Let me just start off by saying that my oldest step son just told me this morning as I was leaving for work that he loved me! Yeah!!! I always tell him & his brother that I love him, 6yr old will say he loves me back but 9 y/o never does. DH asked him once don't you love step mom & he said I do, but you know... so DH left it at that. Which is fine I don't want him to feel forced.

Now the craziness as to why they were at our house on Monday am. One of my complaints out BM is that she never stays home on weekends with the kids & is either dragging them 1/1/2 hours away to BF or he & his 3 kids are at her house. The boys never have time to themselves with mom on the weekends and it is affecting them. They however would never tell their mom that & we are afriad to because she would be very hostile.

So this weekend, despite it be -20 degrees where she is they drive up to BF house. ( Now here is the really good part that she keeps secret. BF drives down from his house & parks his car at BM, loads up the boys then drives to exGF house( about 15 min away to p/u 11 mo old son and then drives back up to the town he lives in where his ex wife lives & picks up 2 kids from that marriage.) To me this is sort of nuts, but okay. So on Saturday ex notices that there is something wrong with her van, but doesn't do anything. Sunday she ends up having to have it towed at at 4pm calls us to see if we could keep boys overnight & take to school today. DH says sure, when will you be here. She says 7:30 that BF brother is driving her down & in the am they will drive back. She then calls back to say it will be closer to 8:30 ish 9pm. These kids are 6 & 9 & should be in bed on school night by then. They also need to take showers before then. So 9 pm they show up, DH is pretty mad by now because WTF it is -20 & his kids should be showered & in bed by now. We both are going to be late to work because we work at 7 am ( BM works at 8:30 ) These kids are going to have to be up really early and will have to shower & dry hair ( they didn't take shower on Sunday so skipping is not an option) and have breakfast. BTW it really was WF driving brother's truck that drove down with her.

I told him, whatever you do don't argue Just get the kids in & get her on her way. He does tell her that you know you could have asked me when you called at 4 pm to come & get the kids & you & we would have gotten you all home before now. She got kind of defensive( I could hear her from where I was)that she didn't think of that & well she could have kept kids up there & out of school today. Not sure what that would mean except DH gets kids after school & if they don't have school he misses out on his time.

So as we are giving kids milk & cookies & getting them into jammies this is where DH learns of the parking at BM situation & that BF ex wife picks up her kids at 7:30 so they couldn't & don't leave till then & that they had to drop off baby before she brought the boys to us.

So does anyone else think this kind of deal every Sunday night when she has kids is kind of nuts? We figure no wonder 6 y/o has hard time consentrating in school monday am.

I did tell DH to not get into it with her, even though we feel like babysitters some times, because she was kind of at the mercy of BF & we have no idea how that relationship dynamic works. Don't want to know either.

I do think she was in a bind, but sometimes I feel like we get taken for granted or are not appreciated because we are more homebodies. We actually never left the house all weekend & snuggeled up & watched 6 Feet Under all weekend. We figure with the baby coming we are not going to have many weekend where we do nothing but hang out & goof off with each other. It was absolutely awesome. We are so lucky that we have yet to ever get tired of each other's company.