You know you've gone back to work when....

You don't update your blog for over a month.

Your facebook status goes blank for days or weeks.

You have this eternally exhausted look on your face that shows up again at five a.m.

So, here's where we are today....

Picked up the boy on Thursday evening and will never, EVER do that again directly from teaching all day without one of those energy drinks. Ever.

My son earned a $20 gift card to Wally World from his school at the RTC and he spent it all on baking supplies. He proceeded to make Cheesecake Brownies, Lemon cake, French Vanilla cake with chocolate frosting drizzled with white chocolate and Chocolate Chip cookies. He was the dessert provider for my family at Easter and I very much could see this kid going into culinary arts.

He has come so far that I felt comfortable and confident in asking him if he was okay with the dogs sleeping in his room (they do when he's not here....Sam, the 96 lb. baby howls like his skin is being peeled off, so, for the neighbors' sake, I put them in at night). This is the same child who at one time abused these dogs, mainly Sam (who howled before we even got him btw) who had been abused.

He organized the Easter egg hunt with his little cousins and was so patient in guiding them to where they should "hunt".

This is the same kid who was previously banished from my sister's property....she now tells him she loves him and hugs him. He's helped her greatly clean up her property and even killed several scorpions in the process (the only time I've heard this deep-voiced boy squeal like a girl).

I have to say, each time that I drive away after leaving him at the house he lives in (an RTC, they have house dads for the boys' houses and house moms for the girls) it is so hard and I am so grateful that I miss him. So many times in the past that I thought I wanted to just have him be a memory. So many tears shed over whether I'd ever have the hope of a future with him in it. So many times I just knew it, with certainty, that he'd be in prison and the only contact we'd have would be through glass. (Been there with him, you just cannot hug through a phone.)

Now, they're saying the plan is for him to come home in October. He may need to go to either a half-way house (didn't know those existed for teens) or foster care as part of the transition. He's stressed about that. But today, I have faith in him. He's got this.