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" Anna&amp;#039;s birthday is coming up in another month, which means the preparations for Anna&amp;#039;s birthday are coming up now. It&amp;#039;s getting easier now that she&amp;#039;s a pre-teen. Gone are the days of inflatable bounce parties, scavenger hunts, Chuck E. Cheese (thank God!) and various time and money consuming events. She wants almost the same thing she had last year - her best friends, money and gift cards, and a shopping trip to a huge mall in a nearby town, followed by a movie.  This year, though, we&amp;#039;ve got a change. Anna has asked that we please include Maddie (Stacie&amp;#039;s daughter) in the invitation. I think it&amp;#039;s a wonderful idea, and I have, in fact, invited Maddie to both Anna and David&amp;#039;s birthday parties every birthday since Peter moved out, with no success. I don&amp;#039;t know if Stacie&amp;#039;s uncomfortable with it, if Maddie&amp;#039;s uncomfortable with it, it&amp;#039;s logistically too inconvenient, or if Peter even passes the invitation along. I tend to think it&amp;#039;s the latter, just because of Peter&amp;#039;s past history of being so uncomfortable with the thought of me interacting with Stacie and Maddie in any form. So I spiked the guns, so to speak, and asked him in front of Anna. I even pointed out that her party is during Spring Break for both of them, and that they&amp;#039;ll be coming off his weekend, so he could simply transport Maddie when he brought Anna and David back. I then offered to drive Maddie back to our usual halfway swap point, since it&amp;#039;s not far down the road from the move theater. Then I told him to extend the invitation and get back to me. And he finally said yes. Maddie will be coming to Anna&amp;#039;s party, and even sleeping over the night before. I was surprised, but very pleased for Anna. It&amp;#039;s about time he stopped being so ridiculous about all this. We&amp;#039;re going to all have to learn to be a &amp;quot;blended&amp;quot; family to some degree, and it&amp;#039;s high time we did so. Did your ex have a hard time with the family blending thing? Did you? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/relationships/dating-marriage/a46696/blending-the-family/>