7th Anniversary

November 25th, 2006 Richard and I were married.
It was a late Saturday morning after Thanksgiving.
We were married in Boston in the Fall and it was a perfect Fall day.
We have a great engagement story, we have a lot of fun trips we've taken, and romantic stories to tell.
But we also have the "boring", the mundane parts of our life. We have the going to work every day, kids around us all the time, busy with church things and maintaining life.
We have the difficult. We have the hard and the choosing to love. We have the grief, loneliness from moves, financial difficulties.

As we celebrated 7 years of life together we were able to get away from the 3 kiddos and enjoy a great meal and some quiet conversation. (thanks to my mom who took care of the 3 boys) In our talking and reflecting I am just so amazed at how things turn out. There are things about Richard that I love and am so thankful for that when I married him I had no idea was a part of him. There were things that bugged me so much when we were first married that now I love b/c it is a part of who he is. We have lived enough time together and established our lives and family enough now that I love who we are as a couple.
I love how committed Richard is to me. Right now we are in the thick of "emotional wife". And he makes an effort to say "goodbye Beautiful" to me when he leaves for work each morning. And let me tell you - 3 weeks out from having a baby, in the throes of trying to figure out nursing - I am not looking my best. But I know that he is by my side - that he cherishes me.
I wonder what joys and sorrows and trials and fun times the next 7 years will bring.
Love you Richard!

 A very good friend of mine took a bunch of photos of us 6 days after Peyton was born. I love these two b/c it shows my sweet family of 5 and then all of us laughing! It was so much fun taking the pictures

And this is what 7 years of marriage has produced :)

(p.s. I love being the mother of  boys!!!!)

Meet Peyton Glenn Gardner

November 6th, 2013 at 7:17pm Peyton Glenn came into the world weighing 7lbs 4oz, 20.5 inches long. He is absolutely perfect and we are ecstatic.

3:30am Wednesday morning my water broke (as it has with all my babies) and labor kicked in right away. I labored at home until about 10am. Went into my midwives office and was checked. At that time was about 2 centimeters dilated. Decided to kill some time so we went to a park and dilly- dallied doing things to keep my mind off labor as much as possible. We decided to head to hospital around 2:30ish pm. At the hospital I labored for about 5hrs. There was plenty of talk of starting pitocin to get labor moving faster along, since I already had ruptured membranes, and plenty of talk about how I couldn't do it anymore wanting an epidural. In the end thankfully the last 4 centimeters to dilate went pretty fast and I made it through without needing that medicine.
I am feeling great and very relieved and so thankful for God's help and strength and Grace. But mostly that all of that is behind me.
For now I'm enjoying my precious baby and loving him so much