Oh come on, no offense to anybody else!

This family truly is one of my favorite families.  Combine genuine sweetness, hilarious personalities, good looks, brains & talent galore, an insatiable love for football, an ever-positive outlook on life, and incredible bonds between all nine of them and you’ve got this amazing family.  They played a very important part of my younger years, since their home my home-away-from-home nearly every Friday night.  I grew up babysitting these guys from when the oldest was only three or four.  I remember visiting when they brought their oldest son home from the hospital.  By the time I went to college, they had four kiddos and maybe one on the way.  Their youngest (#7!) and my oldest are a week apart in age.  My associations with this familiy gave me a lot of insight on family life (besides my own), parenthood, raising children, solving problems, marriage, and most importantly DATE NIGHT!!!!  For real, had they not been going on dates, I wouldn’t have been called over to babysit.  Now that I am married and the parent of four rambunctious lovely children, I understand the value of regular date nights.  Not only are they necessary for the parents’ realationship, but they are good for the children’s growth as well.  Plus our babysitters hopefully benefit too, as I did.  I love that my kids are excited when they find out we have a date.  They fight over which babysitter to call first, they want to go with me to pick up the babysitter, and thankfully there are no tears when we leave.  (There once was, and that was just awful.  I still feel bad for those babysitters!)   I love going out with my husband.  I encourage you all to make Date Night a priority and a regular occurance in your household.  By the way, this is not at all a not-so-subtle hint to my husband regarding our plans for this weekend 😉

I know, there is more than 9 is this family portrait. That’s because there is a wedding in the works!!!