The most important things in life are......

I believe it's my kids! My son was at his mother's house three weeks ago, unsupervised as usual, and while climbing a fence, slipped and tore the skin off his fingers from his palms to his second knuckles. This has prevented him from wrestling since then. He decided Friday night that he wanted to wrestle in a tournament Saturday, so we did. We went to the gym, weighed in, went to McDonald's for breakfast, and went back to the gym to wait for wrestling to start. The kids talked to their mother Friday night, and when C said he was wrestling Saturday, she wanted to know all about it. She called again Saturday morning to find out what time wrestling started. He wrestled once, waited for their mother, wrestled again, waited for their mother, wrestled a third time, and still she hadn't showed up. As we were leaving the tournament to go to his birthday party, she called, evidently she is going on a fishing trip today instead. This is especially interesting to me, I have taken the kids to the lake boating and fishing several times, and she always found a reason to stay home. She never liked to go do things like that before, I can think of two reasons for this (1) There was responsibility when taking the family to do things and (2) There was nobody new to impress. Whatever her reasons, the kids were disappointed by her, as they usually are.

I was thinking about how lucky my kids and my ex are that I am not so selfish, like she is. I see her taking care of her, and only her, regardless of the damage done to anyone else. I could have chosen to do this at many different times in my life. One example would have been when I found out that she was pregnant. What if I had just decided, like a lot of guys do, and like she did recently, that I didn't want to spend my life that way? I could have left her, moved away, and who knows where I might be right now! I have many, many regrets about staying with her, but my children make them all worth it. In some ways, I may be in a better place if I had left, but where would my Ky be? This is not a question I was willing to leave to chance. Not to mention, I wouldn't have my boys.

Although we missed her, we had a terrific weekend. We started Friday watching the opening ceremonies for the winter Olympics. Saturday morning took us to the wrestling tournament, and Saturday afternoon, we had C's birthday party. This was a good lesson for me. We had a room at the Ramkota so we could use their new water park, I thought 5 guests was a good number. I was surprised when all of the parents that were dropping off their kids said "you are doing this alone?" It didn't take very many minutes in the pool to figure out that I had really taken on a full load here. Six - 7 year olds along with one - 3 year old is a lot of responsibility, and a lot of movement to watch in any pool, much less one as busy as the Ramkota was. Also, 7 year old boys in swim suits all look the same, so to decipher which six were mine kept my eyes busy constantly. We were in the pool and water slides for 2 1/2 hours, then went to the room for pizza, cake, and gifts. The pizza didn't show up until after most of the guests had gone home (Domino's was really busy) so some just had cake for supper. This, along with one fat lip, and one bloody nose, caused by some boys climbing up the water slide while others were coming down, were the only problems we had. I am proud that we got through it so well, and very pleased with the outcome. C said he had a great time, and Boo said "that swimmin' at that swimmin' pool was really fun." I feel that families should work on their problems to stay together, it's too bad that some people give up so easily. I love to spend time doing things with my kids; its too bad I can't keep them with me all the time. Maybe I'll work on that.

Thanks UA for stopping by, you were huge!

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