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I double checked with the school after I received her letter.  I did make a mistake reading the calendar.  We have apologized over and over and over.  

Right now she said the issue isn't pulling SD out of school, it is us going over the court ordered visits.  She gets mad when we tell her that when we pick SD up at her house at 5 pm we will not count that as a full day.  We would compromise at noon, but we think a decent pickup time is 10am.  That is pretty much what it comes down to.  She is so busy being angry about the little girl's first 7 years that my husband wasn't there(She ran away and disappeared and then my husband was transferred overseas--what were his options-put a 3 and 4 year old on an international flight solo?)   She just wants to do what she can to hurt him.

We are getting ready for court.  That is the way it is going to have to be.

Ok, I will go in order, or everything will get confusing.

1) On Feb 2-We e-mailed ex dates for spring break 3/11-19.  She said ok.  I read the school calendar and like last year it said early dismissal.
 
2) On the 3rd, she said those dates were fine.

3) On the 14th, we told her we purchased the tickets.  We had looked at the school calendar again and still say the early dismissal note.  I read it and thought it said K-8(the picture quality for the online calendar is autrocious).  So using last year as the precedent, I bought the ticket for the Friday because of the early dismissal.

4)  She never got back to us til yesterday(27th) that there is no early dismissal and therefore she will not put the SD on the flight.  Because school let out at 2:50 and the flight is at 2:05, then she won't put her on the flight.  

It doesnt' matter she didn't mail us the calendar as court ordered, nor does it matter that she didn't tell us school times changed either.  How are we supposed to read her mind.

I am not saying the blame shouldn't fall on me, but why can;t the SD get out of school one hour early to make sure she catches the flight?

Ex says she knows she is being "childish", but she is still "stewing" over the SD first 7 years when my DH was overseas and she disappeared.  So she brings up everything she is still ticked about.  She said the issue isn't SD missing an hour(?) of school, but that we try to get more time than court ordered.  She doens't like it that she counts a whole day, when we pick SD up at 5 or 6 at night.  That is not a whole day to us and we don't count it as such.
We still are supposed to get reasonable visitation, but we don't get anything that isn't specifically written out.  

I am so upset, I made a mistake and because of it, DH may not get to see his daughter.

I called out attorney, but lo and behold.  We have to re-retain him because the money ran out.  He never told us, never sent us a bill or anything.  We called the attorney again today and spoke to his assistant about mailing us a new retainer contract.  She said he isn't taking new clients right now and we need to talk to him directly.  I don't want to lose him as an attorney.  Ex really hates him.  Not sure what to do now.

Thank you.  I have often thought of putting together a webpage for the family.  I might look into it more.  
SD is 12 and right now I think the problem is her mother.  She only really gets on the computer to do homework and checks her mail only on weekends.  We know ex gets on under her name once in awhile because we will IM and the name immediately logs off, and SD will always talk when she is on.

Not sure what to do.  SD is 12 and she is not a talker, at least by phone or e-mail.  This is normal for her.  She is the same way when she is here and her mom tries to get ahold of her.

I am getting the feeling though that ex is intercepting e-mails.  I don't have proof, but now SD is even more distant.  I think ex is getting on under SD name and reading her mail and going thru it all.  Ex doesn't let her get on as often as she used to.  Ex is mad because she didn't get her way again and if she is going thru the mail, she is doing this to hinder the relationship.

We are going to talk to SD again about staying in better communication with us, but she is a teen.  Not sure what we can do or say to stay in better touch.

Thanks.

Ex e-mailed us.  She took the ticket we purchased for SD and had it re-issued for a one way ticket to return SD in January.    One one hand she did pay the difference, but we still lost the $100 for the reissueance.  What has us so mad is that she didn't contact us to ask us about these changes, she just did it with our money.  I am not sure if I am more mad that she is lying to us about why they left early instead of putting SD on the flight, or that she made changes with out our thoughts.  She she have had to ask permission?  By changing the ticket, did she steal the money, or should we just drop it since originally we were responsible for the transportation this visit or did she void this by changing things?  
We still pick up SD on the same day, just a different place.  She refuses to meet halfway, or anywhere neutral.  She wants if at her mothers home.  Her husband will be there and his temper tends to fly.  We don't want him to go off on my husband or even lose his temper with 4 kids present.  We plan to tape the pick-up.  Because it is out doors, we can videotape it right?  Outdoors has no expectation of privacy?  I want to make sure it can stand up in court.  We also hope to contact the police department there and see if we can get an escort.  We would like it if they stayed alittle distant, so as not to scare SD(almost 13), but we want the presence there in case stepdad tries something, so we can have a report and press charges if need be.  i know some departments aren't too happy to do it, is there anything else we can do?

Thanks

The court order just says we are responsible for Christmas stay transportation.  I thought about it, but thought small claims court would be easier to prove.  We could then have that judgement admitted into court and prove the contempt.  

