The other night as I spent the night unable to sleep I used the quiet time while all others in the house were asleep to do some research on the computer. I was on the Focus on the Family site where they have numerous articles about the modern blended families that are so present in our modern society. I must say I was shocked by some of what I read, humored by some, and left scratching my head and saying wow that's my life on yet other things.
I was shocked by the realization that my marriage falls in the category that has a 73% chance statistically of failing. As I read further into it I began the scrathcing of my head and saying wow, as many of the little things mentioned are daily tidbits in my own life. Now talk about not sleeping! Whew.
In one segment they talked about the term blending and what that actually means. They used the example of putting all the foods into the blender and mixing them up at once, translating to me as the part where you get married to one person and all the others in their lives and those in your life being tossed into the blender and anticpating that all will mesh together into one fine smooth lump, and everyone will be happy. Yes sadly that is the hope of most of us when we remarry. We somehow think any mistakes made in the past have prepared us to have a great remarriage and all will have the fairy tale happily ever after ending we grew up believing in.
Then they used the example of putting things one at a time into a crock pot and allowing the foods over time to blend nicely together, given the time to simmer and cook and blend. That tranlated to me as yikes we are going to spend our lives simmering, and stewing in the hopes that all comes out happily together at the end of the process. Yet as I think more on it, the crock pot is a much better comparison than the blender, where we get thrown in together, chopped up and there we are. At least with the crock pot we have the advantage of being put in individually as our own enity, allowed to slowly cook with others and come out one happy stew.
The simmering part is one of the phrases that caught me as really resembling my own blending here. We seem to constantly have someone simmering, and either they eventually reach a full boil and bubble over, or they just continue to slow cook with the boil being hidden beneath the surface. A great deal of the simmering process in our unit is that very often there is no real communication. In an attempt top keep peace, we tend to make things appear to be much more humorous than they really are. In trying to keep everyone smiling and blended peacefully, we begin a discussions and as soon as one or another has decided they don't want to deal with it conversation is over, and leading to more of the simmering just below the surface. If this is at all usual in the married again world I can better understand why that figure for failing is at 73%.
Now our house consists of a lot of male persons, a lot more than most houses and we all know that the males gruffly say their two cents worth and the conversation is over, or they don't contribute to the talk process at all. If we force them to talk about things it creates another problem with attitude, and they go back into the denial process that anything could really be not quite right after all. We have a wild combination of both here at our blender, and a variety of age levels in which it is evident, young teen, to young men, to grown men. The silly stuff they have a lot to say about, but the real issues result in head nodding and at a later point saying I didn't hear that. I also notice they have this blank sad puppy dog stare if you talk seriously to them and the result of that is the quilt you feel,( very much a female trait) at the idea of rocking the boat, so you stop talking, and allow those feelings to simmer in that family crock pot, stewing away any hurt thoughts, angry thoughts, selfish thoughts, allowing them to simmer and simmer but never totally bubble up to boil.
The other thing that is very evident in our house are the extra walls, the ones we bang into all the time, but can not see. They are the invisible walls which keep our unit divided as that relish dish I mentioned before. We have the us section, the me section, the my kids section, the your kids section, the your extended family section, the my extended family section, and the the sections that include one or the other with any one or the other sections. We are like a giant experiment dish, and the focus is keep all from blending at all costs to prevent from boiling. We probably should come with a warning label! Mix, shake, or put in same place at same time may be hazardous to your family harmony. And trust me on this we have definetly seen the proof of the truth in this. Even in these times of trial mixture, the seperateness of the unit is highly visible, as mine goes one way, his goes another, he hangs with his and trickles over to the mine to try and keep peace, and I finally remove myself from the not being spoken to, and the anxiety one can get from being surrounded by contempt for oneself, and I have been known to take a nice long walk where I actually have been gone for a really long time before anybody even noticed. Maybe I am simmering, yea probably. But the walls are there, they can't be seen but they absolutely can be felt.
