Back to normal, if you want to call it that

My sil moved out last Thursday. I strongly suspect that she wasn't going to say anything until we noticed her moving her stuff out. Last time she just left and then came back a week later to get her stuff. I don't think she even told the school that her daughter would no longer be attending. Nice. Very adult. She said that it was just too hard to live down here. Not hard really, just not as easy as living with mom and dad and having them pay all the bills. I guess the reality was quite a shock. Being a single mom with two kids has to be pretty expensive especially when you're not working and refuse to get a job. Call me crazy, but the welfare system is extremely out of whack when they're not even requiring her to look for a job and the state keeps sending her checks. I thought the whole point of welfare was to help you along until you got back on your feet.

Kids never seem to pick up any good habits from each other do they? Every night at dinner now Katie spends the whole time whining about how she doesn't want to eat her dinner. Mikel takes at least an hour to do his homework. I really hope it doesn't take that long for them to unlearn this stuff. It's really frustrating to see another child behave badly and not be able to say anything and then have to deal with your kids behaving the same way. The lack of discipline is appalling. I never really saw myself as all that strict until I saw someone else that clearly wasn't. I told dh that never again will we have family live with us like that. Unless they really don't have anywhere else to go, and even then there will have to be some sort of time limit. The upheaval it causes in our lives just isn't worth it.

Katie has decided to be the Little Mermaid for Halloween and Mikel still wants to be an "Army". I'll go out on a limb and assume he means a soldier. Anybody have an army helmet I can borrow? The only costume store in town doesn't have any and the nearest Army surplus store is 40 minutes away. I'm creative and all, but I'm at a complete loss as to creating an army helmet. We used to have dh's, but of course we can't find it now. Perfect timing.

Our dog escaped on October 2nd. He found his way back home about 3 weeks later. He'd been groomed and he had a new collar. Thanks neighbor! Then a day after he found his way home someone left the back gate open and he escaped again. Sunday night while I was watching tv I heard something outside the screen door. I looked, and there he was again! At least we know his sense of direction is good. He's managed to find his way home twice. We've put a lock on the gate so hopefully this will be the last time Charlie goes walkabout.