You, Archer Chance Bailey, are seventeen years old and the most popular guy in school. But when a prank goes horribly wrong and puts a fellow student in the hospital, you are held responsible and are forced to participate in after-school community service activities, including staring in the school play.
With all the after-school community service, you never have time to hang out with your friends. The only person worth talking to is Nessa Serentity Molloy, the girl you used to make fun of. She is the reverend's daughter and is playing the female lead in the school play. You don't have anything in common but you spend most of your time together. Eventually you start to take your community service seriously and you ask Nessa to run lines with you.
When you least expect it, you start to have feelings for Nessa and you begin a relationship. Your friends and her father are not pleased but the two of you only grow closer. Then Nessa tells you a long kept secret. She has cancer and it is incurable. She has already decided that she no longer wants to fight the disease and spend her time in and out of the hospital, she wants to live life, however short, to the fullest. You are distraught, she is the best thing that has ever happened to you and you don't want to lose her. You spend the rest of your time together helping her achieve her life goals...including getting married in the same church her parents were married.
You have one glorious year of marriage together. Against the doctor's wishes Nessa decides to try for a baby. She is able to hold on long enough to bring your son, August Nelson Bailey, into the world.
Not long after your son is born, Nessa is able to die peacefully, having lived a happy and fulfilling life.
You, Archer Chance Bailey, are now 26 years old, your son, August Nelson Bailey, is 8. You have never dated anyone else and you fill your time working (you write for a local paper and pen plays on the side) and being a single parent. You still think of your wife every day and you find it difficult to sleep at night. Your son wants you to get remarried so he can have a mother and for you to be happy. He calls into a national radio talk show in order to find you a wife and you end up pouring your heart out over the radio about your magical and perfect marriage to Nessa and about how much you still miss her.
Among the many women who hear is Helen Aurora Turner.
Though she is already engaged, she becomes infatuated with your story and writes a letter asking you to meet her on top of the Empire State building on Valentines Day. Your son reads the letter and tries everything he can to get you to meet her, including buying a plane ticket and traveling on his own to New York City. You find him gone and you take the first available plane to New York City. You find him on the top of the Empire State Building, where he has been waiting all day. Its closing time and you start to leave, and then she is there. You recognize her as the mysterious girl you've been seeing around Seattle (she's looked you up but didn't have the guts to say hello). You fall in love and get married.
Two years later you welcome boy/boy twins!!!! You name them Hunter Joseph Bailey and Spencer William Bailey.
~3 Years Later~
You, Archer Chance Bailey, are 31 years old. Your eldest, August Nelson Bailey, is 13 and the twins, Hunter Joseph and Spencer William Bailey, are 3. You have been married for five years and life is great, until one day your wife, Helen Aurora Bailey, steps out to cross the street and is hit by a car and killed instantly. You are distraught, this new loss was so sudden and different from the death of your first wife, Nessa. The kids all take it very hard, the twins are too young to understand and keep asking for their mommy. It nearly breaks your heart every day. You can't seem to find the energy to work and you loose your job at the paper. You have a little money saved but it won't last for long, you'll have to find some way to support the kids. You find solace in working with your hands, you used to be good at woodworking in highschool but its been a long time. You start back mostly for a hobby, something to keep your mind off all you've lost, but then it turns into something more. A friend encourages you to sell your work and you start to make a reputation for yourself. You literally carve out a niche for yourself in the carpentry business making high quality custom cabinetry and furnature.
One day a billionaire husband and wife float into town on their yacht. The wife hires you to build her a custom closet for all her shoes and clothes on the yacht where space is limited. The wife is a looker but a real B*%@$ who treats everyone like dirt. You spend several weeks working on the closet while they are moored in town, but when the job is done she finds fault in your work and refuses to pay.
She and her husband ship out the next day despite the bad weather and Isabella Joan Windsor ends up falling overboard. When she is pulled out of the water, she has suffered a head injury resulting in amnesia. Her husband sees it as a way to finally get rid of her so he denies knowing her and sails away for some quality R&R. You see a story about "Jane Doe" on the news and recognize her. You come up with a plan to get her back for stiffing you...You decide to claim to be her husband and make her your housemaid "for about a month" which you consider equivalent to what she owes you. With the kids help, you plan to make her life hell.
After a while you start to have second thoughts about lying to her, the new more mellowed Isabella is a lot different. You start to have feelings for her, and it seems like she might have feelings for you as well. Everyday you contemplate telling her the truth, but it never seems like the right time.
Meanwhile her mother has been trying to get in touch with her, and her husband has run out of excuses. He knows that he can't put her mother off any longer so he decides to go back for her. As soon as Isabella sees her husband, her memory returns. She realizes that you lied to her and even though she has come to love your children as her own, she knows they aren't hers. She goes back with her husband to her old pampered life, but things are different. She is different. She doesn't care about the same things anymore, she misses her life with you. While she is missing you, you and the kids are missing her, you realize you love her but you can't compete against a billionaire husband and a life of luxury.