Two families, two completley different families, simmering in the crock pot of life, because two grown people decided to merge all these people together into one great dish, whether they wanted to be merged or not, no wonder that number is at 73%. Those two people are so completely outnumbered by the signifcants in their own individual lives and the realizations that no matter how long they try and simmer these different fruits of life the probabilty of their actually blending into one happy mixture is probably less than the 27% chance they have of making it. WOW!!
So the process continues, and two people hope for the best, each one allowing the feelings to simmer and not boil over, stir it up a little, put the lid back on it and hope that one day they will beat those odds and actually somehow stay together and that all the significants will discover it isn't so bad to allow the blending process to happen.
What does this have to do with me? Well we have the yours and the mine daily in our lives. We have the us, and the stress of trying to be a family, but we are constantly three families trying to be one, and including all in one thing has turned out so hurtful and disastrous in the past that we no longer even really try. That creates the simmering in our own personal relationship, consiting of two, where one or the other of us feels the need to walk on eggshells at all times, or to conviently not mention aspects of our days. 73 % of these remarriages will fail, 27% will be strong enough to survive. I wonder what the percentage is of those who just give up. At times I feel like I am too stubborn to fall in to that 73% and at other times I feel like if I just go ahead and allow myself to fall in that 73% I may find myself hurt less, smiling more, more free to feel useful, happy, and fulfilled as a person.
So as our life continues to simmer in our family crock pot perhaps we will become more tender, more combined as a whole and who knows maybe even beat the odds.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
Blessings Abound
This weekend we had one of those memorable and joyous family happenings here at our house. Several weeks ago my teenage daughter announced she wanted to be baptised. This was a joyful announcement for me as I don't baptize my children when they are infants. I do have them blessed when they are babies, but I feel being baptised is a choice they must make for it to really count. Anyway, yesterday was the day she chose.
After she compiled her personal list of people she wanted to be included we handed out invitations and all except one were able to attend. For us that meant a grand total of 42 people in our home for the grand event, as she chose to be totally immersed in our pool. When the Pastors performing the ceremony opened it up to anyone else who wanted to make their choice or anyone who wanted to be rebaptised, her younger brother decided it was a good day for him to do this as well. Now he had been talking about it for weeks as well, but this was her day, so I hadn't asked her to share it with him, but rather told him of course he could do this and we would choose a day for him. One of my own blessings came at the moment the offer for anyone to join her was made, as she looked at her little brother and said," Come on Peter, do this with me". Now the remarkable part of this to me is , as a teenager she is under most circumstances completely self absorbed! And yet given an opportunity to do something with or for someone else, she grasped the chance to go for it!
So my youngest daughter and my youngest son in the presence of their immediate family and our wonderful circle of closest friends and church family members were baptised together on July 18. It was a joyful day not only for them, but for me as their mother, as I watched them go under the water and come back up born again! They officially claimed their faith in that brief moment of time, and will be blessed beyond their comprehension as the days of their lives unfold.
For me it was a double blessing to watch as two more of my children took that leap of faith, and I now have four of my seven that have chosen to be Baptised. I look forward to watching them continue to grow in their faith, to help others grow in theirs, and to embrace them into mine in an entirely new way.
After she compiled her personal list of people she wanted to be included we handed out invitations and all except one were able to attend. For us that meant a grand total of 42 people in our home for the grand event, as she chose to be totally immersed in our pool. When the Pastors performing the ceremony opened it up to anyone else who wanted to make their choice or anyone who wanted to be rebaptised, her younger brother decided it was a good day for him to do this as well. Now he had been talking about it for weeks as well, but this was her day, so I hadn't asked her to share it with him, but rather told him of course he could do this and we would choose a day for him. One of my own blessings came at the moment the offer for anyone to join her was made, as she looked at her little brother and said," Come on Peter, do this with me". Now the remarkable part of this to me is , as a teenager she is under most circumstances completely self absorbed! And yet given an opportunity to do something with or for someone else, she grasped the chance to go for it!
