Family

What makes up a family? Two parents and a child? One parent and a child? A single person? A couple? A combination of four generations of people, including cousins, aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents, children? A divorced mom raising her children with another woman? A divorced dad raising his kids alone? A divorced man and woman and the woman's new wife raising children together?
We have struggled to find our way as a "family" over the past 15 months. We have listened to the nay sayers and the negative people in our lives and it has torn us all apart. We have listened to ourselves and our own hearts and flourished. We have listened to the kids and responded with love and conviction. We are now a family of 5 instead of one family of 4 and one family of 3. Yep that's right if you add those up they don't equal the same thing. No...we didn't ship anyone off to China. Jess and I now consider ourselves, the kids, and their father one big "weird" different family. We all love each other. We all respect each other. We are all there for each other.
Now my question is what do we do now that our family is being targeted by nay sayers again? It's hard to ignore people who are "family", but we take our life as a big family seriously. We split our time with the kids. He has them half the week, we have them half the week. We have worked hard to get ourselves all in places where loving one another was completely possible. Our love for the kids brought us together in the beginning, but now we love each other for each other...not for the kids. We are an awesome parenting team. It's awesome to see the kids flourish in our non traditional family. We have worked hard to get where we are... will we allow "outsiders" to break our family apart... will we allow "outsiders" to attack one member of the family without protecting that person... will we allow "outsiders" to be any part of our family or will we only allow those into our new family unit that are positive and supportive? These are all questions we are facing right now.
Jess is an amazing partner/wife, a fantastic mother, and a powerful woman. She is a dedicated friend and a caring neonatal nurse. She gives me peace and hope. She calls me on my crap and she gets my humor. She loves me for me. I couldn't ask for more. I love every part of Jess. I love that she thinks she's hilarious sometimes. :) I encourage her to challenge herself (she wants to start running 5Ks again). I support her when she is down and out. I love that she wants to continue her education and further her career. I love that she has similar interests as I do and also introduces me to new things that she has interest in. I love how she loves her kids.
I am marrying her in 10 days. I am proud of our relationship. I am proud of our non traditional family.