update

We get internet back on Monday. Yay!!!

Spent last weekend at my mom's house. It was great, I don't get to spend enough time with her anymore. The kids were going to Brandon's for the weekend. Since we drove them all the way to Seattle for Labor Day weekend he came to Spokane for his weekend this month. This has never been a big problem (besides for him!) because his mom lives in Spokane so he just stays at her house with them thus killing two birds with one stone; he sees them and his mom gets to see them so I don't have to take them over to her house. Let's face it, if I am going to drive my kids to Spokane to visit a grandma, I'll take them to the good grandma!!

Anyway, after seeing Julie and the family (including the Baby!!!) and getting some good snuggle time in, with the baby not the Julie, and seeing Sabre and her family for a bit I let my mommy buy me some clothes. (I did say she's the best mom in the world, right?) In the middle of shopping I got a call from Brandon to tell me he was taking the kids to a motel and to find out where he could take Alex for urgent care.

Apparently his mom is quitting smoking with the help of some prescription that makes sane and sober people have mood swings and anger issues. It specifically says DO NOT DRINK ALCOHOL on the label of this stuff. She is an alcoholic so when she came home toasted she was ready to fight. Brandon is not going to win Father of the Year award any time soon but he is miles up the list from where she is as a parent. He's told me some really sad and tragic stories of things she has done to him in the name of drinking. He raised his voice at the kids and made Alex stand in the corner for standing on her couch. She decided he was being too harsh on them since he only sees them once a month. The conversation went from bad to worse with neither one of them realizing this was in front of all my kids. It ended, according to Brandon, with her telling him to not bother coming to her funeral (let's put the "FUN" back in FUNeral, eh?).

Well, that solved the urgent care issue. Alex had stomach aches for a long time (among other ailments like headaches and back pain) when we were getting divorced. When he went to therapy it came out that those symptoms are how his body deals with stress. So when he sat through a huge fight, heeeeeere's the stomach aches! Shocker.

I told Brandon he should just bring the kids out to my mom's to sleep and then see them in the morning before he headed home. That way he could just go stay at his brother's house or something and not pay for a motel. He decided that he would just bring them out and drive home in the middle of the night. I ended up putting my mom on the phone with him, after what felt like 30 minutes of me playing therapist again, to set up the details while I tried on shirts. (I'm telling you, my mom could kick your mom's butt!)

The kids were more than happy to come to grandma's house, the weekend was fantastic, I now fit into another size down in the jeans department and therefore own 2 pairs that are slightly too big but still good and one that fits but will be infinitely more comfortable 5 pounds from now. And will look better when I start doing some massive crunches to get rid of the abundance of muffin top I'm sporting. We spent Sunday playing Trivial Pursuit and mom learned it's okay to cheat a little if everyone's on board. We were playing with the kids' questions since NO WAY would it have ever ended if we played on the adults' questions. Who knows if she really knew the answer but I "helped" by telling her it was not "standing cow". Can you figure out what the answer was? She did. She's the best and the smartest!

Then we played full house hide and seek. Ohmygosh it was fun! The kids totally get it (except Annie who wants to hide with you so she has someone to talk to) and Ashley took my hiding place I found and even I couldn't find her there. I totally forgot. Luckily, Grandma accidentally found her before we really gave up. She was NOT going to come out until we found her. Maybe we should discuss "olley olley in come free" before we play again if she's going to be that good.

Anyway, we had a blast and now two of my friends from our complex want to go have a girls' weekend in Spokane and stay at mom's house. We'll have to see if we can find a weekend that all the daddies can handle it. Maybe Amy's kids will go to her mom and dad's house (also in Spokane) so her husband doesn't go nuts with 4 boys on his own.

Mom, what do you think?