So my youngest daughter and my youngest son in the presence of their immediate family and our wonderful circle of closest friends and church family members were baptised together on July 18. It was a joyful day not only for them, but for me as their mother, as I watched them go under the water and come back up born again! They officially claimed their faith in that brief moment of time, and will be blessed beyond their comprehension as the days of their lives unfold.
For me it was a double blessing to watch as two more of my children took that leap of faith, and I now have four of my seven that have chosen to be Baptised. I look forward to watching them continue to grow in their faith, to help others grow in theirs, and to embrace them into mine in an entirely new way.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Our Lives Are Like A Relish Dish
Sometimes I sit and look at where my life is at, where it has been and where it appears to be going and I realize that I often am on the outside looking in the window and that my view is actually what I often refer to as my view from the porch. That is what I call it when I seem to be looking in at my life and though I am there it sometimes seems that I am on the outside looking in.
I first noticed this two and a half years ago when my husband and I were dating. I discovered then that there was an invisible divison between his life and mine and though somewhere in the middle we joined, that divison was none the less there, keeping our life divided into three parts, ours, his, and mine. Somehow through all that we worked on that common ground we found and we continued dating and eventually marrying. And somewhere in the midst of our life, there are still so many parts of it where I find myself still getting my view from the porch.
At times it is like we live three lives that is somehow entwined into one. We have the our life, the my life, and the his life. Since I am the one who still has younger kids living at home he is included more into my part of the three lives than I am into his, which became again transparently clear today. It is seen in the simplest things, and yet those are the very things that remind me of my place on the porch.
In our blended life today we celebrated the Baptism of two of my children, his "step" children, and we also were celebrating the birthday of my teenage daughters boyfriend as well. As my husband was cutting the cake to be handed out I wanted to take a picture, and I once again got a picture with sunglasses and no smile, after he had already done his usual hide from the camera stunt. This is not an uncommon event when I want to capture a moment in time via the camera and though three years ago it was just as common, it didn't seem to irrittate me as much. Perhaps that was before I realized, he does actually take off his sunglasses and does actually give a genuine smile for the camera, just not for me, but to the part of our life that is his.
When he is with his own blood related family he will actually look at the camera, give a heartfelt genuine smile,and guess what he actually shows off the fact that he has eyes underneath sunglasses. I find these pictures without knowledge because we have facebooks and he gets tagged by his "real" children on it so that he too has the pictures. Silly thing to bug someone you are most likely thinking and I actually tend to agree to a point. However, these visits are never shared verbally or any other way until they are happy family photo shots online. As I sit on the porch looking in at the part of life that is behind that invisible divider I often wonder why that is. That in itself is mystifying to me, but then when we have an event to take a good photo shot at, that my children or I are involved in we get the goofy photos instead of the nice ones.
As we move forward through the days of our lives, it becomes clearer and clearer to me that there will forever be the relsih dish effect in our lives. There will always be three sections and no matter how much I want to include him in all aspects of my life, there are always going to be parts he doesn't really want to be involved in where my children or my side of the family label is concerned, and there also will be parts of his life that I will never be fully included in as well.
This is all part of blending two completely different families together.
I first noticed this two and a half years ago when my husband and I were dating. I discovered then that there was an invisible divison between his life and mine and though somewhere in the middle we joined, that divison was none the less there, keeping our life divided into three parts, ours, his, and mine. Somehow through all that we worked on that common ground we found and we continued dating and eventually marrying. And somewhere in the midst of our life, there are still so many parts of it where I find myself still getting my view from the porch.
At times it is like we live three lives that is somehow entwined into one. We have the our life, the my life, and the his life. Since I am the one who still has younger kids living at home he is included more into my part of the three lives than I am into his, which became again transparently clear today. It is seen in the simplest things, and yet those are the very things that remind me of my place on the porch.
