Living your Dreams, (Family) Part 2 ~ Day 14

3) Family.

This is where my “adjustment” came in to play! 

My dream clashed with reality.  I learned that fantasy and dreams are not the same!   We will never be “The Brady Bunch”…

Soon after we eloped in Central Park, New York City on a beautiful April day, which also happened to be my 37^th birthday as well, I instantly became a part of his big FAMILY!

Since it was a second marriage for both of us, James already had a family of 4 children, including three grown children, Jim, Mary & John, and his youngest son, 14 year old Jerry,  and I had one daughter, 6 year old Lauren.   Neither children lived with us.

For the first time in my life, I get a second chance to live my dream of having a BIG loving family automatically!

So, I brought with me my own fantasy of what  I thought a big loving family can be for us, something like out of the “Brady Bunch” Show that I watched when I was younger, into my new marriage!

I knew going into our marriage that James had had a vasectomy many years ago. My biological clock was ticking strong as I entered a new loving marriage, one in which I would have loved to have a child of our own. Not that we didn’t look into having one of our own. We went to see several doctors to look into the possibility of reversing his vasectomy, only to discover the surgery came with a very low probability of success.

So, we don’t have any children together. This is my only regret I have, but I am also being greedy here, my friends!  When there are already five children between us to love and enjoy as we merged our two families.  Not only can we span across two families, we spanned across two countries, Vietnam and the U.S. of A.

Right after our marriage, James’ career moved us away from Atlanta and took us across the country to California.

I had a great idea to bring our Western family together with my Eastern family by planning our “public” wedding, where we would restate our vows for our new extended families, in my native country of Vietnam, on the other side of the world.  

This was also living my dream of being an Asian bride to honor my native heritage, where I would get to wear a red wedding gown in the traditional Vietnamese ceremony in my family’s small village.

So we notified all the family members of our plans to get their approval before we began the planning.  It was unanimous that a wedding in Vietnam would be a great “family” experience for all involved!!  

Of course, nothing is that simple, right? 

Come back tomorrow and I’ll spill the beans… Part 3

With Love & Light,

Hai