Family Ties...

These pics show me along with other (human) members of my family. I'm the blonde mother, by the way. Everyone else obviously looks like their dad. Some friends of my kids have even asked if they were adopted when they see me with my kids. Once they meet dad, it is obvious why they look the way they do.

We are a pretty close little group. We have to be. There are no extended family that live nearby, no living grandmothers or grandfathers either. We literally have begun our own little family legacy out of necessity.

Christmas and other holidays are spent with...us for the most part. There are no family gatherings where cousins get to meet each other or catch up where they left off from last gathering.

We have a church that we attend and consider them our family instead. It is a fairly closeknit church that started off small but is now growing by leaps and bounds.

Families come in all different sizes, some big and some small. Ours happens to be small with some other extended family out in the great distance that we meet up with occasionally. There are positives and negatives to all sizes of families. My feeling is that this is what we have. We make the best of it and I don't mean that in a negative way. We have had the opportunity to grow close to one another through thick and thin of things. It's the glue that holds us together...relationship and caring. And our trust, faith and belief in God.