In our blended life today we celebrated the Baptism of two of my children, his "step" children, and we also were celebrating the birthday of my teenage daughters boyfriend as well. As my husband was cutting the cake to be handed out I wanted to take a picture, and I once again got a picture with sunglasses and no smile, after he had already done his usual hide from the camera stunt. This is not an uncommon event when I want to capture a moment in time via the camera and though three years ago it was just as common, it didn't seem to irrittate me as much. Perhaps that was before I realized, he does actually take off his sunglasses and does actually give a genuine smile for the camera, just not for me, but to the part of our life that is his.
When he is with his own blood related family he will actually look at the camera, give a heartfelt genuine smile,and guess what he actually shows off the fact that he has eyes underneath sunglasses. I find these pictures without knowledge because we have facebooks and he gets tagged by his "real" children on it so that he too has the pictures. Silly thing to bug someone you are most likely thinking and I actually tend to agree to a point. However, these visits are never shared verbally or any other way until they are happy family photo shots online. As I sit on the porch looking in at the part of life that is behind that invisible divider I often wonder why that is. That in itself is mystifying to me, but then when we have an event to take a good photo shot at, that my children or I are involved in we get the goofy photos instead of the nice ones.
As we move forward through the days of our lives, it becomes clearer and clearer to me that there will forever be the relsih dish effect in our lives. There will always be three sections and no matter how much I want to include him in all aspects of my life, there are always going to be parts he doesn't really want to be involved in where my children or my side of the family label is concerned, and there also will be parts of his life that I will never be fully included in as well.
This is all part of blending two completely different families together.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Good Old Summer Days
I remember the good old summer days of youth. School ended and the days were longer, and filled with carefree nothingness. We looked so forward to those longer days and all that freedom to do pretty much nothing at all. Friends spent the night, we spent the night somewhere and families actually took vacations, had cookouts,family reunions, and we all just basked in the enjoyment of being lazy for days and weeks. Ah, to have a summer like that again!!
Now my summer is filled with sports practices, teenage music blasting in my head hours after they have actually turned the music off, cleaning up after armies of teenagers, and it seems someone is spending the night at my house every night! Seriously not one night goes by that one child or more doesn't say " I have a question, can so and so stay the night?". There are no lazy carefree days filled with nothingness in my summer. I can't even really decide why they ever called it things like summer vacation, or summer break. I can't find five minutes to be lazy and do nothing. Cookouts are a lot of work, where did we ever get the idea that cookouts were the way to go. You have to shop, decide what to cook, clean the grill, wait for ever for the grill to heat up, and then can you believe you actually still have to prepare food after all, so you have something to eat with whatever you are cooking out!! I mean I don't remember that from my earlier summers. I had the crazy idea that while we kids loafed around in our nothingness every one did, with the exception of the dad who had to go to work.
Summer around here consists of five kids with five various sets of friends who all think our house is just the coolest place to be all day and apparently every night as well. I wonder sometimes if they really have homes at all. Our house seems to be the local camp or something, and my kitchen seems to be open to the public. I didn't realize we even owned as many dishes as I find in my kitchen sink at any given moment throught out the day. I barely get them dry before they are again dirty in the sink. I have this wonderful modern device called a dishwasher, but apparently you have to be over 30 to put dirty dishes in it, as no one here during summer seems to know how.
I have decided it might be a really good idea to put in a revolving door before summer rolls around again, as it seems ours is constantly being opened and closed. They will walk outside, turn around come back in, just to walk out and back in again in five minutes. They stand there with the door half open and declare it is hot today! Well no kidding, it is hot every day, it is summer. I guess they have some strange idea that if they wait five minutes and go out again it might somehow be cooler, but surprise still hot...let's try again in a few minutes!! And so it goes with the door. Know what else I don't remember from my lazy summers of the past, electric costs A LOT!!
