Some Of This, Some Of That

Some of this.

As I told you in my blog about a week ago, I made changes to the final divorce decree I was sent by Lori and her attorney.  The changes that I made mimicked exactly the agreements we made and signed on our Rule 11 temporary orders.  I sent them back to Lori and her attorney last week with my fingers crossed, and a hoped and a prayed they would be accepted.  Accepting them would give us a real chance at closure.  Unfortunately for everyone involved, I briefly heard back from my attorney at the end of last week, and he let me know that they were not accepted, and we would now be going on to mediation.

Mediation is ideal for many couples.  It allows couples having difficulty finding common ground, a chance to find solutions to many of their problems without having lawyers present.  It's just you and your spouse and an unbiased mediator.   Well, in my opinion, Lori and I have already done the mediation thing, but without the third party observer.  When we were trying to finalize our Rule 11 Temporary orders, we mediated all of our differences, and came to a mutual agreements on all.  Like I said in the past, that Rule 11 agreement contained the absolute limit to my concessions.  The final divorce decree that I just submitted reflects that limit, so any additional mediation is kind of redundant and might be pointless.  There is no way on God's green earth that I am going to agree to seeing my children less that the 48% that I capitulated to on the Rule 11 Temporary Orders.  

As our temporary orders stand right now, Lori gets the children 14 more days a year than me.  Lori - 189 days......Me - 175 days.   I agreed to this in order to find a quick solution to our divorce.  I knew by doing so, it would cause the least amount of turmoil in the children's lives, and we could both move on to a much happier place.

Lori's final decree, (the one that I was so disappointed with and made changes to) has a visitation break down like this. Lori - 250 days a year.......Me - 105 days a year.  As you can see, that is a ludicrous suggestion, and one that I'm still scratching my head about.  All of you have been reading this blog long enough to know how deeply important my children are to me, and how much of a factor and influence I am to their lives.  To think that I would agree to that, or that any judge or jury in the world would agree that the children would be better off with that schedule is sheer lunacy.  So, unless something drastically changes, after mediation, a long drawn out court battle is next.

Here is a good article about mediation

http://www.mediate.com/articles/jamesb1.cfm

As you can see, the average length of mediation is 3 months, and after that, the average length of a litigated case in the courts is 18 months.  Yep, we could still be married until 2015.  Think about that.  Wow, that stinks.

Some of that.

The boys and I have been having fun for the last few days.  The weather has been noticeably cooler, and we have certainly taken advantage.  We have been bike riding and spending much more time outside. 

I got Aidan signed up to play in a winter basketball league at the YMCA.  His team is being coached by two good friends of mine, and two of Aidan's good friends are also on the team.  Everything is great, except one small problem.........Aidan has never played organized basketball before.  Hmmm.......better start doing something about learning the rules, and the nuances before the season starts in December.

I took both the boys over to the local elementary school on Saturday.  We rode our bikes there, and I took along the basketball.  While Christopher frolicked on the playground toys, I began teaching Aidan about the game of basketball.  He has some work to do before the season, but I think it's going to be super fun in the end.  Here he is........Aidan "Nothing but Net" Thornton.

After his basketball lesson, he joined Christopher on the playground.  "Hey, let's play follow the leader"

After the game of follow the leader, it was on to "fake like your going to push Christopher off the platform".  Oh yeah,  that went well......and earned Aidan the "Icy Stare of Death" from Christopher.

Yikes!!!!  That even scared me.  I believe Aidan was counting on his fingers exactly how long he had to live.

Just before we left, I looked over, and Christopher was letting me know he was ready for his driver's license.

I guess he was practicing for when he purchases that exotic Lamborghini in Italy that only comes in right hand drive.  Hey, a boy can dream......right?

Thanks for stopping by, and I'll have another update soon.

William