First and foremost, may I applaud you for not burdening your children (and yourselves) with absurd hyphens? Yeah, I said it! I have an anti-hyphen bias. Can we consider what happens when Emma Lincoln-Schneider and Zack Gillham-Powell marry? What about when they breed? Must their children bear the monikers of all four grandparents? This sometimes seems like an exercise in pride and self-promotion. Must children come with credits or are they allowed their OWN names and identities? Maybe I'm just bitter because my maiden and married names, if hyphenated, become the semi-dirty "Dickens-Butler" but, as you say, "that's another story."

Our family is very close to another family and I am often the assumed mom/spouse of the other kids, husband and etc when I am the one that played taxi that day or whatever. I'm a familiar (but not familial) face at scouts, school, sleepovers, etc. At some point, one of the adults expressed some concern about the confusing message this may be sending to the kids and I said "oh c'mon - everybody has four parents these days!" Honestly, this is a great example of how families are what we make them - a group of people who live together or apart, who share genetics or don't, who love and care about each other and support each other in life. That's it. No formula encapsulates it and therefore, sometimes it needs more than one name to cover it. :)