6 babies in 2.5 years ...

3 blond kids, 3 brown-haired kids ...

5 boys, 1 girl ...

1 January, 1 March, 2 April, 1 July, 1 October...

One blonde mom, one brunette mom, and one redhaired mom ... (and at least 2 certifiable yummy mummies)....

The stats don't even begin to describe the family that you all are ...

We are blessed, and thank you.  Here's to the next 25 years (though not the next 6 kids)

xo

"Man is a knot, a web, a mesh into which relationships are tied.  Only these relationships matter." -Saint-Exupery

"....the wide relief you feel when someone says, "I know," and you believe them.  I'd never had a friend like Ruth.  I was shy; I had trouble trusting people; and I'd always spent most of my time alone.  I liked the immediate and easy intimacy that Ruth and I shared, the way we seemed to see so many things alike.  I thought about how good it was to know I'd finally found a friend I would have for the rest of my life."

- Elizabeth Berg, Talk Before Sleep

"Hold back!  Stop!  I panic unprepared for change, but its too late ... I cannot gather back one moment, only marvel at what comes next." - Louise Erdrich

"My love for you has no strings attached.  I love you for free"

- Tom Robbins, Still Live With Woodpecker

"Guided by my heritage of a love of beauty and a respect for strength - in search of my mother's garden, I found my own." - Alice Walker

"Ordinary life was laced with miracles, I knew that, had read enough poetry to understand that we are elevated with the knowing, and yet it was difficult to notice and be grateful when one was continually fatigued and irritated.  I suppose that unquenchable sense of wonder is what separates us dolts from the saints and the poets.  This was the lesson, perhaps, that I was sent to learn: this old life was worth having at any expense."

-Jane Hamilton, A Map of the World

"In this moment there is life and food for future years."

-Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey

"Turning her head to look at each of her friends, Vivi saw Teensy and Caro and Necie as she had never seen them before.  They seemed to glow from within, like there were lanterns inside their bodies.  They looked very old to her, and very young at once.  They looked both invincible and utterly, utterly fragile.  Their bodies were the density and weight that anchored her, made her more real.  She looked at them and loved them and was flooded with gratitude."

-Rebecca Wells, The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

"I will try my best to give thanks for gifts strangely, beautifully, painfully wrapped."

-Rebecca Wells

"Insanity runs in my family.  It practically gallops."

- Cary Grant

"Gratitude is one of the least articulate of the emotions, especially when it is deep."

-Felix Frankfurter

"Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are."

-Marianne Williamson

"We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us." - Joseph Campbell

"Tell me whom you love and I will tell you who you are."

-Arlene Houssaye

"The art of mothering is to teach the art of living to children."

-Elaine Heffner

"The years teach us much the days never knew."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorry, all you need to know."

-James Baldwin

"What children take from us they give ... we become people who feel more deeply, question more deeply, hurt more deeply, love more deeply." -Anon

"Now the first thing about having a baby - and I can't be the first person to have noticed this - is that thereafter you have it." -Jean Kerr

"From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life."

-Arthur Ashe

"As often as I have witnessed the miracle, held the perfect creature with its tiny hands and feet, each time I have felt as though I were entering a cathedral with prayer in my heart."

- Margaret Sanger

"It seems to me that since I've had children, I've grown richer and deeper.  They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from."

- Anne Tyler