Our family is everything to me, my kids, and I'm proud of the family and the relationship and how hard we've worked. We've publicly gone through stuff and made it work. And I'm so glad that we did, 'cause our family so strong and so amazing. I'm blessed.
Our family story here is one that we're proud of, and that is that, as the ninth of 10 kids in our family, I was the first who, right out of high school, was able to go to four-year college... it was a big moment in our family's life.
What is a family without love? And by family I don't just mean a packed kitchen table with a hoard of children around it. A family can be made up of any number of people. Me and my fiancee are our own little family, a family of two (and the dog!), and our love is at the heart of that.
My mum and dad ran a family cafe in Sligo for 35 years and worked long hours. We grew up in a very hard-working family and had a lovely atmosphere, as we lived above the restaurant. It definitely made me want to work hard, whatever I chose to do. As the baby of seven kids, I was definitely a bit spoilt.
Love and this close-knit family structure really helped to give me the confidence. To know that you have family to go back to is a help. It doesn't always happen biologically. Sometimes God gives you family in other forms, but I was very blessed. I have a very strong biological family.
Some of our kids are adopted and some kids are natural-born - I forget which ones are which. Family's just amazing. We think that of everything that we could do in the world... if you don't take care of your family and raise your kids, you lose.
All my kids have worked in the family business. I've been successful at that. My family knows how to work. We all started working very young.
My parents worked hard. My mother, Wilhelmina, was a very strong woman. She had to be with 12 kids. She would do anything for the family. She was a light, the glue in the family.
And having a strong family, you know we've lost some members of our family and had some setbacks, but I think a good family and kids all those things I thought at one time... you got to be kidding me... Those things are so important they enable you to go on.
Our family had been shattered, but we now are more united, and the remains of my family and the majority of my mother's family are glad to know the truth about a horrible crime.
In one way or another, everybody has this experience in their lives... the moment when you have to define your relationship to family and how your family's made you who you are, whether you've spent your life running from your family or deeply connected to your family.
I think every child deserves a family as loving and committed as mine. Because the sense of family comes from the commitment we make to each other to work through the hard times so we can enjoy the good ones. It comes from the love that binds us; that's what makes a family. My family is just as real as yours.
The one thing that kept our family together was the music. The only thing that our family would share emotionally was to have our dad cry over something the kids did with music.
I want to work as hard as I can. But I also want six kids! It takes a lot of courage as an actor to take time off for family. But family is everything.
Me and my sisters were taught that if our eyes worked and our legs worked, we were beautiful. We had so many kids in our family that if we all got in front of the mirror and were ashamed of browns and golds and yellows and whites, and we believed what society told us - that the darker people were less attractive and the lighter ones were prettier - we would have had sibling murders. My family, being half-rural and half-military, just came from a different place.
We were the first state in America to open our doors to publicly supported higher education. We had the foresight to create the Research Triangle Park. And through the efforts and sacrifices of all our citizens, we have built a state where anyone would be glad to raise a family.
I grew up as the only child, and we did not have a large family. So for me and my mother, our friends tend to become our family.