I broke down and got a Barnes and Noble membership. I’m there at least every other week downloading my free books so I figured I might as well get the discount on my magazines and frappacinos. I think I’ll repay the cost over the course of the year no problem.

I think it was a good shopping weekend.

Tonight I made a cream sauce for the very first time!  I know.  How simple.  Not for me.  It’s a bit like making flour gravy and I stink at that.  However, this was incredibly easy.  I am making tuna casserole for dinner and my recipe calls for cream of mushroom soup.  Don’t have any.  So, I grab the butter, flour, milk, baggie of frozen mushrooms and make my own.  I’m impressed.

It looks like my next trip planning exercise will be for a trip to Israel.  However, this time we will probably take a guided tour complete with 60 other Americans on a tour bus.  Sigh.  But, it’s really a better way to do Israel in my opinion, for us at least.  The limiting factor is going to be cost.  Oh. My. Goodness.  Almost twice as much as our trip to Scotland.  There is something to be said for staying in lower end hotels and eating at local eateries.  All the tours stay in 5 star hotels and eat in more upscale restaurants.  Not really my cup of tea, but there it is. 

I’m doing the Women’s Retreat again this year.  I’m not sure they will let me step down from it any time soon now.  This is the fourth year I’m doing it.  I hope they like the changes we are making.  We try to change up something each year, but after last year’s raging success, I hope this year is as good.  Pray for me.

Not back in school yet and probably won’t be for the forseeable future.  I tried to go to Metro, but they are NOT working student friendly.  Not enough online classes and having to actually go to the school, make an appointment, and come back to get registered.  Um….no.  I think not.  So, my next option is online schools or the local Christian college.  All those options are good, but twice as expensive.  My company can only reimburse me so much before it’s taxable income and I’m not sure they will go over the non-taxable limit anyway.  That means only about 4 classes a year.  Yep.  A year,  not a semester.  Plus, with things still so up in the air with court and all, I probably will wait.  I still want to finish my degree, but it’ll wait.

I moved to a new group at work.  It’s still in Asset Recovery, it’s just a different group doing different work.  I like it, but wow is there ever a learning curve. 

That’s it for now. 

The detective kept asking where my son was. He was actually off getting his girlfriends daughter to babysit for awhile. We were told to get ourselves off to the police station for interviews – after they took off the handcuffs of course. My son showed up a little while later having been to the house and told to come to the police station. We were all interviewed and once the cops were done with our house we were allowed to go home. Needless to say there was no sleep had that night.

My husband was distraught. Even a hint of anything like this and we would both lose our jobs immediately. Any charges, didn’t matter if we were later found innocent, but any charges would be a deathblow to our jobs. For a man, that is a horrible thing to contemplate.

Ok, I’ll make the last six months a short story. Just before Christmas my son was charged and is now sitting in jail waiting for his trial and/or plea deal. Our computers were returned to my husband and myself once they were found to be clean.

My ex-dil was informed of what had happened by an ex-friend who also told her lies her poor-excuse-for-a-paralegal friend supposedly dug up (like our name is really an alias……really?!). All physical contact with our granddaughters was cut off immediately. Witch. Both of them. Wait, all three of them.

The ex-friends daughter is now living with us and engaged to my son. The ex-friend called Social Services on her own daughter and had her granddaughter taken away. Again…..witch. I’m working on forgiveness, but right now I hope she chokes on her decisions.

My marriage, which had been teetering on the brink of …..something……has been greatly healed. My husband repented of his treatment of me and I was able to completely forgive him for it. Truly. Completely. Absolutely. Is our marriage perfect now? Hardly. But, I don’t wake up each day wondering if I will still be married by nightfall.

My husband has taken to praying with me and over me and reading his bible and daily devotional. I am in a word…..impressed. He has made a huge turnaround. I am very proud of him.

There is of course more to come. The court battle is ongoing at the moment. I’ve made some changes in my own life in the past six months. I’ll be back with more to tell.

I’ll start with what you already know.  My son got divorced.  He lost custody of his two girls.  For over a year their mother let us see them on Sundays.  Free babysitting.  Then, the most hideous things happened and we have not seen them in six months. 

During the divorce, ex-DIL got a restraining order.  My son consistently didn’t read it and kept getting in trouble for not abiding by it.  He was put on probation for a year for domestic violence (yeah right….a text is soooooooo scary!).  He didn’t do well.  Then almost a year later, his probation was extended.  We are still waiting for the end consequences of that. 

Ok.  Sit down.  Grab on to something.  This is where it starts to get interesting.

On June 22, 2011 at approximately 6 p.m., as I was cooking dinner, my dog Maya started barking at the back door.  This is not really unusual as she barks at the changing seasons, but this time the bark was different.  She was SERIOUS!!!  I glanced toward the back door and see through the window, several figures all in black with facemasks.  One of them reaches to open the back door screen (the back door was actually standing open).  It was probably only a split second, but I just stood there looking at them wondering if some of my son’s friends were playing a joke.  At that moment, from the front of the house I hear….Bam Bam, Bam…Police! Search Warrant! Open the door!  I literally spun on my heal and headed for the front door.  Now, my house is not very big.  It’s really only about 15 steps from the stove to the front door.  Again, …Bam Bam, Bam…Police! Search Warrant! Open the door!  This time I’m probably at the edge of the living room.  Once more…Bam Bam, Bam…Police! Search Warrant! Open the door!  As my hand is reaching for the lock on the front door it is blown open by battering ram weilding SWAT officers.  It just about hit me in the face.  The officers immediately start screaming for me to get on the floor.  Hah!  Not a chance.  Not only can I not physically do that easily, but there is no room at that spot for me to do that without getting stepped on.  So, I opt for sitting on the couch instead.  One step and a spin.  Six or seven officers file into my tiny living room and fan out to the back of the house.  Yeah, all of what…..10 feet further back.  Anyway, somehow in all of this my husband has gotten up from his computer in the back room and made it into the kitchen where the other SWAT officers had come in from the back door.  After the “all clear” is sounded I am ordered to stand up with my hands behind my back and am handcuffed then sat back down on the couch.  My husband is handcuffed in the kitchen and brough into the living room to it on the love seat acoss from me.  A detective comes in and asks if we are who we are.  Then he says he has a search warrant for our computers because someone in our houseas been uploading and downloading ….wait for it……child pornography.  Stunned does not even begin to describe my reaction.  In the few moments when my brain was trying to process what was going on I thought they had the wrong house, that they thought we were dealing drugs, or that we were growing something off in the garden.  Child pornography was not anywhere on the radar.

Ok….that’s it for now.  Oh, yes, there’s much more, but I’ll write tomorrow.

 Today I got Sidewalk Prophets cd and two books.  The books are For Women Only  and Love and War.

 I already started reading For Women Only and will post a review soon.  It’s not a very big book, but already it is amazingly insightful.  Can’t wait to get into it further.

 In two weeks two more books will be half price so look for more reviews coming.

It was loads of girly fun for me that I never indulge in.   After that, he sent us off to dinner.  It was all in all a good day.

Needless to say, they had a great  messy time.

Sinse when are “government workiers” above the law they are supposed to uphold?  Sinse when did my tax dollars go to support corrupt “government workers” on power trips?  Wait, don’t answer that one, it’ll just make me cry.

Needless to say, I am not happy with my county’s “government workers” at the moment.

A couple of empty moving boxes, some tape and crayons and the girls were perfectly happy to play for quite a while.  Cheap entertainment.