Blessed with Six

My oldest son is Daulton. He was born on June 18, 1995. The day he was born was Father's Day. I remember when I found out that I was pregnant with him. I was so excited. I already had a little girl and I just knew that I was going to have a boy. I had his name picked out and everything, Daulton Shane. No, I did not get Daulton from Road House (even though I love the movie and Patrick Swayze, it is spelled different anyway) You see, my husband is a sports nut, and in the 90's when the Atlanta Braves were doing so well, the Philadelphia Phillies were a rival, but I thought there catcher was just so darn good looking, Darren Daulton. I loved how his name looked on the back of his jersey: Daulton. I thought it was the perfect name for a boy. I started showing early with Daulton, I guess I just carried him differently. I got so huge. One month I gained 14 pounds!! I will never forget getting on the scales at the doctor's office for my monthly check up and the nurse looked at me...

I was looking over my blog and realized that I had shared Devyn and Addie's birthdays, but did not share the other four. Which the other four celebrate their birthdays in a two month span. From June 18th until August 24 we have four birthdays. I will share starting with June, because they are pretty much in birth orde from June to August.

When I was a child I only had a little brother. We were almost five years apart. So we really aren't that close. I wish we were. We live completley different lives. He knows almost nothing about me and I am about the same with him. It is really sad. Looking at my own children, I pray that they don't end up the way my brother and I have. I want my kids to be close, even in their adult hood and after Mike and I are gone. I can remember as a child I looked up to my cousins to. I was the oldest and I didn't have an older sibling. I just wanted to be a part of my cousin's lives. They were three sisters that were close, how I wanted to be in that circle of sisterhood. The youngest of the three was only two years older than me, that was as close to a sister that I got. When my parents moved when I was in the sixth grade I wanted to move to the school were my cousin went because I wanted to be close to her. Well, needless to say we hung out some, but we never in the six years...

Today my husband and I celebrated our Seventeenth wedding anniversary. We celebrated by taking care of sick kids, baseball pictures, baseball games, football games and a nice dinner with our children. At first I was a little bummed, but then I got to thinking, God has blessed me greatly, these children are the fruit of our Seventeen years. Each one a reminder of our love for each other. Each one has a special talent, and lights my life in a different way. I also started thinking about my marriage. It has not been easy, seventeen years is a long time, and I pray we triple it! Marriage is a lot of work. We were married so young, we have practically grown up together. Michael is my soul mate. I can't imagine my life without him. I love him more than he will ever know. He has put up with so much out of me. My moods, my temper, my crazy family. I have hurt him in so many ways, and he has shown me so much forgiveness. If anyone is responsible for revealing Jesus to me, it is my husband...

I am so exhausted. We have ran everywhere this week and it is not going to get any better. I only have three kids playing sports this fall, I can 't imagine if they were all doing something. I have successfully this week: updated my blog, kept up the laundry, put clothes in a consignment sale, been to football practice, a JV baseball game, worked at the school and led AWANA at the church on Wednesday. I could fall asleep sitting here. God always has a way of making you smile in the midst of overwhelming exhaustion (even if it is at the expense of someone else) I was leaving the ballfield tonight on my way to the consignment sale, sitting at the light waiting to turn and in the other turn lane is this older man in a convertable, and he was picking his nose!!! Dude, if you are going to pick your nose please don't do it when the top of your convertable is down so EVERYONE can see it!!! Can you tell how unbelievable exhausted I am that I would find this amusing! -pg

This is the bumper sticker I saw today, very cute!! Smile More... Gripe Less

Like I said before, it has been three years since we moved into our house. It took us three months to get the house ready for us to move in. We painted every room in the house (ceilings as well, those are the ONLY spots that Addie has not drawn on), put hardwood in the kitchen, den , dining room and living room. We finished the basement with two bedrooms, bathroom, office and a family room, and we totally gutted and finished the kitchen. During all of this we were living with Mike's parents until the house was ready. A couple of weeks before we moved in we came one evening to the house to work on it a little. The kids were in the backyard playing. All of the sudden Brady runs in screaming bloody murder and we can't understand a word he is saying. All I am getting is "nose... spi - derrrr ". Finally I get him to calm down, he tells me with tears and all that he was running and he ran through a spider web and the spider bit him on the nose and it hurts really bad. I am ...