The Real Blended Family

FAMILY MOTTO:  The kids come first.

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Hi, I'm BlendedMom, and I have a blended family.

Wow, that probably reeked of a support group intro.  I laugh at the idea, but only in part, because there are actually support groups out there for people who are trying to deal with the dynamics of being a "blended family".  There are whole agencies devoted to nothing but helping people get through this challenge.  I don't know any personally because I did it the hard way, as usual.  Perhaps some background....

My husband and I are each on a second marriage and we both brought children into the marriage.  In addition to the children we were already blessed with, we had had one more together.  Truly, we have a "yours, mine and ours" situation.  Unlike the movie that created the phrase, my husband and I have to deal with ex-spouses/co-parents.  It was so tidy in the Hollywood version, resulting in two parents with tons of kids coming together to create this fantastically balanced family unit.  In our reality, there is visitation (local and long distance), child support, family roles, adoption, power struggles, lawyers, and lots of frustrating questions on what the next step should be.

Over the years, we have navigated some pretty stressful and  rewarding situations successfully as a family.  Our motto is "The kids come first".  Using that as our baseline, my husband and I have tried to make the best decisions we could. 

Of course, in the process of navigating these decisions, we have asked advice and used others as sounding boards on what the best decision might be.  In turn, others have sought out our input as well.  The purpose of this blog is to provide a resource for people who might have questions about becoming/being a blended family, have some input to offer, or are just interested in what blended family life is like.

I'm new to the blogging thing, so bear with me as I am learning as I go.  Hmmmm.....looks like it's the hard way again....you'd think I'd have learned by now.