, that probably softened the blow.....Nat left a library book in her backpack with a leaky bottle of some smoothie or something, and the book got ruined, so I had to replace it. I got a replacement for it on Amazon, but didn't notice I was buying a softcover book, although it was used (like new). Which the library said was ok. But not being a softcover. They wouldn't take it, and then said it had to be brand new. So it's going to be $80 instead of the $40 for the Amazon book, which I've returned.....