15 Apr Great Weekend!
It’s late Sunday night, and we are officially exhausted! A good exhausted though! An emotional weekend having Jonathan here for his first home visit in over a year is coming to an end.
He arrived Thursday evening, where we picked him up at LAX. As soon as we got home, Charlie (his/our dog), recognized him immediately. Charlie is NOT a licker, but he just about licked Jonathan’s face right off!! He just went on and on in excitement over their reunion!
On Friday, we had a home visit with our County Case Manager. She missed meeting with him her last time at Heritage three weeks ago because we had him off campus at our visit there. So, we arranged for her to come in for a meeting while he was here. That seemed to go pretty well.
Jonathan spent the rest of Friday on a couple of grocery shopping trips with me for the preparation for today’s open house we held for him. We had heavy rain all day Friday (which is a nice break of weather for us), so the time we spent at home was in front of the fireplace. Josh had a few different appointments on and off through the day, so it was a busy day in our household.
On Saturday, some long time friends of the boys and our family came in from Temecula. We ventured over to the Wildlife Learning Center in Sylmar. Jonathan is an animal lover and we had never been to this place before. It wasn’t much of a big deal, but was fun to spend an hour or so at anyway. After that, we picked up another close friend of Jonathan’s who we had arranged to come spend Saturday night with us.
Today, after church this morning, we had the open house from 1:00 until 6:00 pm. BBQ’d burgers and chicken and hosted a slew of friends, family and such. It was so great to see the show of support for Jonathan and our family that has been built over the years. Jonathan seemed to have a genuinely good time seeing everyone.
Tonight, we’re just tired, but as mentioned, it’s a good tired. Tomorrow, he’ll board the plane to head back for the next season at Heritage. I’ll get to see him again May 17-21, when Heritage has their next Parent Conference. It’ll be a few days of some really good education, as well as some good time spent with Jonathan while I’m there. (Colleen isn’t planning on making this trip due to work and some other upcoming travel.)
From there, we think his next home visit will be an extended one during his next school break in August. We anticipate that trip will be 7-10 days long. That will be our first real test. This weekend was a test, but it’s intentionally short to minimize stress, re-acquaint him with home, and give an opportunity to see how he functions back in the original, formerly troubled, environment.
I think we all did well for his first time back. We can see more that needs to take place, but overall, he and we did very well. Our hearts are glad!
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