The First Post about Life in our Blended Family

I guess I'll just start this blog with today. Some posts will simply just say that it's a normal day and everybody is great but I feel those posts are still important as to give a better sense of our family. I don't want this entire blog to just be filled with all the bad stuff that happens. It will truly be a full and honest (except for identities and locations) portrayal of our blended family, the good times and the bad.

Anyway, today would normally be a day that either William or Jasmine would pick up Rayanne from daycare, after school, and she would be going to their house for the evening to spend time with them and her half brother Chase. Today, though, Tony will be picking her up and she will be staying home with us because William and Jasmine are attending a funeral.

Living Arrangments and Visitation Schedules

Here is the living arrangements and visition schedules for each of the girls, Rayanna and lily.

Rayanne:
Primary Residence - with Bio-Mom, Marie, and Step-Dad, Tony.
Visitation Schedule - goes to Bio-Dad William's house every Tuesday evening, returns home at 7:30pm. Stays over Williams house every other weekend starting Thursday night, comes home Sunday evening at 6:30pm. This schedule has been in place for approximately 2.5 to 3 years now and is court appointed. William, his wife and their son live about 10 minutes from us and about the same distance from Rayanne's daycare and school.

**Notes: Rayanne did not know her father until she was about 5 years old. I raised her on my own, with my parents help until I met my husband when Rayanne was about 4 and he stepped in and started helping me. Since her father has been in her life everything has worked out just fine and, though he missed the first 5 years of his life both and him and I agreed that it has been better for Rayanne to have not known him during that time because he did not have his life in control.

Lily:
Primary Residence: with Bio-Mom, Clarice
Visitation Schedule: Bio-Dad, Tony picks Lily up from school every Wednesday and she spends the evening at our house. We have her home by 7:30pm. Tony picks Lily up every other Friday from school and she stays at our house for the weekend, we have her home by 6:30pm on Sunday. Lily and her mother live about 30 minutes away from our house, her school is also about 30 minutes away. She is currently not in daycare. This is a court ordered schedule that has been in place for about a year and a half now, maybe closer to two years.

**Notes: Tony has been in Lily's life since the day she was born. Tony and Clarice have been separated since Lily was about 2 and for the first couple of years Tony took Lily every single weekend and also took her 1 evening during the week. This was before her mom started working and before a court ordered schedule was put in place.

The Family

Since I've told you what this blog is about now I guess it would be good to give you some family background. The names I use in this blog will not be the real names of the people involved as I want to protect everyone's identities because this is a real life family.

Mom/Step-Mom/Wife (Me) - Marie

Dad/Step-Dad/Husband (my hubby) - Tony

Mom's Bio-Daughter (8yrs) - Rayanne

Dad's Bio-Daughter (6yrs) - Lily

Mom & Dad's Unborn Son (Mar.) - Dominic

Rayanne's Bio-Dad - William

Rayanne's Step-Mom - Jasmine

Rayanne's Half Brother (2yrs) - Chase

Lily's Bio-Mom - Clarice

At this point those are the main people I can thinking of that will be mentioned in parts of this blog. If other parties are mention, no names will be used they will just be referred to as who the are in relation to anyone on the above list.

Introduction

This blog has been created as a way for me to vent my frustrations, share my joys and just talk about life living in a blended family. Blended family meaning it consists of step-parents and step-kids, and bio-parents and bio-kids. All the names have been changed to protect not only my family’s identity, but also other parties who are involved that, even though at times I would love to tell everybody how much I dislike them, it’s not my place to plaster their identity all over the world wide web and complain about them. So they will get new names, and the locations of where we all live, work, etc. will not be revealed. Not everything in this blog is going to be negativity, it’s just going to be a real account of my family’s experiences with being a blended family, good times and bad. My hope is that maybe other people can read this blog and not feel alone or that other people may even be able to give me some advice on things.