The "adopted" Grandparents

Continued from the Halloween entry about their "adopted" Grandparents...
These are old neighbors/friend's of mine, they live across the street from my parents house and I have known them for 17 years. Sonny is 70 and Kathy is 63. Sonny has 4 daughters from his first marriage and he might have grand kids, I'm not really sure. He hasn't heard from his children since 1990! He said that once he put them all through college he never really heard anything from them unless they needed money. So he stopped dishing out the money to them and hasn't heard from them since! He and Kathy married about 29 years ago. She was 34 then but they never had any kids together. We've never really talked about why, but I know she wanted kids and would have been a great mom.
So, she has "adopted" my kids as her grand kids, which is really cool because as most of you know my parents and Eddie's parents are not very good grandparents. Sad, but true. We have battled with this since Brenden was born and it's just gotten much worse over the years. Eddie's parents live literally 2 minutes away, yet we never see them. The only time we see them is on Birthday's or Holiday's, so I'm gonna estimate once a month. When we do see them we do not feel comfortable or welcome around them, and the kids feel this as well. Now, my parents have a house about 4 minutes away from us. Right now they live in New Jersey. My Dad only comes into town for Christmas and my Mom comes in with him and she stays until March. BUT, even when they did live here we did not see them that often and they never came by to see the kids unless I said something about it. And my Mom has been in town since late August because my sister was pregnant and then she stayed to help. Well, the only reason we've seen her is because she came to Kathy's across the street while we were there swimming. She finally came to the house just last week BUT again only because she wanted me to cut her hair! Not really to come by and visit with the kids! And my kids even tried to give her a hug when she came in and she just went straight to the couch, no hugs =( And when she left, again the kids tried to hug her and she just got in her car so they ran over and gave her half a hug as much as they could with her sitting in her car! It's just sad. Every time they go to Kathy and Sonny's they get hugs and they talk to them and make them feel loved and welcome, the way it should be. And Bren & Chase have even said how they feel about when they are with them compared to how they feel with their own grandparents.
Would you believe that their own grandparents not only do not offer to come visit but they don't babysit them either. I can count on one hand how many times they've babysat!I know so many of my friends who's parents can't wait to watch their grand kids or have them sleep over. My kids have NEVER slept at their grandparents homes! So whenever we have somewhere to go together most of the time I just wouldn't go or just recently our favorite neighbor Marlen watches them!
But what's weird is my Mom is really close with my sister and her kids. She does everything for her kids. Maybe that's because my sister still lives in my parents house and has never really grown up! Who knows.
Anyway, my kids also have another set of "adopted" Grandparents. Our neighbors across the street from where we live now. Mr. Dewey and Ms. Margie, they are in their mid to late 70's and have 3 kids and many grand kids. But being we are across the street, they see my kids very often. Probably too often, LOL, since Margie started giving Logan cookies, he now goes over there every afternoon for his afternoon snack of cookies, water and a banana! Even more, they have the kind of refrigerator that has the water/ice feature on the door! Logan LOVES this! And has learned to use it well. She thinks it cute that he likes to do everything himself so she has put the baggies and cups within his reach so now when he goes over there he gets everything all by himself. It is really cute and they think he's hoot. They also give Bren and Chase treats and love to watch the kids play outside from their kitchen window. Brenden is the their lawn boy and they pay him good and even give Chase & Logan little chores like watering the lawn and plants for $1.
So even though their "real" Grandparents SUCK, it's good that we have such nice, goodhearted friends/neighbors to show them how a Grandparent should be. I really could go into waaaaay more details about the things we've had to deal with with our parents because it's a lot worse than what I've written here, but it just makes me mad so I'll leave it at this.