Then what is up with youth sports?? I mean seriously we practice football all summer long, three to five nights a week depending on the cooperativeness of the weather. Those wonderful longer days are spent sweating at a field all so we can give our kids the great opportunity of team sports!! WOW! What a great idea that is. Of course it has it's advantages too... it means we have to eat dinner by 4:30 so those cookouts are out of the question. However it adds to the restaurant effect in the kitchen since I make sure all the dinner dishes and such are done before we leave, that way they are all clean for round two after we get home.
I still have one luxury of my earleir summers though. Remember we got to stay up late?? Well I still get too, that way after all are showered and all have eaten their second course of dinner, and I get yet round 250 of the dishes dealt with, then I get to take a shower and if I am very lucky there may be a few trickles of hot water left, I might actually pick up a bottle of shampoo that isn't empty and once in the while there is actually still a full size towel left in the cabinet to dry off with, if not I have learned that hand towels work too. But the best part is I still get to stay up late!! There are times when it is almost time to get up by the time I get to sleep.
Then there is morning while they are all sleeping in late, and I am up early. I stumble to the kitchen to discover I can't find the sink!! Seems it is a requirement in my house for each operson to use four or more glasses and various other dishes after I have gone to sleep as there is some sort of rule that mom must wake up to sinks full of dishes! And did you know that lightning bugs must come in our homes at night and eat all our food, because in my house food is eaten in the middle of the night by no one here and they also leave dishes for you.
But soon summer will end, things will slowly return to a more normal state, and just as I begin to get comfortable with that......it will be winter break!!
Now my summer is filled with sports practices, teenage music blasting in my head hours after they have actually turned the music off, cleaning up after armies of teenagers, and it seems someone is spending the night at my house every night! Seriously not one night goes by that one child or more doesn't say " I have a question, can so and so stay the night?". There are no lazy carefree days filled with nothingness in my summer. I can't even really decide why they ever called it things like summer vacation, or summer break. I can't find five minutes to be lazy and do nothing. Cookouts are a lot of work, where did we ever get the idea that cookouts were the way to go. You have to shop, decide what to cook, clean the grill, wait for ever for the grill to heat up, and then can you believe you actually still have to prepare food after all, so you have something to eat with whatever you are cooking out!! I mean I don't remember that from my earlier summers. I had the crazy idea that while we kids loafed around in our nothingness every one did, with the exception of the dad who had to go to work.
Summer around here consists of five kids with five various sets of friends who all think our house is just the coolest place to be all day and apparently every night as well. I wonder sometimes if they really have homes at all. Our house seems to be the local camp or something, and my kitchen seems to be open to the public. I didn't realize we even owned as many dishes as I find in my kitchen sink at any given moment throught out the day. I barely get them dry before they are again dirty in the sink. I have this wonderful modern device called a dishwasher, but apparently you have to be over 30 to put dirty dishes in it, as no one here during summer seems to know how.
I have decided it might be a really good idea to put in a revolving door before summer rolls around again, as it seems ours is constantly being opened and closed. They will walk outside, turn around come back in, just to walk out and back in again in five minutes. They stand there with the door half open and declare it is hot today! Well no kidding, it is hot every day, it is summer. I guess they have some strange idea that if they wait five minutes and go out again it might somehow be cooler, but surprise still hot...let's try again in a few minutes!! And so it goes with the door. Know what else I don't remember from my lazy summers of the past, electric costs A LOT!!
Then what is up with youth sports?? I mean seriously we practice football all summer long, three to five nights a week depending on the cooperativeness of the weather. Those wonderful longer days are spent sweating at a field all so we can give our kids the great opportunity of team sports!! WOW! What a great idea that is. Of course it has it's advantages too... it means we have to eat dinner by 4:30 so those cookouts are out of the question. However it adds to the restaurant effect in the kitchen since I make sure all the dinner dishes and such are done before we leave, that way they are all clean for round two after we get home.
