Our family tree has many branches.  Ours is a blended family.  My husband Richard came into this marriage with two kids, a daughter Minka and a son Aaron (the two in the middle).  I had one daughter Jeanine (on the far right).  The kids were in second and third grades.  When we decided to get married we decided to have our kids be our wedding party, afterall they were getting a new "family" as well.  Minka wanted to be my maid of honor, Jeanine wanted to be the flower girl, Aaron was asked to be Richard's best man, it just worked out great.  Our daughters wore white princess frilly dresses and those white satin shoes that get dyed for weddings all the time.  They loved those dresses!  I wore a soft mint green dress since it was a second wedding and frankly I had more fun helping the girls pick out their dresses.  Our wedding was small with just a few friends and family.   Devon (on the far left in the picture above) our adopted daughter was also there but wasn't part of our family yet.  Had I known then, I would have gone out and bought her a frilly princess dress as well.  It really is one of the few regrets I have in life. But hindsight and all that....  Anyway, at the last minute we made her the ring bearer, so she too was part of the wedding.  This is a picture of my brother Joe walking me down the "aisle" (actually the sideyard since we got married in our backyard).

Since there is only a year and 3 months between my oldest and my youngest, the teen years weren't the most fun... but I figure we got it all over at once and I still have my hair.  It's amazing how much easier they become to communicate with once they get through those teen years.  Of course, I'm seeing it from a parent's point of view.  I think they look back fondly with memories of growing up together. They were as different as four kids can get. Everything from their friends, to the type of clothes they wore to the type of music they listened to was different.  But they were siblings through and through.  If you messed with one you messed with four.

It was confusing at times with our different kids calling us different things... Jeanine called me Mom, the others called me Betty etc.  Soon after getting married Richard and I became the male and female parental units.  It worked for us. When all was said and done... our kids have different extended families which created some issues but we made it through them.  My mother was the only grandparent to consider all four of my kids her grandkids -- that's me with her in Philly with a bunch of friends.  It's a long story but we weren't the only people that night with "lip" bread in their mouths but what happens in Philly, stays in Philly!

I love being married to Richard.  He's caring supportive and affectionate and quite the romantic.  He is there for me 100% and when I have good or bad news he's the one I want to talk to.  He's my best friend and I love spending time with him.