Several years later, his father got remarried to a woman who  had 4 children. His father had 3 of his own. So now there were 7 children. They had a child together and that made 8!  Eight is great! :)

There were a lot of wonderful times that we spent with his parents, brothers and sisters, on Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Easter we'd hide eggs and watch the children find them.  Once we all went to Florida for a week. That was a lot of fun too. Those were the good times. I remember that my husband, his father, a couple of his brothers and me went deep sea fishing.  That was so much fun!

When you marry someone you love, you become one.  We had our ups and downs, but we made it work.  We always would check on each other. We loved each other.

The last 2 Christmas's we spent together, we were not able to give each other a gift. The 3rd to the last Christmas he gave me a small gift that I love and will keep it forever! The last Christmas we spent together, we had no gift for each other, but we did have was each other! I did wrap up my Great Granddaddy's magnifying glass and gave it to him. He wouldn't wear his reading glasses at work, but he loved the magnifying glass.

We received a letter from the bank one day. It said that our house would be auctioned off,  on of all days, his birthday!  We didn't know anything about foreclosure.  We thought that it was going to be gone on that day, May 3, 2011.

I began packing things up. I had boxes in the living room and the library.  After work and on the weekends we would go looking for a house to rent. One night we went to look at a house. It wasn't anything like ours. My husband and I both loved where we lived. It was like a cabin in the woods!  He did not want to move. He tried many times talking with Bank of America for help, but they just kept putting us off.  The house we saw that night wasn't what either of us wanted but we filled out the form anyway. I was taking pictures as we were outside. My husband was walking in front of me. I asked him to turn around and let me take his picture. He didn't turn around, so I took a picture of him from the back.  I look at that picture now and you can tell just from looking at him from the back that he was a broken man. The agent told us that filing for bankruptcy was the best we could do. My husband had already filed, but it wasn't finished yet. He paid our attorney half. Later on I paid the rest. The agent said it will give us a new start and things would be better. The agent had looked at me and asked me if I was ok. I told him I was, but I was nervous about everything, so was my husband.

On the way home that night, I noticed that my husband was fixing to take a wrong turn. I said to him, "Where are you going?" He said, "I don't know."  He said on the way home that he didn't know how we were going to make it.  I tried to tell him that some how, some way, we would make it. I always told him that things could be a lot worse, even though they were bad as it was at that time. I told him that our child could die, one of our grandchildren could die.

That night when we got home, he fixed dinner. He loved pasta! We would get the pasta mixed with veggies or shrimp. That night we had pasta with shrimp. Little did I know that that would be his last meal.

I sat down right in front of him that night so I could see him eye to eye. My exact words were, "If God came down right now and asked me to choose between you or the house, everything in it and our dogs, I would choose you!" We can always find a home for the dogs, I said.  I told him how much I loved him and that I couldn't live without him. I told him we needed each other to get through this.  Then I sat on the sofa while he watched TV. I feel asleep. I woke up and as always, either him or I would say, "Are you ready to go to bed now?" We would get up together and go to bed. One thing that was funny about that, was when we would say, "Are you ready to go to bed?" the dogs jumped off the sofa and went into the bedroom.

I can still see him sitting in his chair that night. I had no idea what was to come next.