Our Chosen Family

We’re back ....

Family…. chosen family.  

We are gay, straight, male, female, Puerto Rican, Russian, German and Italian.  Two of us were born on Islands, one in a foreign land.  

We are from 33 to 61 years old, two of us born in January, two in October.  Two of us are Boomers, one a Gen X'er and one a Millennial.

One of us is an orphan….  three of our Mom’s are still living.   Our closest Mom lives 1118 miles away by plane.  Our furtherest Mom is 6259 miles away and we talk to her every day!

We have five college degrees between us and too many different jobs and professions to list.

We have  been married four  times, two marriages have been knowingly to lesbians (& I’m not one of the two  lesbians nor  have I ever been married to a lesbian).   We've been divorced three times.  One of us has never been married.  We have two children and a niece and three nephews who I love as my own.  We have eleven grandchildren of sorts.   

We have thirteen siblings of the thirteen only two who are full blooded siblings.   They happen to both be sisters.  We have ten step brothers and sisters, five of whom we have never met .  We have one cousin who we consider a brother, he is responsible for bringing us together and we adore him.    Eleven of our siblings are still living, that we know of….  

We have lived in five states,  one US territory and seven countries.  Between us we have traveled to forty seven states, three territories, and  thirty five countries.  We are fluent in three languages, and can get by in four more.   One of us has dual citizenship.  

We have three pit bulls.  Three of us love dogs, one of us prefers them stuffed!

We’ve owned nine houses, we currently own four and today we are living together in one.

We have five vehicles, a BIG jeep, a pickup truck, an SUV, a family car and a sports car.  We have two giant jet skis.  

We sit down to a family dinner every night.    Our favorite gifts are experiences,  okay…. two of us love jewels just as much!

Two of us started together nineteen years ago,  one more joined us sixteen years ago and we became whole seven... (you can read about some of our early antics in previous posts, going back to February 2011) 

We all greatly dislike cold weather, snow and ice...the other thing we all share is that our life stories so far are way better than any reality TV show and probably just as hard to believe.

The only thing we ever argue about is who is going to pay for dinner.   It’s always a race to the server to pay first.  We have never been mad, angry or disappointed with each other… well except for that time halfway up Mt. Fuji, when I wanted to kill Tracy for deciding the night before  while out drinking in Shinjuku that it might be fun to climb the mountain the next day.      Oh yeah...then there's that time Tracy got mad because we asked about purchasing something from a person who came to the front door.  (notice the pattern here, it's part of his charm!)

You can find us all together, in pairs, trios or solo.  All and any combination of us works!   

We love and adore our birth families…..  We also love  and cherish the  family we have created here.   We are colorful.  We are diverse.  We are us!  

                       We wish you all a fabulous New Year!!!

                                                         Janet, Jay, Tracy & Kosti!