extended family

before I blog about the third and final day of my trip to surrey, I want to introduce you to three people who are very special to me. now that families dont fit into the nice cosy framework that they used to, I'm sure that I'm not the only one to have an extended family and I dont think mine is particularly complicated, they just seem to need rather a lot of words to describe who they are and how they fit into the overall scheme of things.

here in the picture above is reese, he's the one on the right, with his friend spiderman. reese is ed's son, my grandson, simple, straightforward. . . . . . . but thats where the simplicity ends.


in this picture are jade and tegue. jade is reese's mum, and I quite often refer to her as my daughter-in-law, just to make things easier all round. but as she and ed aren't, and never were, married, thats not strictly true. she is as good as a daughter-in-law, and its a lot easier to say than "my grandson's mum", she is a lovely girl and we are great, great friends. I just wish there was a word I could use, or even an acronym, to describe our relationship. sitting beside her is tegue, her younger son. (his father is rob, but thats jade's story and not mine, so we wont even go there) tegue is reese's half-brother and not really related to me at all, but he is a dear boy, I love him to bits and he is as much my grandson as reese is, so I tell people I have two grandsons.
as mentioned earlier this little family unit is very dear to me, and is really the main reason for my frequent trips back to surrey. I love my two older sons and their partners and its lovely to see them as often as I can, but seeing the grandchildren during school holidays and half terms dictates my calendar completely.