I still have one luxury of my earleir summers though. Remember we got to stay up late?? Well I still get too, that way after all are showered and all have eaten their second course of dinner, and I get yet round 250 of the dishes dealt with, then I get to take a shower and if I am very lucky there may be a few trickles of hot water left, I might actually pick up a bottle of shampoo that isn't empty and once in the while there is actually still a full size towel left in the cabinet to dry off with, if not I have learned that hand towels work too. But the best part is I still get to stay up late!! There are times when it is almost time to get up by the time I get to sleep.
Then there is morning while they are all sleeping in late, and I am up early. I stumble to the kitchen to discover I can't find the sink!! Seems it is a requirement in my house for each operson to use four or more glasses and various other dishes after I have gone to sleep as there is some sort of rule that mom must wake up to sinks full of dishes! And did you know that lightning bugs must come in our homes at night and eat all our food, because in my house food is eaten in the middle of the night by no one here and they also leave dishes for you.
But soon summer will end, things will slowly return to a more normal state, and just as I begin to get comfortable with that......it will be winter break!!
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Yikes!! Hey I Want A Rewind!!
During my motherhood journey, I look back on the days of my childrens infancy and toddlerhood, and I think Oh, if I only knew then what I know now!! Those wonderful innocent days of whimpering cries from babies, and the helplessness of being a mother pulling her hair out trying to figure out why are they crying?? I so remember thinking if only you could talk and tell me what is wrong. You know those cries, when they have a full belly so hunger isn't the problem, they don't really have a tummy ache as they just burped and spit out any excess all over you, they aren't wet you just changed them, too soon for teething, no shots just had causing this, and rocking, singing,walking,begging, nothing helps!! Ah yes I remember those days.
Then they speak and you are delighted, finally now you and baby can communicate. Baby can help you know what to do by telling you what is wrong. Uh huh...only problem is baby won't talk, they just point, whine, nod, and the only word you can understand with absolute clarity besides me is that.
Suddenly those days flew by and the child is no longer a baby and they have a vocabulary that you actually can understand and for a few years life for the most part is grand. They use their manners and never forget please and thank you. I love you are words that just flow from their sweet mouth non stop. And you swell with pride at your child.
Before you know it you have a teenager and sadly you understand everything they are saying. They are still whining and crying and their favorite words are still me and that with a lot I want and can I mixed in. Those manners, well lets say letting them have friends and social lives was not your best idea. You find yourself looking back at their baby pictures and wanting to slap yourself for begging to be able to understand their words, because now you are praying for silence, wishing you couldn't understand what they were saying, as you look at them blankly wondering did your child actually just use that word, or has someone dropped the wrong kid off at your house.
I have officially got four teenagers in my house now, and that means I have personally had to live with six teenagers so far, and heaven help me I still have one that will be a teenager! I personally have a goal to survive this and witness each of them with at least one teenager of their very own. I will even treat myself to a medal if I do!
As I think back to the days of wishing so hard I could understand what they were trying to tell me I think now oh how I wish you couldn't talk yet. Then I look at the one that is grown up with a child of their own now and I think ah Her turn. So though I can't rewind my life back to the quieter days, I can smile as I watch my own child shake her head wondering is this really my sweet little baby? Yelling like that?? And then I can laugh when I remind her he is only five and the real fun is still to come. We get to rewind in a way through our children, and this time we get to be in our parents spot of watching them deal with it and smiling.
Then they speak and you are delighted, finally now you and baby can communicate. Baby can help you know what to do by telling you what is wrong. Uh huh...only problem is baby won't talk, they just point, whine, nod, and the only word you can understand with absolute clarity besides me is that.
Suddenly those days flew by and the child is no longer a baby and they have a vocabulary that you actually can understand and for a few years life for the most part is grand. They use their manners and never forget please and thank you. I love you are words that just flow from their sweet mouth non stop. And you swell with pride at your child.
