Heavy Heart

Dear Heavenly Father,

My heart is heavy and I don't know what to do.  I know that things happen for a reason, but I am struggling again as much as I did after losing my boys with why things happen.  What purpose is served by leaving children in miserable situations?  Where is the justice when pathological liars get away with their deplorable acts?

Why is my brother allowed to have his children?  Why is my niece allowed to keep her children?  Both of them have been offered assistance over and over and over again.  Both of them are in the "system" as high risk parents, and yet their abilities to bully their children into lying for them & their pathological abilities to lie themselves has a total of 5 defenseless children living in fear.  All 5 of these children had adults that cared about them enough to step up and do the right thing & notify authorities of the situations (and yes I mean multiple situations that have been witnessed).  And yet, the system has stated, "They are doing the best they can" and "No we don't need to interview the 15 people that witnessed it".

Years ago I sacrificed any chance of having a relationship with my brother to try to rescue my niece and nephew.  That blew up in my face when the system that should have protected them, notified their abuser that I had called.  The only good thing that came out of it is that I was the scapegoat for him for several years as the cause for all of his problems.  At least if it was my fault, he might not take it out on the kids as much.  (Although as is normal for all pathological liars - he has a new scapegoat now -- because nothing could never be his fault!)

Then comes my niece, she's been in the system since her oldest (now 9) was born.  She is an even more convincing liar than my brother.  Things came to blows last weekend when she was belittling her oldest child (who she seems to be the most venomous to) at her middle child's birthday party.  Her parents intervened and told her "enough" - hoping it would stop at least to get through the party.  Instead she blew up and made a very dramatic exit.  After she left a call was made to the hotline (the boys had told family some scary things a few hours before the blow up).  Interestingly - now the story that my niece is telling is that she had to get her children to safety because her father threw a knife at her.  And guess what - DCFS doesn't need to interview any of the people at the party to find out which story is the truth - most likely because she has convinced her boys to lie for her.  Why?

Why did I have four beautiful boys - but yet Jonathon only lived 5 1/2 months & Jeffrey only lived 2 hours.  Why does Tim have all the problems he has?  Why does Chris struggle with school - even though he is a very smart person.  Why does my beautiful adopted daughter have to have the physical and emotional issues she has?  And now it appears that her biological mother had a premature baby some time recently.  Why?  Is she any better prepared to be a parent now than she was 6 years ago?  I hope so, but she is still unemployed, with a different baby daddy & according to her family unstable.  Why did Darwin's cousin lose a beautiful baby girl 6 years ago & now almost lost her baby this week (thankfully she was delivered early and is looking good) - but why?

I don't understand why children have to suffer?  And I don't understand what they are supposed to learn and what I am supposed to learn?  Is the lesson I am supposed to learn to stop caring?

Our Official Gathering of the Gremlins 2011!!

The day we'd all been waiting for!!!  The first annual Gathering of the Gremlins (just a cute name we made up for our gathering - it just kind of stuck!)

Dr. Chung spoke to us about the geneticts of 16p & where the research was with it.  She then had an hour or more of questions and answers!  It was soooo awesome to be there and listen to what she had to say!!

We had 13 families with at least one person in their family with 16p deletion or duplication.

Ashley thought talking in the microphone was awesome!

The kids played with two of the genetic counselors while the parents listened to the talk!

Trying to round all the kids up was quite the challenge - and we didn't succeed completely - but we got quite a few!

And here was a picture of many of us at the gathering - again not everyone, but quite a few!  Trying to get everyone in one place at the same time is a very challenging feat - so this is pretty darn good!

Christy designed a special t-shirt for everyone for the picnic on Sunday!

Although many other people helped with ideas and communication - the five of us ladies did most of the main organizing and planning.

And here was our Simons team!

After the gathering, some of the families went to a water park - we just went back to our little water play ground.

This gathering was so awesome to have - we are definitely planning on making this an annual gathering!

Friday July 22nd

Friday morning we returned to the Hatfiled and McCoy Theater for a breakfast show with the Blackwoods singers.  It was a pretty good show, and so so breakfast.

The waiting area for the theater had some cool areas - definitely Hillbilly style!!  :)

Amie liked the kitchen area!

Darwin found some special sauce we were going to buy after the show....but forgot to go back to get it!!  Dang!!

Grandma found her perfect sign!

I found a very......interesting use for horse poo!!  I bought a pad of the paper to give to a special person that loves horses!!

All week we've heard "wace" every time we'd drive by the 150 or so go cart race tracks!!  We'd told her she wasn't big enough.....then we found out there was one of the tracks that had little kids go carts!  So....we decided to let her "wace"!!!  

She was even more excited when we found out the way you pay for the go carts was to purchase a points card.  She took a hold of it and said "Ewwwww credit card"!!  OH NO!!  That's not a good sign that she knows what a credit card is and she thinks it's a great thing to have one!!!

Waiting her turn!

Climbed in and ready to go!

Then she found out that she had to listen to how this worked and what her rules are!

Here's a close up of the look she was giving him.  "I already know everything I need to know - you can stop talking now because I'm not listening to you anyway."  

Ok - really what did you just say?

And AWAY she goes!!

After "wacing" she got to chose one other ride.  But it was HOT HOT HOT!!  So we limited it to just that one ride!

For lunch on Friday we decided to try this pizza joint.  But hmmmmm should we have been worried about eating at a place called the "Mellow Mushroom"??  LOL!

Besides the name - the other reason we ate at that pizza place, is it was next door to a large castle & Amie had wanted to knock on the castle door all week to try to wake the dragon up!  LOL - isn't that funny!

So - after lunch - her and I walked over to the castle!  Then she started having second thoughts!

Knock and Run!! 

There was a smaller door towards the back of the building, she thought maybe that would be a better door to knock on.

Oh well, guess the dragon was already taking his nap for the day.

Friday night we met our new friends the Watson's for dinner.  Kaitlyn is quite the character!  Here's Kaitlyn and her Mommy Jennie.

Mr. Logan

After dinner we went to the River Terrace Hotel where most of the families were staying and where the luncheon was being held the next day.  What a great thing to see the welcoming sign on their marquee!

Trying to gather as many of the 16p kiddos together.  Here is Logan, Amie and Colton

Hunter is another 16p kiddo & his Dad's name is Darwin.....so here are the two Darwin's.  We were trying to decide if they were Chocolate and Vanilla Darwin's or Salt and Pepper Darwin's!  :)

Kristy (twin to Ashley and not 16p), Ashley, Amie and Raylin

Ayden

Colton, Ashley, Hunter, Amie, Raylin & Ayden - all 16p (Kristy - Ashley's twin is in the pink with glasses)

LOL - we had a time trying to get them together!

The glass elevator was quite the hit with all of the kids!

The little purple dressed girl is McKenzie - another 16p.

McKenzie, Ayden & Amie.  Amie was carrying her swimsuit around most of the week.  She wanted to get wet at every opportunity!!

The evening was great for us to start getting to know the people that we'd interacted with on line for most of a year for some of them!!  Great people, great families, great kids!!  Great get together!