When I first started dating my wife when we were in high school, I thought that her family was large. She had three siblings, six aunts, seven uncles, eleven cousins, three grandparents, and a great grandparent. My family felt small in relation. For some reason, at the time, I only thought of my family as my two siblings and parents.

But I remember vaguely a conversation that I had with her and I explained the actually large family that I had. I had an adopted brother, an adopted sister, two half sisters, a step sister, a step mom, a mom, two dads, three grandparents, five uncles, four aunts, and five cousins. You just needed a playbook to keep track of all of them. For my now sister-in-law, she would joke with me that I kept finding siblings when I would talk about a “new one.”

The main reason that I thought mine was small is because it wasn’t a “traditional” family. I very rarely saw some of my family members and I could count on two hands the number of times that I had seen my cousins and grandparents. I also wasn’t close to very many of them. You have to remember this was before social media allowed us to be “close.”

Two quarters, a dime, and a nickel. For the last year, I have carried this amount of change in my pocket. Every day.

Earlier this morning, Mrs. PFG left with her sister to join her mom, aunts, grandmother, and other sister for a girl’s weekend in Austin. For the second time in two months, I will be a single parent.

Four months ago, my wife, son and I welcomed a baby girl to our growing family.  Our lives have not been the same since and we couldn’t be happier!