Before you know it you have a teenager and sadly you understand everything they are saying. They are still whining and crying and their favorite words are still me and that with a lot I want and can I mixed in. Those manners, well lets say letting them have friends and social lives was not your best idea. You find yourself looking back at their baby pictures and wanting to slap yourself for begging to be able to understand their words, because now you are praying for silence, wishing you couldn't understand what they were saying, as you look at them blankly wondering did your child actually just use that word, or has someone dropped the wrong kid off at your house.
I have officially got four teenagers in my house now, and that means I have personally had to live with six teenagers so far, and heaven help me I still have one that will be a teenager! I personally have a goal to survive this and witness each of them with at least one teenager of their very own. I will even treat myself to a medal if I do!
As I think back to the days of wishing so hard I could understand what they were trying to tell me I think now oh how I wish you couldn't talk yet. Then I look at the one that is grown up with a child of their own now and I think ah Her turn. So though I can't rewind my life back to the quieter days, I can smile as I watch my own child shake her head wondering is this really my sweet little baby? Yelling like that?? And then I can laugh when I remind her he is only five and the real fun is still to come. We get to rewind in a way through our children, and this time we get to be in our parents spot of watching them deal with it and smiling.
I Now Pronounce You Family and Family
We live is a society of muliple marriages, the generation of yours, mine, and sometimes ours.In my situation the ours consists of farm animals , dogs, and cats. The yours and the mine are made up of seven kids belonging to me and three kids belonging to him, and then all the fill in family as well on both sides.
I met my husband a little more than three and a half years ago on myspace, and in person three years ago. We will be married two years this fall. He was then a divorced dad of three and I was a widowed mom of seven, five of whom still lived at home.
In the months before we even thought about marrying, he met my kids, I met his kids. We spent time with his parents, his brother and sister in law and their children, his sister, I even met an aunt of his. He met my aunt, my sister, her husband and their boys, my brother, sister in law and their blended family of his and theirs, my cousin and her family.
Given the fact that everyone liked one another, all talked, laughed and seemed to enjoy one another, you would think that when we did get married our lives would have blended smoothly into one big happy family!! Wrong!!!
We learned quickly that the kids that like you , like you much better when you are around now and then, not daily. We have learned that no matter what ways we try to be creative to include everyone it won't happen that way. We have learned that grown children are very jealous of young children, and that whether kids despite what age they are liked you before they don't like you very much if you have "taken" their daddy or their mom! Through it all we have discovered they for all their wanting you to be happy really liked it best when you had no real personal life at all and they could count on you to be there at their beckon call.
And this is what we call our blended family! Between us there are a total of seven boys, three girls, one granddaughter, and one grandson. There is his family which he refers to as " My other family" and their is my family. There are his kids and my kids, one set of parents on his side. A grand total between us of three brothers, two sisters, two sisters in law, and one brother in law. and somewhere in the middle of it all there we are. Two people surrounded by the obstacles of many, trying to be a couple in our spare time.
We have discovered that getting together with the family ( that is the entire family consisting of both sides ) is an illusion, well at the very least is a memory of our past. We have tried birthday parties that included from both sides and have ended up with no one from either side. Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, you name it we can only get some to agree, and the rest are busy. Add to it that the ones who do agree come hours after you have asked them to be here for dinner, or say they are coming and then just don't show up at all.
We both remember the days of family reunions, aunts, uncles, cousins, in laws, and probably some outlaws but the whole entire family, gathering for feasting, playing, joking, talking, laughing, and reminiscing about the good old days. That is how it was when we were kids. That is how we were brought up to think it was supposed to be~always! That is how we somehow thought it would be when we blended our two family units and that is also the point where we were the most wrong! Now in fairness he has family that lives in other states, and so do I, but they do come to visit. He sees his family and I see mine and every once in the while it works that I see his and he sees mine too.
But our dreams of blending the families and being one large happy family have long since fallen to the wayside. The harder we try to do that the harder it becomes and now we just accept that he was right when he labeled it his other family.
