Last night I picked up my daughter from her after-school activities and returned home after a long day at work. I found my three poodles and one cat running through the house disoriented, with dirty athletic socks over their heads. The socks appeared to be those of my two teenage step-sons.

I removed the dirty socks, let the dogs outside, put the cat up in the safety of my bedroom, sent my daughter to work on homework and went in search of the boys. I found them in the game room playing a fierce video game and said hello. They mumbled a quick hello and went back to their game. The battle on the screen required their full attention.

I wandered into the kitchen to contemplate what to make for dinner. While I stared at the refrigerator door, deep in thought, my husband arrived home from work. He plopped his briefcase down by the front door and came into the kitchen to hug me and give me a long wet kiss. That was the best part of my day.

Jim and I have been married for seven months. He is the father of three and I am the mother of two. Our children range in age from twenty-six to eleven, with three of the children still living at home. The other two children are in college. Three months ago we became grandparents. Our lives are chaotic and we have learned to love almost every minute of it. That is the key statement. We have had to learn a great deal as we merge our families and love has gotten us to this point.

Our wedding months prior was a private ceremony. The children were our witnesses and our only guests. I gave them approval to wear their favorite outfit to the wedding without actually understanding the ramifications of that agreement. When we arrived for the ceremony in our long white limousine, the first two out of the car where Jason (15), attired in his full military camouflage gear, and his twin brother Daniel, wearing a t-shirt and jeans, his red updo newly dyed black. Matt (21) followed close behind in a shirt from the Island of Maui . Elise (11) idolizes Jason. She too wore full military camouflage, including a camouflage hat. Melody crawled more slowly out of the limousine wearing a beautiful maternity top. Melody was soon to give us our first grandchild. Jim helped me out of the vehicle wearing his jeans and a white Hawaiian wedding shirt. I wore a long off-white sleeveless wedding gown, giving bystanders the only clue as to why this motley group was gathered together.

We were married that afternoon surrounded

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Tags: Camouflage Gear, Poodles, Video Game

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 3:43 pm and is filed under Relationships & Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.