Court Tomorrow

What a full day and evening! The three littles and I ran around (all right, drove around) all morning getting things taken care of to finish The Great Vehicle Swap of 2013.

I don't think I have mentioned that I am now officially the proud driver of a VAN. My sweet sweet mother and I have traded vehicles, so she's now completely sans van after all of these years, and I have Big Blue to cart my crew around. My dad met us in the middle of Texas over Thanksgiving break for a five-minute Hello and a hand-off of vehicles. We've done the bill of sale and those kind of documents, but we're taking care of the inspections, registrations, title transfers - all that fun stuff. All kinds of stuff that toddlers love spending time doing, of course. (Just kidding - they were actually pretty good troopers about it all!)

After naps, I taught a piano lesson, Miss A had a violin lesson, I had handbells practice, we ate a Church dinner before Advent services, and then had a very musical night. Every third Wednesday night Advent service at our church is a special one, which features all FIVE of our handbell groups and our choir. This was the first year Miss A has played in a group; she chimes away with her fellow youngsters on the "little ones" as she calls them. It was a fabulous night with great music.

When we got to our car after church, I had a voice mail message from the twins' attorney. She asked to chat about the court hearing tomorrow, so I called her back, even though it was after 8:00 p.m.

And... I really really like her! She was very upbeat and friendly, which put me immediately at ease. What she informed me about court tomorrow is that the previous family is asking for extended visitation, the clarification on which nobody seems to be quite sure. Longer visits? More frequent visits? Probably both of the above. We had also heard this week from the twins' caseworker that they were pushing for a Christmas visit and possibly longer, unsupervised, or even overnight visits for Christmas.

It tears my heart to not see my family for Christmas. I sympathize with the longing to be together on such an important occasion. Yet, when they have only had two one-hour supervised visits in the CPS office since the kids were removed, it seems a bit unrealistic to request unsupervised overnight visits at this point.

I expressed to the lawyer that I didn't want to sound selfish, but we already had our Christmas plans made a while back, and have had them confirmed with the twins' caseworker, as I'm sure the other families have. We will be out of town and then out of state visiting family for two weeks beginning on Saturday. If we have to change our plans, we are willing to accommodate what the judge orders, of course. It would be a huge disappointment to ourselves and our families, though, if we had to either be away from the twins for Christmas, or not be able to see family - all of which live out of town and hours away - because we have to ferry the kids back and forth to visits, when they have already had two this month (the average, we've experienced).

(Please, please, I don't want anyone to think I'm being overly selfish in expressing my feelings. It's not easy to be at the mercy of the courts, and to hear your holiday plans may be potentially derailed a few days before said plans are set to commence. These girls are part of our family now as well, and thus part of our family plans. This is not the same situation as a divorced couple arguing over custody rights, after all. We don't intend to inconvenience or hurt anyone else, but the reality is that these scheduling things are the consequences of having children removed from your home - which of course happened for very good reasons. The former caregivers are not in charge of this case and shouldn't get to dictate the Christmas plans of three other families one week out. Rant over.)

She responded, "We'll just have to see what the judge says. That's all I can tell you." I agreed, and we left on excellent terms.

During the conversation, she did share some very kind words. She said she had about ten home studies to look at while determining the placement of the twins and that we had stood out for her. She was very complimentary about what she read about us. She joked that she was disappointed we couldn't take ALL of them! "Oh man, you mean they can only take two?!" she recollected saying.

What a neat thing to think about how much we prayed for our theoretical new additions long before we heard about the twins, and how God was working the whole time! All things in His schedule, not ours!

We would ask for prayers and thoughts tomorrow. He knows what will happen over Christmas break, as well as what will happen ultimately for these five sweet children. It's all in His hands.