Family

Family.  We use that word all the time.  We have our immediate family, our extended family, our family of friends, our family of POLPs.  Family.  When two people get married you inherit a family.  In laws.  And sometimes you like the family.  You ingrain yourself in their lives.  You start to love them and their children.  You share memories and stories, holidays and special occasions.  Then you divorce.  And the family that you inherited goes away, perhaps not right away, but things fade.  Over time, after the sides are chosen, the bonds that were once formed remain as pictures in a photo album. 

But when you have a child, the family bond is never really broken.  There are aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents.  And in a normal divorce two parents go their separate ways, but bring the child around their respective families.  In a normal divorce.  In a not so normal divorce this doesn’t happen.  So when my “sister in law” and I reconnected, we both realized that no matter what, we each had a child and that child had a cousin.  And my son has two aunts.  And a great grandmother.  And an entire extended family.  And when the opportunity presented itself that I was able to fit New York and Boston in the same trip, there was a very happy and not awkward at all reunion. And I remembered that I loved this family and fun with this family and that this family was torn.  Yet there is a four year old boy that deserves to be a part of that family.  Yes, there was the initial hesitation, the uncertainty of what was said, what was believed, etc., but that melted away quickly.  And we had fun.  And that’s what counts.

We started our trip Saturday to New York.  Lunch and goodies at Aunt Pat and Uncle Dennis’.  Even Aunt Melski dropped by to give some love to her favorite godson.

That night we had a camp out at my parents’ apartment in the city.  In the morning, it was off to Boston.  First we met up with Maeve.  It’s so awesome that we are all older now and I can totally hang out with Katie’s best friend.  She too had to love on the lil’ man (not to mention lots of cupcakes were consumed-yummy thanks Maeve)!

Then it was off to Aunt Angela’s house to meet up with her and Isaiah. When I met Isaiah he was 3 1/2.  He is 14!  It’s unreal how he is so grown up and what a sweet amazing young man he is. Angela has done an amazing job raising him! We took our Valentines out to dinner at Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse.  It’s similar to an Outback but the animals on the wall randomly start to talk.  The buffalo states, “Hi I’m Bill.  I normally don’t sing in front of people.  I sing in the shower.”  This irked Preston to no end that for two days he told me how buffaloes cannot fit in the shower and that why would the buffalo sing in the shower anyway.  Finally I told him, “It was a joke Pres!” to which he replied, “Well it wasn’t funny.” This child. The next day we went to visit Nunny again and had lunch.  Then we visited Maeve at the Channel 7 (NBC affiliate) studios in Boston for a tour of the newsroom.  Totally awesome! We then ended our day at Quincy Market for treats!  It was a great visit.  Here are some pics!