Introducing...

My name is Hailey. I am married to Bret, and I have been posting to a pregnancy board for a little over two years, but thought now that our family is complete, I would move to a less defined location. My husband and I have been married a little over four years and have three beautiful daughters: Trinity, Temira, and Talia--the youngest having arrived only weeks ago, August 9th. We have both been married before. He has three sons from his previous marriage: 11-year-old twins, Chandler and Tevin, and 9-year-old Harrison.

Details will undoubtedly be uncovered as I post, but to summarize: his ex-wife was addicted to internet chat rooms--yes, those chat rooms, and one day in late September several years ago, he caught her cheating in real life. He was devastated; the boys who were barely 6 and 4 at the time were beyond confused--they are still affected and probably will be the rest of their lives. Their divorce was final in November of 2000, and she married the "other guy" a mere three days later.

I don't have children from my previous marriage, which was a source of incredible sadness to me during the years that I was married, but once it finally came to an end, I realized what an incredible blessing it was to not have wee ones to put through an emotional wringer. My divorce was final in October 2000, and I was set to spend the rest of my life alone--not out of self pity or anything of that nature. I just didn't feel like opening up to trusting anyone again. I was afraid it would take too much time and effort, and I just didn't want to deal with it. Since I had spent my whole married life putting my ex-husband through school, I decided to go back to college myself, and finish up my Associate's Degree. (I work at the college here in town, and tuition is free, so why not, right?) I was in the middle of several classes the fall semester the divorce went through, and decided to take the last 19 credits the following spring to get it over with.

Just before Christmas a friend of mine from church asked me if I was divorced. She said she had noticed that my husband hadn't been around in a while, and she knew things hadn't been "good" for a long time. I told her that I was, and she asked if it would be all right to give her (newly divorced) brother my phone number. Realizing that he probably felt as I did...that he just wanted to be left alone for a while and would likely never call, and not wanting her to feel that her "help" was unappreciated, I said she could. Just as I expected, he never called...until the first part of February. He asked if I would go with him to his niece's first birthday party. (Yes, though he is the oldest of nine children, this particular niece belonged to my friend.) Thinking that she had put him up to it, I accepted. Besides, he had a really nice voice. The party was fun, and I got to meet a few more family members, but getting to know Bret was surprisingly easy. He was working three jobs to pay his child support and living expenses at the time, so he was even busier than I was, but we still managed to see each other several times a week. He has a small floor cleaning business (as well as working two other jobs), so I would go with him to clean at night, etc. Our little romance grew very quickly, and we got married on May 24, 2001...so much for my life of celibacy!

I will save the girls' birth stories for future posts, since this is getting extremely long. Anyway, that is our story in a nutshell.