January 1, 2015 found Nathan, Meow-meow, and myself on the beaches of Isla Mujeres. We had several fun days tooling around Mexico before flying home on January 4th. We visited Chichen Itza.
We played on the beaches of Playa Del Carmen, and I didn't want to leave.
We went to church before going to the airport.
Our flight leaving Mexico was delayed in leaving. It was a very tiring airport experience.
Here are some picture snippets of our January 2015:
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| I had "help" putting away Christmas decorations. |
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| Spaceman Spiff had his friends over for an epic Minecraft LAN party. |
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| Firebolt turned 12 at the end of December, so we had a birthday party for her. |
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| Birthday girl and her cake. |
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| We had two exchange students from Korea stay with us for the month of January. |
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| Sugar Dust snuggling my feet. |
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| Anubis perching. |
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| Spaceman Spiff and Firebolt went to do baptisms for the dead. |
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| We played at Trafalga. |
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| Anubis napping in Lion Heart's science project. |
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| Spider Monkey being a monkey |
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| Being silly at grandma's. |
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| Horsing around with Uncle Stephen |
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| Braces on.... |
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| Braces off!! |
My parents picked Nathan, Meow-meow, and myself up from the airport. Because our flight had been delayed so long, my parents picked up my kids from my ex. Spaceman Spiff's phone was not returned. My parents had asked for it, but my ex refused. We flew home Sunday evening and on Monday morning we were trying to get the cell phone back. My ex, naturally was giving us the run around and making things way more difficult than they needed to be. In the end, we had to get the police involved to get the cell phone back. My ex told the police that the reason he didn't want to give the phone back was because he thought we were using it to spy on them.
At the same time as we were attempting to get the phone back, Nathan was having conversations with my ex about taking him up on his offer of adoption. My ex, at first, seemed willing to entertain and discuss the idea. At his request, we arranged to have a meeting in which he cancelled at the last minute. Then he requested a meeting with our bishop in which he was a no show for. Then he requested another meeting at a pizza joint that he again cancelled at the last minute. We had all of the adoption paperwork ready to go and after being jerked around for about a week, we went ahead and filed the adoption paperwork. Needless to say that ruffled some tail feathers.
Upon getting the kids back from the ex, Spaceman Spiff understandably was hurt beyond words. He was very aware that his bio-dad didn't want him and offered to let us adopt him. It put me in a very hard spot because Spaceman Spiff was refusing to go back to his bio-dad's house for visitation, and the other two didn't want to go back either. I could totally understand why they wouldn't want to go, but as the custodial parent, I had an obligation to make the kids available and get them to go. Against my better judgement, I did everything I could to get them to go. We did have a few blessings in that one visitation my ex showed up way past the 15 minute mark without giving any notification of his lateness. The police were called in an attempt to get me for custodial interference, but our newly signed parenting plan fell in my favor. Another time he said he would get them but never showed up and never gave any notification. Another time, the police, my ex, and the kids had a meeting in my front room while Nathan and I were upstairs. The kids refused to leave with their bio-dad. The police couldn't do anything and since I wasn't there to "influence" there was no case for custodial interference.
My ex filed court papers against me and a hearing for February was set. At the same time my ex filed a petition to stop the adoption and a hearing for that was set for March 9th. I, to this day, will never understand his actions. It's completely obvious that he disowned Spaceman Spiff. His response to try and gain the kids back was to be a complete jerk and fight over it. The easiest solution would have been to sit down with Spaceman Spiff and apologize, and to realize that he needed to give Spaceman Spiff some time to cool down and forgive him. Things would have been completely different if my ex could have said, "I understand that you might not want to come visit me for a while, I'm sorry for what I said, I understand that you are mad at me, I hope you can forgive me, and when you'd like to come back for a visit, I'll be here." And leave it at that. I guarantee that within a couple of weeks, the whole thing would have blown over and Spaceman Spiff would have returned to going to his bio-dad for visitations. But what the kids got was the police being called, fighting, and their bio-dad standing on the porch yelling at them, putting guilt trips on them, making them out to be the bad guys by constantly telling the kids how much they have hurt him (the kids had never done anything but love him, he's the one who let his anger get in the way and told Spaceman Spiff to his face that he didn't want him), and telling them they are going to hell. That pushed the kids even further away from him and only served to hurt them further. It made it harder for me as the custodial parent to fulfill my role in facilitating visitation time. It's hard to convince your children to go with a person who is telling them they are going to hell.
We had fun, but all in all, January was a very stressful month.
