I LOVE our movie nights. We turn our family room into a comfy theater complete with blankets, pillows, popcorn, and drinks!

I also loved that my son went from being an only child to having 3 siblings. He loves it and I think he has become a better person because of it. He has learned to share, to work out conflicts, to help other people, and the list could go on!

I love having a large family with so many different personalities.

And I love the fact that I now have 2 daughters that I can do girl stuff with.

And I love that my sons clothes get a lot of use from my ss using them after my son outgrows them.

I have become more organized with having so many kids.

So many good things to our blended family. Would not trade it for anything!

I am a bit cynical these days but

"the best thing about a my blended family"

Is I cannot take any blame or credit for what my SC do ... good or bad not my fault.

Yeah, from what I know Pseudo mom, I really can't blame you. But on the other hand, even after all you have been through, you can still come with at least ONE positive thing! That says a lot!

June,
I love when they "help" me cook meals. (Not easy at all!)
Isn't that the truth!!! It's tough to balance having fun and getting it done, isn't it?!

Lord, I go crazy sometimes! Say I'm making something REALLY SIMPLE, like Kool Aid. The trick is dividing the steps so that everyone gets to do something. But it's Kool Aid! Add water and stir! How do you separate that? Lolol.
DH just laughs at me and looks at me like I'm crazy. He'd rather just cook and get it done. But they look so earnest when they ask to help, who can say no???

I am thankful that I have been given a second chance to have a good and healthy marriage. I'm thankful that I have the love from my husband that I've needed all of my life but never had. I love being able to love a little girl that has lost her mommy. I'm blessed to have her love me, depend on me, laugh with me, make memories with me. I love knowing that I have had the chance to experience what it's like to have 2 children from of my body and 2 children of my heart. I love being able to give all of the kids the example that they need in their lives to encourage a good marriage for them in the future.

"Children of my heart".......absolutely beautiful.

junegemstar.....I read this when I was young. It was in a letter to a child that had been adopted. It said..."You are not a child of my body but a child of my heart." I have remembered it all of these years. When I think about my step daughters in this way I understand how truly blessed I am to have them in my life.

There are SO many positives I could go into...we do a lot together as a family (with shopping being everyone's favorite thing to do, of course) and there are so many special moments...but the biggest positive to my experience as a blended family has been seeing how open and accepting my parents have been. They live 200 miles away, yet when we visit my family makes no difference in our children at all. They have accepted and loved my stepchildren just as they accepted and loved my biological children. I always knew my mother was something special but seeing her treat each child as an equal has been such an experience. Ask her how many grandchildren she has...she will always include my 3 stepchildren without explanation that they are "steps." At a family reunion, which I could not attend because of the kid's necessary attendance to football/cheerleading, she got up to talk to our VERY large family about her life. Many of whom she hadn't seen in years. She mentioned that her eldest daughter couldn't be with her today because I had previous engagements with her "5 precious grandbabies." She said nothing about "Well, 3 of them aren't really hers..."

I admire that about my mother. She is one of a kind.

Hmmmm...well. honestly I don't think of us as being a blended family so that's a tuff one. We don't have alot of the more common problems of step families. The girls live with us and mom is out of the picture 97% of the time so it doesn't really feel "blended" as much as some other situations.

I will say for me it was a real experience to finally have kids around me at home. I work with them all day but had never had any to come home to. I had been told I couldn't get pregnant so the girls to me were a huge blessing. They filled this void I had from not having any children. It was a nasty feeling to not feel needed in a motherly way and to think you would NEVER know what that felt like was unbearable. I always felt SEMI-adult because I wasn't a parent and all my friends were. I still felt like a teenager. People were always aking me "So when are you gonna have a kid?" People are dumb like that...they don't consider the possibilities before opening up their mouths.

Of course I am pregnant now and we are all very excited but even if I would of never gotten pregnant I would of still felt 100% satisfied just helping out with the girls. For the first time I feel like I have my own family and it's a really awesome feeling.

I'd have to say that even with the problems I've had with my SM, growing up with a blended family situation itself has definitely helped me to be flexible as a person, and of course it's exposed me to multiple lifestyles and even cultures. My mom and her family and my SF and his family are all Jewish; she grew up in Pittsburgh, he grew up in Cleveland, and I grew up with them in Miami. My Dad is half Italian and half Scotch-Irish and grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania, very "Mayberry" or even "Norman Rockwell"-like. It still is literally like 1952 there, and I love that as much as I love the cosmopolitan modernity and excitement of Miami. SM grew up in Alabama. I now live in the South, and there are many things about it I embrace. (Conversely, there's several things about each place that I think are less-than-great.) I've learned to love and embrace ALL of it as literally parts of myself, and feel I have things in common with a wide variety of people. The travelling back-and-forth and adjustments have their down sides, as we've all discussed. But one thing I will say is that it can make a kid a bit more broad-minded, diverse and inclusive. Even without the culture or geographic differences. When this goes relatively well, this can be one of the ways a kid can "make lemonade out of lemons" and turn into a good experience.

My experience with my SF has been all-around very good. I absolutely consider him a "bonus" to my life in every way, and very "parental" in a good way. I don't talk about him much on here b/c there's hardly anything to complain about! LOL...

For the SD side: the best thing is having a proper "family" again. My SM is great, and she really grounds my dad, providing more structure to our family.

From the SM side: right now the best thing is seeing the impact that I've had in A__'s life. Now, I'm not saying the I'm the reason he's made personal progress in the past year, just that many of the positive changes in his life have been my initiatives (less time at GM's, speech therapy, etc)...
A year ago I probably would have said that it was that I couldn't/wouldn't be with FDH if I wasn't willing to be part of a blended family.
Who knows what I will say in a year or ten years...

I became a CSM before a BM, so my SD was my first parenting experience. I know that taught me a lot about myself, and I think brought out a lot of strength I may not have otherwise known I had. I honestly pattered many of the things I did to be the opposite of what her mother did as I could see the negative effect they had. This taught me selflessness, humility, compassion, logic and more. The stronger my relationship grew with my SD, and sadly the more I saw her relationship with her mom deteriorate, the more I understood how a parents actions contribute to a child's self worth, self esteem and over all outlook on life.

Every time my SD comes to me because I'm the only person she can "really talk to" and "really understands her" or she runs in from a visit with her mom to wrap her arms around me and say "I'm so lucky to have you" I'm reminded that she has helped mold me into the person I am today. That is a gift I can never repay, and I think my favorite thing about being a blended family.