Our Family Life: He got hitched

Continuing on from Halloween in February....

Donavon's Dad got remarried right before Thanksgiving. Yup. We met Ruth on the 2 month anniversary of Brenda's passing and they got hitched not to long after. November 15th I think.

Now before you whip out your judgement, this is definitely a very personal choice and Donavon and I have had many conversations about it as well as with other family members. It breaks down like this: Everyone is different, everyones circumstances are different, we all "move on" in our individual ways, and we as a couple, along with most of his siblings are ok with it. Of course I'd be lying if we didn't have mixed emotions on the whole thing, but this is HIS life, he can do whatever he wants. He is our Dad, and we will support him if this is what he wants. We just lost Mom, we dont want to lose a Dad too because of something silly like this.

We knew, before Brenda had passed he had a strong desire to start dating again. That had already sunk in before she passed. If you think about it, Donavon was just a little guy when he started getting chats from his Dad about "mommy might not be here with us long". Donavon was prepped his entire life that his Mom would not be there throughout his childhood, her time was very limited. Thankfully he got her for 32 years. So as you can imagine my father inlaw had to prep himself that his wife would not always be around, and I'm sure had prepped himself mentally that one day he might have to find another mother to raise his kids with him.

So when he created an online dating profile that wasn't a big deal. I think we all thought it might take awhile, but when you know, you know right? The funny thing is, when I saw her picture, before ever meeting her, I knew it was her. Weird huh?

Now I will say we were all totally blown away that they were getting married so fast. We thought maybe early into the new year they might. So we quickly got to know her and met some of her kids after the engagement. Ha! We were pretty nervous about meeting her kids, I mean they've already decided to get married so uhm, ready or not, you are now stuck with new step brothers & sisters!

It went great. Phew. Ruth has 6 kids. 3 boys and 3 girls. We still haven't met all of them, slowly but surely. Maybe? We have officially met 4. Her oldest, Amy, is awesome, I'm sure the others are too but we just spend the most time with Amy since she lives local, and has kids to play with... and she is a hairstylist and we have hair that needs cut a lot. She's got 4 kids, 2 of which are Issac and Katie's age, Courtney is actually ONE week older than Katie, how awesome is that?! She's become Katie's new BFF. She asks about Courtney all the time! Issac was so thrilled he got NEW cousins, and not just one by one after new babies, he got TWELVE new Aunts and Uncles and a bunch of new cousins instantly! Bam!

So as you can imagine, the 32 something of us has increased just a tad.... Should make for interesting holiday family get togethers! Mike and Ruth have TWELVE kids now, throw in spouses and You've got a crowd.... then throw in grandbabies! YIKES!

Anyway, its been 6 months since they got married. Ruth is a great addition to the family. She's sweet and makes Mike happy. My biggest concern was whoever he picks, this will be my children's Grandma. All of my nieces and nephews are older, Grandma Brenda was with them throughout a majority of their lives and they are teenagers now, they will forever have those memories. My kids? Not so much. We'll be lucky if Issac remembers much of her. Katie wont. So yes, I was very concerned who he picked, because we needed a Grandma. The first time we met Ruth, she changed Katie's diaper. She played with them and they had a great time. She's a great Grandma, and that's all I wanted. Oh and now we don't have to worry so much about Mike, she takes care of him pretty well :)

So here are some pictures from the wedding. My camera was freaking out big time that night, I was so frustrated. Most of my pictures were super blurry. The flash would go off way after I took the pictures. These are the only good ones I got.

{Katie loved the "loons" and dancing in her princess dress}