Thought I'd break my post down a bit, so people could respond to various issues if they wanted to...it was way too long for the average person at work to read!

I'm so tired, I mean, not particularly tired of her...BM and I only see each other maybe 3 times a year on account of the fact that she lives in another country. When she calls, she talks to the boys as long as they want, they call her from time to time. H doesn't talk to her at all if he can help it. I do not talk to her AT ALL. For any reason. Thankfully we have never had any emergencies. She sometimes takes visitation, sometimes she doesn't. But yes, I'm tired because we had a family vacation in July and got 8 days to ourselves (we had not had any time without them overnight since a trip in December 2006) but it's been almost another 3 months now without a break. I'm so tired, yes, I am. I know that if the ss's were mine, this would be the norm for us, but oh how I want a break sometimes, just a little bit of time to watch movies and not have a sleepy child walk out in the middle of it because he's hungry, or get to go out at night and know we can come home any time we want or just something as simple as going for a walk by ourselves. Last week we had a very nice lunch together at a Thai place and that was lovely...we do try to make little plans like that by ourselves.

I almost wish we had the BM within 10 miles of us. I almost wish we had visitation every weekend or whatnot, because we'd get a break. But I love having my ss's here in our house, and the little one especially I consider my own. The older one still has attachments to his mom, but I've been the primary caretaker of the youngest since he was 1.5 years old. My parent's are divorced and in two different states. His parents are in a state 3,000 miles away. We usually have someone visit maybe once a year, if that. My husband and I plan to move as soon as we reasonably can because we dislike the town we live in (he has HAD to live here and work in the same place because of his visa) and hope for someplace better to raise the boys. We would love to move closer to any of our immediate family!