Well, my mom said that this morning, my dad was truly sorry - more sorry than he's ever been in his life. He seemed to realize that he had done some major damage to our family and he was actually sorry about it. That really surprised me - usually, he would just try to sweep everything under the rug and pretend like he didn't really do anything all that bad. My mom told my dad that if he ever acts like that again, she'll leave him. I'm not sure if that makes me happy or sad. I have a feeling that if my mom left my dad, I would almost never see him again. She's the glue that holds our whole family together.

Erin and Lisa seemed to be happy that my dad was truly sorry - they even ventured that perhaps his outbursts are due to his diabetes or something. But, of course, they still don't particularly want anything to do with him right now. I have a feeling it's going to take awhile before things are normal again, if they ever are. I can't say that I blame them - if my dad talked to me the way that he talked to Erin, I don't know that I could ever really forgive him. Well, I suppose that I would try to because I know that that's what God wants us to do, but it would take some real healing time.

Anyway, we had a conference with Jaden's teacher, Miss Moll today. Nothing too new came up - we have already been talking a lot with her about the fact that Jaden is not very good at listening. He just doesn't want to do what they tell him to do and they've been having a hard time getting him to do anything without spending inordinate amounts of time and attention on him. So, we're working on it. We talked about how counting generally works and that he often listens after I ask him to repeat what I've asked him to do (and then remind him that he needs to listen and obey). It's frustrating that he's not doing well with listening, but I don't know what else we can do besides continue working with him.

We left this evening for St. Louis to spend Thanksgiving with Sharon and Joel. Linda came with - her first holiday without the girls. Linda got here a bit after 5:00, but, of course, we weren't ready to go. As usual, we were running late.

The drive to St. Louis went amazingly well. First of all, Linda brought a DVD player so that Jaden and Danielle could watch movies. They were mesmerized. Honestly, I think Jaden made about two peeps the entire ride. They watched about one and a half movies and then they both fell asleep and slept the rest of the ride. It took us about 5 and a half hours to get there, but the ride went really fast since we were chatting with Linda for most of it. We finally found out a lot more about what went wrong with her and Chris. We really hadn't realized that she was trying to keep them together and Chris really still wanted a divorce. He is pretty much just happy to live a bachelor's life - in fact, his best friend decided suddenly to ask his wife for a divorce as well and they are going out to bars together, etc. We also hadn't really thought about how tied to Chris Linda will still be and how much this will change every aspect of her life. She now can't make any kind of life decision without conferring with someone who is not directly involved in her life. And, she isn't just losing Chris - she's losing time with the girls and she's losing the close bond that she's formed with his family. Chris' family is actually having another dinner with everyone except Chris because they don't want to lose Linda. It just makes you put everything in perspective.