The children are safe now, our thanks to everyone that helped especially the DHS office. The kids will probably see their dad again after he gets some help but the powers that be stepped up and made sure that they will be safe until then. I'm proud of the lady from DHS and also the Izard County legal system.

It saddened me to see the eyes of the grandparents. They wanted to hug the kids and we weren't exactly sure of the way the restraining order worked so we couldn't allow it. It felt horrible but our feelings don't matter and today theirs couldn’t be taken into consideration either. It was all about the children.

The grandfather was there the night that we had to brave the icy roads to go get a little boy out of harm’s way. I didn't see any anger or resentment in the grandfather’s eyes that night. The only thing that I saw was pain and sadness. I don't know him very well but I believe in my heart that he is a good man.

I don't know the grandmother at all but to see the pain in her eyes today definitely took its toll. I wish that we could have told the kids that they could hug them.

The man that the restraining order was for seems to want to be good father, I really don’t understand it. He isn’t openly rebellious or defiant in any way. He seems calm, cool and relatively collected. There are just times when he lets his temper go and he hurts someone. If I didn’t know his history I wouldn’t even suspect that he would do anybody harm. I hope that he gets the help that he needs. It would be nice to at least be able to let the children have supervised visits in the future. It’s hard to forgive someone that would hurt a woman or a child, even if they didn’t set out to do so, but I plan to work at it so that if he is ever given supervised visits that I will be able to look at him and allow him in our home without feeling any ill will toward him.