All of my five step children lived with us full time until a year ago (Actually a year ago the end of this month). At that time, I was the primary care taker of my five step children, and two biological children (from a previous relationship). My husband works full time as a manager, and also owns and manages his own business with about five employees. His ex wife is actually now married to his brother, and she was too busy making more children to come pick up the ones she already had. So I was with all of the kids 24 hours a day 7 days a week, by myself. I opened a daycare, because I always wanted to contribute financially, and there really was no way I would have gotten a job and made enough to cover our own childcare.

The older my step children got, the more disrespectful they became. It became my fault that their mother never picked them up, my fault their father worked all of the time, my fault their parents were divorced, my fault they couldn't find something, my fault they didn't like anything I bought to eat in the house, etc. They became very verbally, and at time physically abusive to myself and my infant sons. So when they started pitching the fit they wanted to move, I told my husband, well wouldn't it be nice to be the ones that just get to have fun with them on the weekends? Well, that's not how things worked out. It turned into me packing their bags and throwing them out the door, telling them to consider themselves in prison while at my home, saying they were never allowed back, that they were damaged and had issues, that their mother didn't care about them and only kept having babies so she wouldn't have to pay child support (Obviously none of which were true).

My husband never wanted to believe the girls said or did any of these things. I called him at work one day because his second oldest daughter was walking up and down the street in front of my house calling me names and saying she was going to come kick my a$$ while I was watching the daycare children play outside, and in that event, he says I completely made the whole thing up. He doesn't want to see or hear anything that they do that's less than perfect.

So up until this past year, we were the most dysfunctional blended family on the face of the earth. And he still wants to keep up the façade of the perfect family. We brought my step son with us to the party, he still lives with us and honestly has never ever ever done anything rude to me whatsoever, he's actually really wonderful. My husband called and had two of my step daughters drive over mid-party, and is still trying to tell me that he had no idea they would actually come.