Scotty and Missy are a couple, they live with five of her kids, and lots of farm animals, flower gardens, and fruit trees. He has a family, and they belong to him and she has a family and they belong to her. His kids have no desire to be a big happy family, and hers don't either. They have learned through the blending journey that they are the only common denominator and that if we of them fell to the side, his family would go their way, and hers would do the same.
Now you might say well perhaps it the ages of the kids, and I suppose perhaps for some that is true, our children combined range in age from 7-32, and age could be a contributing factor. Life is a facgtor too I imagine as everyone is busy in the world today, but how sad that we are too busy for family, for following traditions, for making traditions. Sad also when I think how we now live in the generation of I now pronounce you family and family....go your seperate ways and hope what God has joined together, children don't put unsunder.
I met my husband a little more than three and a half years ago on myspace, and in person three years ago. We will be married two years this fall. He was then a divorced dad of three and I was a widowed mom of seven, five of whom still lived at home.
In the months before we even thought about marrying, he met my kids, I met his kids. We spent time with his parents, his brother and sister in law and their children, his sister, I even met an aunt of his. He met my aunt, my sister, her husband and their boys, my brother, sister in law and their blended family of his and theirs, my cousin and her family.
Given the fact that everyone liked one another, all talked, laughed and seemed to enjoy one another, you would think that when we did get married our lives would have blended smoothly into one big happy family!! Wrong!!!
We learned quickly that the kids that like you , like you much better when you are around now and then, not daily. We have learned that no matter what ways we try to be creative to include everyone it won't happen that way. We have learned that grown children are very jealous of young children, and that whether kids despite what age they are liked you before they don't like you very much if you have "taken" their daddy or their mom! Through it all we have discovered they for all their wanting you to be happy really liked it best when you had no real personal life at all and they could count on you to be there at their beckon call.
And this is what we call our blended family! Between us there are a total of seven boys, three girls, one granddaughter, and one grandson. There is his family which he refers to as " My other family" and their is my family. There are his kids and my kids, one set of parents on his side. A grand total between us of three brothers, two sisters, two sisters in law, and one brother in law. and somewhere in the middle of it all there we are. Two people surrounded by the obstacles of many, trying to be a couple in our spare time.
We have discovered that getting together with the family ( that is the entire family consisting of both sides ) is an illusion, well at the very least is a memory of our past. We have tried birthday parties that included from both sides and have ended up with no one from either side. Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, you name it we can only get some to agree, and the rest are busy. Add to it that the ones who do agree come hours after you have asked them to be here for dinner, or say they are coming and then just don't show up at all.
We both remember the days of family reunions, aunts, uncles, cousins, in laws, and probably some outlaws but the whole entire family, gathering for feasting, playing, joking, talking, laughing, and reminiscing about the good old days. That is how it was when we were kids. That is how we were brought up to think it was supposed to be~always! That is how we somehow thought it would be when we blended our two family units and that is also the point where we were the most wrong! Now in fairness he has family that lives in other states, and so do I, but they do come to visit. He sees his family and I see mine and every once in the while it works that I see his and he sees mine too.
But our dreams of blending the families and being one large happy family have long since fallen to the wayside. The harder we try to do that the harder it becomes and now we just accept that he was right when he labeled it his other family.
Scotty and Missy are a couple, they live with five of her kids, and lots of farm animals, flower gardens, and fruit trees. He has a family, and they belong to him and she has a family and they belong to her. His kids have no desire to be a big happy family, and hers don't either. They have learned through the blending journey that they are the only common denominator and that if we of them fell to the side, his family would go their way, and hers would do the same.
Now you might say well perhaps it the ages of the kids, and I suppose perhaps for some that is true, our children combined range in age from 7-32, and age could be a contributing factor. Life is a facgtor too I imagine as everyone is busy in the world today, but how sad that we are too busy for family, for following traditions, for making traditions. Sad also when I think how we now live in the generation of I now pronounce you family and family....go your seperate ways and hope what God has joined together, children don't put unsunder.
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