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Kate POV

Thirteen is the number

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Thirteen is the number. It's the number of games my husband Tom coaches at Lincoln college every season. It's the number of times we zero out of bank account each year to make ends meet. And it's the number of kids we try to keep track of. Thirteen is an insane number.....kids but having a small family was never an option for us. See, Tom loved growing up with seven brothers and sisters. And after my sister died, I spent most of my time... wishing I had seven brothers and sisters. Tom and I met at lllinois Polytechnic University. He was a senior dreaming of becoming the head football coach there. I was a freshman dreaming of becoming a sports reporter. He wanted eight kids, I wanted eight kids. Bam. An hour after I met him, I knew he was the one. We just had family at the wedding. A year later, we had our first-- Nora. Three years later we had our second daughter Hayley. I loved taking them to work with me. After Charlie and Lorraine were born, we realized our dream of living in the city....and having eight kids and two careers wasn't gonna work. As much as we wanted our big careers, we wanted our big family more. So Tom settled for a Division 3 coaching job at Lincoln...I quit writing for the Tribune, and we moved to the country. Tom and I got busy when we moved to Midland. We had Henry, Sarah, Jake and Mark in consecutive years. Then we went for magic number eight, and instead...we got the first set of fraternal twins--Jessica and Kim -ten kids. With each child, Tom and I got further from our big career dreams. But we didn't think about that. We had our hands full with ten. We were happy, and we were done. Then we went to a party celebrating Shake Maguire's appointment...to athletic director at our alma mater. And, well, too many beers and nine months later, we had Mike. After that, Tom got a vasectomy. But he didn't hear the doctor say that it would be a few weeks...before the procedure became effective. And Nigel and Kyle got us to that crazy number. But by then, Tom and I were experts at managing chaos. And we became bigger experts when our second eldest daughter Hayley had her first child when she was sixteen with her boyfriend Steve McGarrett who's she been with since she was thirteen and they had Tom and I first grandchild who'd they name Grace McGarrett, she is two years old. Now Tom and I about to be grandparents of two because Hayley is pregnant again. And I can't wait to Steve proposal to my little girl, she doesn't have any clue but he asked for the family blessing and we all gave him our blessing after all his been apart our family for six years and we all know how much he love Hayley, they kind of remind me of Tom and I when we where young.

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