How normal is YOUR family?

As I was editing these images, I was wondering what a “normal” family looks like these days.  When I think about family, I think of a nice clean family tree complete with appropriate branches…  you know, grandma and grandpa – married only once and FOREVER.  Followed by their children, including my father… married to my mother, again only once and FOREVER.  Followed by me and my brother and sister, where I am married only once and forever, and so on.

The truth about my immediate family is that my parents were married and since divorced and remarried.  My dad had a daughter with my step-mom, my mom was done after my brother and me. I was married, had Jordan, divorced, married Heather, had Grace and have Michael on the way.

TYPICAL?

As a wedding photographer, I get the distinct honor of being let into a family for a day, a GREAT day.  I get to learn how the families are made and how they grow and of the most recent weddings, many of them are blended families.  I have seen step-mom’s dancing with their step-sons and big families getting bigger through marriage, kinda like the Brady Bunch

So back to these images and the story behind them.  Heather, Jordan, Grace and I were headed to meet with Jordan’s mom Katie and his sister Alexis at a local park.  I had my gear there and took the opportunity to grab some images.  From the outside, seeing a blended family is a little weird…  I mean how awkward is it?  Do they get a long?  In our case, we are not awkward and it is totally cool.  Heather and Katie talk a lot.  And since Grace is Jordan’s sister, Alexis considers Grace her sister too.  Ask me back in the early days if I thought Katie and I would be able to get along like this and I would have liked the thought but would have also thought you were crazy.  I sure am glad we are grown up enough to have worked out the situation we have now.

So, we are FAMILY – even if the tree is a little ornate