Awesomeness and fancy restaurants

There is no other way to describe this past week. Monday afternoon Michael & I met our son, our daughters met their brother and J met his forever family. Tuesday afternoon I went to his school and met with his teachers who all sang his praises in the behavior and work ethic departments. J struggles in school and will need some intensive instruction to catch up with his peers. I'm hoping with enough structured one on one directed instruction he will make significant gains this next school year. Before I left school I got to say a quick hello to J and get one of those hugs. Wednesday was J's swimming lesson and his foster mom REALLY wanted me to have an individual visit with him without the "distraction" of Michael and the girls. Heehee, she really has strong opinions but she does love J. So J and I had a nice 1 hour visit with just the two of us. I took along the video camera which, let's be honest, has spent the majority of the past 5+ years collecting dust.  I had planned on video taping his swimming lesson but when I was telling that to my mom the night before she suggested he and I interview each other on tape. So we did! It was fun. I asked him some very basic "getting to know you" stuff. He giggled lots and I learned a little more about him. He has never been to Disney World and has his sights set on visiting there and Legoland. He LOVES all things Lego and baseball. He definitely wants to please us, when I asked him if he could travel anywhere in the world to visit where would he go - his response was Canada. I accused him of playing favorites because we are Canadian, his response was a sheepish grin and denial. We are still hopeful to have him travel with us but there are legal steps to be taken to ensure he can get a passport. Unfortunately we have no control over these kinds of things at this point so I just keep asking and asking to see if others are getting done whatever they need to do.  So far no progress but I will hold out hope for a complete family trip to New Brunswick in August. Thursday was just an ordinary day. Yesterday J and his foster parents came to our house for dinner. Yup - our son came home - just for a two hour visit but he was here.  He came through the door and very shortly after greeting each of us he looked at me and said, "I wonder which one is my room?" I told him we would check it out after dinner.  So we all sat down to eat and then began the house tour.  Of course we started with his room. It is almost complete - at least there is a bed in there now - that just got established yesterday morning. We ordered his bedding but it hadn't arrived yet. Hope he likes it.

He then got the complete house tour including his sisters rooms and our room. He was very excited about seeing the pool which, thanks to the monsoon that was happening when they arrived, was filled to the brim.

After the tour J and the girls hung out in his room and visited and he explored some of the things in his room. Most of which are hand me downs from his sisters. His favorite find was a Nintendo DS that T no longer uses. Michael said J opened the case it was in and said, "It's just like new." For those of you who know T that will come as no surprise. All three girls went through their DS games and he now has quite a collection of games to choose from. To our surprise he did not ask to take anything with him when he left. He put everything back in its place and it will all be waiting for him on his next visit.

We then gathered at the table for dessert and J showed us the homemade bracelet he was wearing.  It had the initials "J" & "M" on it and a number of colored beads.  The J & M obviously stand for his new name. The other beads represented each of us in his life and each of our pets and he had one bead to represent sports which he obviously loves. It was very cute to see that he is thinking about us just like we think about him when we are not together.

When the time came to say goodbye for the night he ran straight into Michael's arms for a great big full on man style bear hug - good grief - then the girls and I each got snugly little side hugs and big grins. He is going to love having a daddy, and in my humble opinion Michael is the best there is.

So the obvious question is when will our next visit be? Right now all we have scheduled is a visit on Thursday afternoon. Hoping we get another one between now and then. Also related to visitation is the fact that his worker told me on Thursday that she would like to see us begin our UNSUPERVISED visits with J on June 24th. That is not too far away.

If you are taking prayer requests, here are ours for this next week, more than one visit with J, positive movement towards obtaining a passport for J to travel to Canada with us, and more unsupervised visits on the official calendar.

Oh and back to the interviews we did, his cutest question for me was, "Do you like to eat at fancy restaurants?" Of course I said, "Yes!"