Free I Just Want You to Know by Kate Gosselin Page B

even Christmas presents from viewers of our show. Everything was always taken care of.
    During our first Christmas on Andrew Avenue, we were getting by but didn’t have enough to do anything extra. JoAnn from Georgia sent boxes and boxes of Christmas gifts that she had hand-wrapped for our kids. All I had to do was take them out of the boxes and put them under the tree. JoAnn has sent our kids something each Christmas since—and has since moved on to also helping a quintuplet family. She has never forgotten us and has brought us so much joy as well as relieved so much guilt.
    After seeing our first one-hour special, Connie from Ohio emailedme and said she wanted to send our kids each a pair of shoes! She has no idea how much this helped and what her thoughtfulness meant to me. She was our shoe angel. Each season she would email me to find out the kids’ shoe sizes. She would then ask me to pick out shoes from online or would copy and paste a few options on email and ask me to pick them. And then she would send us shoes. She even started a shoe club at her church, where a group of women would have coffee and then go pick out shoes for the Gosselin kids. They truly enjoyed shopping for them and my kids were elated to open the packages and see what shoe surprise awaited them.
    Lying in front of the freshly decorated Christmas tree.
    On the way home from church one Sunday, we had planned to stop by a woman’s house. She had seen our hour special on the Discovery Health Channel, contacted me, and asked to meet us; she also said she had a box of things for our family. I checked with Jon and he agreed we should do this. On our way, every single kid fell asleep.
    “Kate, are you sure we need to stop by? It’s actually peaceful in here for once,” Jon said.
    “I know, but we told her we would.”
    “Is it worth going out of our way?”
    “It doesn’t matter. We need to go since we said we would,” I answered.
    We pulled up to the house and knocked on the door.
    Opening a gift from a fan!
    “Thanks so much for stopping by!” the woman said. Her name was Denise, and she was cheery and kind. She and her husband were our age and had two little girls. “I have a few things for you.” She pulled out a box of household supplies and then handed us an envelope.
    Mady, Hannah, and Cara with packages.
    As I looked in, I started to tear up. The envelope was full of gift cards—Target, Walmart, among others—as well as a check. I couldn’t believe it. “Thank you so much!” I said to Denise. “You are our miracle today.”
    Truly at that time, it took a miracle a day.
    One Sunday night in September 2007, we were eating dinner when Mady bit down on a crouton and said, “Mommy, my tooth hurts so bad!”
    I looked in her mouth and was horrified. One of her teeth was black and rotting. I started tearing when I realized how serious this was. It must have hurt her so badly, and I didn’t know how I didn’t see this sooner.
    Since it was Sunday evening, I couldn’t do much at that point, except give her a hefty dose of Motrin and put her to bed. I arranged for a babysitter to come the next day and tried to set up a dentist appointment. Jon’s new job meant we had new insurance, plus we had moved away, so we couldn’t go to our old dentist. I had a recommendation for a new dentist from our pediatrician, but we hadn’t seen her yet. So I left a voicemail, letting her know the situation.
    The next morning the dentist’s office called back and we set up an appointment for one o’clock that afternoon. Mady would have to miss school, but that was our only option. As we drove to the appointment, I had a bad feeling about it. I hated making Mady the guinea pig to meet the new dentist in this emergency situation. Mady didn’t seem to mind too much. She was just chatting away. At one point, she looked out the window and saw a daycare group pushing a six-seater stroller. “Look, Mommy! They have sextuplets too. Anyway, um…” and