One Week To Go ...

With a little more than seven days left before the election, the amazing rollercoaster that has been this year is drawing to a close. What has this year meant?

It's meant having the support of my family -- Rick, the boys and their "Vote For My Mommy" T-shirts, my mom and dad. It's meant having the support of friends that I've known for decades, and it's meant getting the support of friends I've just met. It's meant printing what seems like a million brochures. It's meant yard signs, big signs, banners, newspaper ads and recording a radio spot. It's meant playing bingo and watching Adam and Jesse flat-footin'. It's meant spaghetti lunches, a couple of brunches and too many barbeque dinners to count.

It's meant crowning Debbie's Snack Bar in Hamptonville the unofficial world headquarters of my campaign. If you want to know why, just visit the place. It's meant putting up campaign signs in the rain. It's meant hammering sign frames together. It's meant my mom and dad hitting the campaign trail all over the district, on their own. It's meant handing out a yard sign ... and then another ... and then another ... and then another. Rick's record for heading back out to the car for more signs is at least three times, and not once did he complain.

At least not to me.

What else has happened this year? In January, Rick had what he calls the most memorable experience of his career in journalism when he drove a race car at Talladega. That he did so less than three weeks after surgery is completely besides the point. I had surgery and was later found to be completely cancer free for the first time in two years. Adam hit the first home run of his baseball career and Jesse flourished at his summer art camp. Richard graduated from high school and is a freshman at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

And ... it's still tough to write these words ... Rick's dad, Sid, passed away. Sid had never smoked a cigarette, but instead developed lung cancer as the result of the Agent Orange he encountered in Vietnam. He fought the disease for four long years.

Thank you so much for all that you've done for my family and I over the past year. I'll see you at the polls.