What a Man...

I have the best husband I know!!! Tomorrow we will be celebrating our 18Th wedding anniversary and then in November it will be 27 years since we started dating!!!

I'm not exaggerating, I truly have the best husband I know. My granddaddy is a tight second second but I know he wouldn't be able to put up with my like Artie does - so Artie wins.

We married in a whirlwind - after being apart for 2 years while I was in college - when we reconnected and began dating again - we married 6 weeks later. Brian cemented our family together with Troy's birth quickly behind 11 months later. Things have never slowed down since...

Artie is the hardest working man I've ever known. I guess that comes with having a bigger responsibilities of a larger family. He has a minimum of a 2 hour drive to and from work everyday and then a 10 hour work day. Often there are overtime hours. But in our life things don't stop when the outside work ends.

It is a rare day when Artie gets to come home and just hang out and relax. He always trys to make time to make sure he has played with the children. He's the best at tag, kick the can, and King of the Hill (and not the TV show)!! He can out ride/play any of them on a bicycle, ramps, 4 wheeling, basketball (I know that's a hard one but still true Brian!!) or anything else he wants to!! He has an unending spirit about him.

Then the house is always calling his name. When we bought our current home, we were in a state of shock having just found out we were having twins (numbers 5 & 6) and needed a much bigger house and quick!! As I've posted in the past, there is so much to do on a 100 year old home!!! On top of the physical house work, there is just the fact of living with 8 people. No matter how much I get done in the day while everyone is at school, there is still house work and home work that needs to be done in the evenings. Our children wouldn't be able to spell if it wasn't for Artie - he is the spelling tutor and most all the children were blessed with my spelling ability.

Add to that the Boy Scout outings, football games, dances, birthday parties, camp outs, bonfires, cookouts, picnics, musicals, recitals, school programs - it never ends!!! :-)

So, a great provider, a great father, but most of all a great husband.

I've never loved another person in my whole life as I love Artie. Outside of Jesus - he's the beginning and the end. Life before him I hardly remember and life without him impossible to imagine. He became my best friend when I was in seventh grade and had the strictest daddy anyone knew. He was warned by a mutual "friend" not to try and date me - I wasn't worth dealing with my daddy. :-) Thanks Robbie, good thing he loves a challenge. That might be just what set him on my path!!! Russell, thanks for the introduction!!! God is good!!! :-)

Sharing a relationship with Artie and Jesus is wonderful. A chord of three strands is not easily broken.

It is such a blessing that God has given us each other. He has done more miracles than I can publicly share.

I had a woman tell me one time "well, if I was married to your husband, I could be happy too.". Life isn't all "peachy" with Artie. Life isn't all "peachy" with me. We are two sin filled people striving to be like Jesus. It's easy to look at someone else's life and think things are easy.

Our life hasn't been easy. It's not easy to be married to Artie - he's a hard man. It's not easy to be married to me - I'm a emotional woman who still doesn't know how to keep a house. But we are good together. I could give you a list of Artie's faults and someone would tell me - you should divorce him. They could do the same with him about me. We love each other faults and all. We push each other to be better and love each other when there is nothing good inside of us at the moment.

That's what love is - I love you no matter what - when you're good and when you're not. I love you~~~