Amazing

There are so many things that I can classify in my life as amazing, and I think this is one of them.  Saturday night a stranger knocked on our door.  After a few minutes we learned that he was my mother-in-law’s long lost brother.  He found us through extensive on-line and physical searches through records and archives.  Our address just happens to be the same one my husband’s mother had once resided at. (Our home was a boarding house for a long time, she had rented here while finishing high school!)

Sadly, this isn’t my story to tell, but I can tell you some of it.  My mother-in-law was the second of five children.  They were removed from their parents when their father was imprisoned and their mother was unable to care for them.  There were horrible stories that went along with the life they lead prior to being removed.  Some of the children were adopted, a few spent the rest of their minor years as wards of the state in a local orphanage.  At the age of 17, MIL was on her own, finishing high school, and working.  She was able to remain in some contact with her siblings, but not her younger brother.  Both had tried in the past to find each other, but met with many roadblocks. 

We invited her brother to join us the next day for lunch.  He brought his wife and stacks of paperwork they had found from agencies that had handled their cases, as well as prison records that finally had all lead them to us.  We invited my husband’s brother and sister and talked about our plans.

Today my mother-in-law will see her brother for the first time in over 50 years.

Amazing.

Friday Fragments–Comeback

I’ve been MIA for a while and I have so much to tell you.  I’m excited to use Mrs. 4444’s Friday Fragments as a nice little way to make myself a list of ALL the stuff I need to come back and blog about!

• After the March to Mandaree, I took some time to relax with my family and unpack.  We’ve mostly cleared out our camper of stuff, but we were hoping to use it one more time before school started.  Hmmm… maybe a weekend during the fall will work out better.
• I got a new French press coffee maker and I think I’ll never go back to an electric one again.
• We are planning on switching our current living room with our current master bedroom.  I know it sounds strange, but our house used to be apartments, so they’re really both living rooms anyway.
• I had a tumor removed from my neck.  I’ll tell you more about that later.  I’m fine now, a little sore, and rocking a cool scar.

• We visited my relatives in Wisconsin and wished we could have stayed longer.  Even my mom came from Washington, so it was awesome!  This is a picture of mostly great-grands and a few grandchildren for my mom’s mom’s side, and not all of them either.  My mom is the oldest of seven, and we like kids.  A lot.

• While we were in Wisconsin, Daddy and I escaped for a day and took the commuter train to Chicago.  We googled a restaurant he’d seen on Travel Channel AND Food Network.  We found it and gave it a try.  It wasn’t bad, not OMGosh-I-Have-to-come-here-again great, but good anyway.  The journey was just as fun.

• Our kids go to school almost a week before any other school in the area, so their first day was this past Monday.  Piper started Kindergarten, Max is in Second, and Aria in Fourth.  Wow.  Now JC is super bored without anyone to entertain him at home.

• We did a lot in the last month, and I’ll get around to blogging more now that we’ll have a routine again.  I’m hoping to pick up more hours at work to keep up with our finances right now.  I look forward to THAT being better, too.

Have a good weekend!! And don’t forget to stop by Half Past Kissing Time and join in!!