I am sure about the contempt, because she is just changing the transportation to the area, we still get SD the same day and a couple hours early.  We are still in the air about the return.  We have sent a stern letter stating the return date and time will remain the same regardless of the transportation the ex chooses.0

We have transportation responsibility over Christmas break.  We get the entire break.  We contact ex in mid October to let her know dates and if she was going to be driving into town-so we could plan accordingly.  She said yes, we could switch with her summer transportation and we said not, because if she drove she would drive SD here 3 days late and want her picked up 3 days early.  We said, no, looking at her drive schedule, we would just purchase the ticket.  We did and sent her the information at the end of October.
THEN, we hear from friends in her state last week, that they are going out of town this friday(today/yesterday-looking at time).  Pick-up is now only 5 days away.
She tells us in an e-mail going out the door, by the way, there is a family emergency and we left, SD won;t be on the flight.
We say since she choose to change plans so last minute, she should be responsible for the plane ticket we purchased in good faith.  We checked with airlines and we can't use the second half of the ticket since ex didn't use first portion.  Now we are out almost $350 for a ticket,  We can cancel, but to reissue later will charge us a big fee.  We can't afford to purchase a new ticket, even using the cancelled ticket money.  She will refuse and blame us for buying the ticket even though she had months notice.
She will also claim family emergency--I need a somewhat tactful way to tell her to prove it.  We are going to call the SD school and see what they have.  They pulled SD out 3-4 days early and are going to want us to return SD 3 days early so she doesn' miss any more school.
We e-mailed a very stern letter stating she is responsible for the ticket, she will reimburse us, she will be picking daughter up on the last day of vacation as per the orders.  She can choose to fly home with SD from the airport here or she can pick SD up at airport and drive home.  If she misses school, so be it, I will get assignments from school and have SD do them here.  We told her we are not arguing with her, everything we stated is nonnegotiable and if she sends any negative e-mail it will be forwarded to the appropriate people(our attorney and court records).  And the negative e-mail will not be responded to.  Any negative response will have us consider she accepted the driving option and told her where we would be at what time.

Any suggestions?

I am going to go in a slightly different area here.  It could be that he wants to see his son know because his son is older.  Sometimes it is harder when they are infants because they know the child won't remember them from visit to visit.  That is what happened to my husband.  His ex left him one night and took their daughter.  She then refused to let him have visitation, even see the child at all.  He had been very involved with the pregnancy and birth.  He was an active father.  He was in the Navy and they shipped him to Japan.  How do you visit a child at that distant.  He didn't call, what do you say to a 6-month old, or a 1 year old or a 3 year old?  Ex didn't have any pictures of him,tried to cut him out of the child's life, threw away all his packages.  He went straight to court when his daughter was 7 after he got back into the country and out of the hospital(he left Japan after he was in a bad accident and in a coma for awhile, then they had some serious therapy to go thru... so to be true at that time, he had to think of himself)  When he was healed he went to court and fought to see is daughter.  He understood he would have to go slow and now has standard visitation with his daughter now 12.  She knows who he is and knows he is her dad.  Her mother and step-father do everything they can to discredit him to her, but she knows.

Your ex, may just have been an inept new father, now the child is older he may feel that he can handle it better.  Whether or not there is a current court order, stay friendly with him, let him see his child, if he goes to court and you were unfriendly, it could seriously hurt you.  What ever happened in the past, this is who YOU choose to be the father of your child, be civil and include him now.

One year BM got phone for her daughter for when she is staying with us.  SD was only 11 at the time.  We do not restrict the phone from her use, unless it's like after 10pm (reasonalbe stuff), as they do.  They are constantly screening calls and we can go 2 weeks without hearing from SD.
BM thought she was taking control(as she likes to do), but our rule in the house is no cell phones for children, it goes for ALL the children.  They don't have tv's, computers or anythink like that.  That was the way we were raised and that's the way we wish to continue with our children.
We explained very nicely to a child, that this is something we don't allow, that it was being turned off and put up(we have toddlers) so the babies couldn't get to it.  She was welcome to call her mother from our phone any time she wished.  She gets privacy here when she wants to call, we don't sit over her shoulder like her mother and step-dad do.  She hates calling us because of that, but there is nothing we can do.

We just returned SD(12) to her mother.  So far we have agreed to fly SD on a non-stop flight, but it meant that we drove 3 hours out of our way to and from the airport(6 hour drive time).  Ex refuses to put SD on anyother flight.  There is another non-stop flight, BUT it means she would need to drive 9 hours or fly SD to the airport.  We checked prices.  It costs us about an extra $300 a visit to drive to the airport and back.  It would cost her $180 to fly daughter from her airport to the non-stop one.  Ex also refuses to put SD on a one-stop flight.  It is more expensive for us, but those are our only options.  We are writing a letter to our attorney who is retained for transportation purposes.(we have to pay more for him to cover other issues--income tax returns next year??)

School in TX started on Monday.  We have not heard back from SD to let us know she is registered.  We haven;t heard from the ex or the school.  We think they have pulled a disappearing act--they do this every once in awhile.  We don't have as much money as ex, so they go on "vacation" because our visits are so bad(no money, means we stay at home and that is not good enough for ex)

We have been trying to call SD since Monday.  Court order is for Wed nights, but both sides have been pretty lax, because my husband works nights and ex doesn't mind(usually).  We document each phone call and keep our phone records.  I think from now on, every week, we will be sending a letter(e-mail) to the ex every time we cannot reach the SD for conversation.  We will also forward the letter to the circuit clerk.  I know SD is 12 and can call when she wants, but she doesn't, ex controls the phone and screens the calls.  SD is not comfortable calling because ex's husband likes to listen in or grills SD about the phone calls.  Ex and her husband talk really bad about my husband, but we can't get proof.

We need to go to court and require ex to let us know when they are out of town, and contempt if the phone calls are not allowed through.