Act of trust?

I don't know if it was trust or foolishness, but we decided to let Craig spend the night with the kids while we went off to ski. He had a list of rules that pretty much boiled down to not leaving the house unless it's an emergency, don't even think about alcohol, and don't believe the kids if they tell you they're allowed to be on the phone or texting after 10pm. Alex is perfect capable of being in charge of Rachel and Kevin for an evening, but we wanted an adult there overnight; since he has no school right now, Alex could get his sister and brother up and out the door to the bus in time, but still. There needs to be an adult around. Craig wanted to do this, and he's done well enough lately that we agreed to it.

That's not saying we didn't have Alex texting us frequently to let us know how things were going; he understands our reluctance where Craig is concerned. For that matter, so does Craig, and he doesn't take it personally.

At 6pm Char got a text: Grandpa is here, says he just wanted to bring pizza over but I think he's spending the night.

Char called him; he was as polite as he could be, but the gist was Hell, yes, I'm spending the night. He likes my brother, but doesn't quite trust him with his grandkids' lives just yet. I should point out that Craig raised his boys and they turned out just fine, but I was just a little bit grateful that Brad was willing to butt in. It was testament to the fact that while I am proud of how far Craig has come, I'm still not 100% sure he has what it takes to hold onto sobriety. Brad was there, he later said, so that if something did go wrong there would be a witness. Kids do stupid things and break bones; addicts do stupid things and slip up; there needed to be another adult around to tell the tale if either happened so there would be no doubts about the cause.

Will we do it again? Probably. We'd like to take advantage of some kidless time on the slopes, and we have willing adults to stay with the kids. The kids don't mind as long as we're willing to turn around and take them skiing and snowboarding on the weekends.

Next week, however, Brad is staying with the kids and we're taking Craig with us. I'm hoping to get some good audio of him sliding down the hill, because I know he is going to scream like 5 year old girl being kissed by the kindergarten cootie-monger.