My Best Trip to WV in a LONG Time!

So this weekend, I went to West Virginia to visit my family and also to attend Hailey's birthday party. The party was great, as I knew it would be. And, surprisingly, my visit with my family was pretty awesome, too.

Most of you don't know that my youngest sister is currently under indictment for a robbery she and two co-defendants committed in November of 2005. Not that this is an excuse, but she was severely addicted to prescription pain medication at the time and also has some pretty substantial mental health issues. Needless to say, the lifestyle she has chosen for herself is so foreign to my own that I have experienced great difficulty in dealing with her for the past several years. My response generally has been to just not deal with it, talk to her when I absolutely have to and otherwise try to keep it out of my mind. Her most recent exploits left me in such a bad place, a place full of anger, embarrassment and sadness over what I have seen this do to my family.

Amazingly, her arrest and the three weeks she spent in jail before my parents were able to post a sizable bail did nothing to change her attitude. She half-heartedly attempted rehab, but relapsed several times. She, for the past couple of years, has essentially been a selfish monster, a person that if you looked at her funny, you could expect an onslaught of profanity and insults. Due to the fact that she is currently on home confinement at my parents' house, it made family visits difficult, to say the least. This has been really hard on all of us because my parents love nothing more than to spend time with Jonathan.

Most recently, however, there have been some positive developments. My sister entered a five week in-patient rehab program in January of 2006. She amazingly (to me, at least) completed the program and has been diligently completely her after-care since she was released two months ago. Additionally, she has admitted to her wrongdoing and is set to take a plea on Thursday that will keep her out of prison, assuming that she continues to behave herself. And, most importantly to me, she and I have had the best conversations over the past week than we have had during the past five years. I am optimistically hopeful, but I am hoping with all my might that this continues and that I am able to build a relationship with my youngest sister that we have simply not been able to have. I am tired of being angry with her and I truly want to be able to support her and be proud of her. This weekend, I saw the first glimmers that it may come to fruition and I am SO happy about it.

Also making my weekend awesome is some news about my mother. My mom and I are REALLY close and our relationship just keeps getting better as I get older. Last week, she got some results back from a mammogram that were less than stellar. They saw some spots and wanted her to come in this morning for a magnification. She had a similar issue a few years ago, but it all turned out to be fine. Still scary, regardless. Well, I am happy to report that she called me today and they actually compared her mammogram from this year with her previous one (apparently they were in storage in Virginia and had to be ordered) and, when they did, they found there had been absolutely no change! So she is totally fine and I can breathe a little (actually a lot) easier.

One more happy note (and then I'm through, I promise!). About a month ago, my hubby was having to go out of town two nights a week for work. This went on for a month and it was some extra work on me. My hubby duly recognized this and, as a "thanks for being a great wife" gift, bought me a new black Coach leather purse. He picked it out and everything and it was really awesome! So, this left me with no need for the black Kate Spade purse I've carried for the last couple of years (also a gift from hubby). I decided to sell it on E-bay and it sold for $79.00 last night. I was so happy! Now I need to scour my house to see what else I can sell!