The Month of LOVE: I Love My Weird Family!

Friday is #FamilyNight and I thought this would be a perfect day to write about another kind of love… our love for our children.

I will probably write a post for each one of my children individually during this month, but for today I want to write about my family as a whole. My husband and I have raised five children together.

They are mostly adults now, ages 26, 22, 21, 19 & 17. Obviously, they’re pretty close in ages and because they were homeschooled for the majority of their educational years, they grew up quite close to each other.

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There have, of course, been personality clashes, fights for attention and just sibling rivalries over the years with that whole natural ‘ebb and flow’ of relationships. It was always hard for me when my kids weren’t getting along, especially as they got older and it wasn’t as easy as making them do a load of laundry together until they got along again like it was when they were young! (Yes, that was my punishment when they were little. It always worked and I got some laundry done in the process)

All in all, though, we’re at a stage of life where everyone enjoys hanging out and being together. As illustrated by the fact that my two sons share a house with two other friends. My two youngest daughters live at home and my oldest daughter lives about 20-30 minutes away with her family.

We all started getting together once a month for “Family Night” where we’d have dinner and then play some sort of game afterwards. Sometimes it was Telestrations or Cards Against Humanity, other times the kids were in the mood to play poker for the night. Yet other times, we all sat down and watched a movie together. Usually it’s some sort of game that leads to all sorts of inappropriate jokes and LOTS of laughter. There is nothing I love more than hearing my kids all paying games and laughing their butts off in the next room (while I’m entertaining the grandkids in their room at our house!)

The once a month game night/family dinner soon morphed into twice a month… and NOW we just open the doors every Friday night. Now the kids have started asking about bringing extra friends along. Of course we already invite our adopted kids, those friends who just feel like part of the family already, so inviting a couple more isn’t a problem for me!

Recently a bunch of us decided to meet up at the coffeehouse for open mic night as well. Mostly to support @abyni and her music, but we all enjoyed hanging out so much that it appears that “Open Mic” night might start being a regular family event as well.

I love my kids, obviously, parents tend to love their kids :) But the thing I really love about my kids is how much we all genuinely love spending time together. I love how funny and witty they are. I love how different they all are, and yet how supportive they all are of each other.

I love hearing their inside jokes (and of course participating myself) and I love seeing that even though they’ve grown up, they still love family time.

I love seeing how all of the kids interact and play with their nephews… including when they all get so involved with playdoh that they don’t notice the kids have left the room for other things! :)

I feel very very lucky to have such happy, healthy kids and there aren’t words to describe how much I love spending time with each one of them… one on one time is AMAZING and the group time together is incredible for entirely different reasons. I am a very very lucky mom!

I can't leave out our most recent family night. It was a bit belated because of holiday schedules, but we finally had our "Dirty Santa" gift exchange. Most of the family seemed to take the "Dirty" part of the title as a reason to get inapproppriate gifts... so it was a wild night :) The Trex costume that Jaedin aka @knightengale was a clear winner and everyone fought over that gift. Patrick @serapium still insists that he won with his gift, because he's still hanging onto the "dirty" part of the gift exchange. Plus, the guys in this family are weirdly competitive... soooooo

Here are most of the other gifts from that night:

Also included in this crazy family post:
Patrick aka @serapium, Sprite, her husband Matthew, their boys Lyric & Shepherd, Kainan aka @mcloven69, Jaedin aka @knightengale, Paris, @abyni our youngest, Jazz aka @schmwke (Paris' boyfriend) AND Nick our oldest family friend at the moment (not that he's old,
he's just the one we've kept around the longest!)

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Here is my first post on the topic of love: 10 Ways He Says “I Love You!”

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All photos are mine unless otherwise stated under the photo.