2004: Rowdy boys don't stop Pam

"I thought I'd have all girls," Pam says. "I never dreamed I'd have a bunch of boys."

Welcome to a brave new world.

The two older boys, carousing, knocked a hole in the garage wall. All three boys broke an iron bed frame wrestling around.

"Very rowdy," Pam said. What was that old Jeff Foxworthy joke? If it ain't broke, it ain't ours?

"Applied to us perfectly."

Pam fretted over the fights. "She was afraid they were going to kill each other," said her husband, Dennis. "She was afraid they didn't like each other."

On the family's cross-country sports trips, the boys would drive her so crazy, Pam retreated to the middle seat of the 1988 Ford conversion van, with one boy up front with Dennis, one next to Pam and the other in the back.

Pam had hoped for a girl with her final childbirth, but the baby checked in at over 10 pounds and, sure enough, Boy No. 3. "What are we going to do with another boy?" Dennis asked as Pam lay in the delivery room.

Said Pam, "We're going to love him.

"Many times since, I've said I'm so glad I didn't get to choose what we had. Think of the blessing I would have missed out on."

So Pam and Dennis went about the business of raising their boys in Lincoln County, and the gal who grew up without sports found herself in Ballgame Central. At school, her boys played football, basketball, baseball and track, and at home they turned the house into an Olympiad.

Whiffle ball in the back yard, basketball in the front yard and anything goes in the parlor.

But a funny thing happened. That kind of life grew on Pam. Soon enough, she realized that boys will be boys and that rowdy brothers can bond.