The kids are misserable without Isabella around and so are you. You know that Isabella and her husband are shipping out soon and its your last chance. You and the kids go after her. Just as Isabella is turning the boat around to come back to you, you catch up with her. She decides to give her good-for-nothing husband the boot and come back with you. You can't believe that she would give up a life of luxury, she tells you she doesn't have to...the money is all hers!!!
As soon as the ink is dry on the divorce papers, you tie the knot.
Almost nine months later you welcome a new baby boy you name Justus Nero Bailey.
~5 years later~
You are 37 years old. Your kids are 19, 9 and 5. After you and Isabella Joan were married, you no longer needed to work to support the family. Your woodworking got demoted to a hobby and you had more time to spend with your wife and kids. You also had more time to work on your other hobby, playwriting. You showed a few to your wife and she loved them. She encouraged you to write more and even produced a few at a local theatre in Seattle. Some big wig producers saw your plays and loved them. They asked you to come write for them in London and with your wife's encouragement, you accept. You move the entire family to London. Your eldest, August Nelson Bailey, starts University in London and your wife thinks it would be a great opportunity to send your younger kids, Hunter Joseph, Spencer William, and Justus Nero Bailey, away to boarding schools.
For you life has changed dramatically, where you are used to having a house full of kids and noise, your home is now quiet and empty. Your wife is loving everything that London society has to offer, but the social life isn't for you. You and your wife start growing further and further apart. You find it hard to work in a quiet house, so you start going to the park regularly in order to write among the sounds of laughing children.
One day you meet a family of four young boys (Christopher Ellis Curran is 14, Simon Piers Curran is 13, Patrick Seamus Curran is 11, and Anthony Jasper Curran is 7) and their widowed mother, Bryony Acacia Curran, in the park. During the next months you play with the boys daily, their imaginity games give you an idea for a play. Simultaneously, a friendship starts to develop between you and the boys' mother, much to the chagrin of your wife and high society, which gossips about your relationship with Bryony and her sons. You could care less about what society thinks, your only care is for the boys and their mother's reputation.
Despite what the gossipmongers say, your relationship with the boys' mother is strictly plutonic. You respect her and she appreciates everything you do for the boys who have had a hard time adjusting since the death of their father. She comes to think of you as a god send especially now, because she has become very sick and fears she may be dying. Her illness brings back memories of your first wife, Nessa, and you pay for the best doctors to care for her and you try to be there for the boys. Your wife, Isabella, tells you she is leaving you for someone else.
You know that your play, based on the imagintive boys, will be something that no one has ever seen, it will be different and magical though your producers aren't quite convinced. The boys' mother becomes sicker and the doctors can't do anything for her. The play is a huge success and becomes an instant classic, but your success is bitter sweet because the boys' mother doesn't have long left to live.
In her will she names you as gaurdian for her boys.
~1 Year Later~
You, Archer Chance Bailey, are now 38 years old. Your eldest, August Nelson Bailey, is 20 and is getting ready to graduate from university. The twins, Hunter Joseph and Spencer William Bailey, are 10, your youngest, Justus Nero Bailey, is 6 and your adopted children, Chritopher Ellis, Simon Peirs, Patrick Seamus, and Anthony Jasper Bailey are now 15, 14, 12 & 8. After your wife, Isabella, left and the widow, Bryony, died leaving you to care for her boys, you decided you wanted your children near you, so you took them out of boarding school and enrolled them at a fine school nearby. The widow's boys fit right in with your own children. All seven children (all but your eldest) are rambunctious, energetic and rather industrious practical jokers. Some might say they are ill-behaved, but you know it is all for fun and tend to let them get away with their many antics. The only problem is they do tend to scare away quite a few nannies. They've been through 17 nannies to be exact, in just under a year! Until you can find a new nanny, care of the children will have to fall to the family maid, Cora Grace Byrd, the only woman the children seem to listen to...
And to make matters worse, you've just been notified of a new stipulation in the widow's will...In order to keep custody of her boys, you must find a wife...and you only have until the end of the month to do it!!!
More than anything you want to keep the widow's children, who have become so much a part of your family. You'll do whatever it takes...so you enroll in a dating service. You also call the Nanny service but they have no more Nannies to send. Desperate, you take the advice of a mysterious voice that tells you "the person you need is Nanny McPhee."
Nanny McPhee is a rather unusual and hideous woman who is able to use magic to keep your children in line and teach them to mind. With discipline and magic, she transforms the family's lives. In the process, she herself transforms from ugly to beautiful. Meanwhile, you've been busy finding a wife. You've brought several nice women home, but your children have scared each and every one of them away. Your latest potential mate is Mrs. Selma Quickly, a widow of three husbands with garish taste in clothing. When you bring her home the children do everything they can think of to scare her away. After a disastrous visit she leaves angrily and refuses to see you again.
Afterward, you explain your situation to the children. They know that they have made a mistake and on their own accord they visit Mrs. Quickly, apologize and convince her to give you another chance. With time quickly running out and no other options left to you, you propose marriage to Mrs. Quickly. On the day of the wedding, the children discover that Mrs. Quickly is just as cruel and conniving as they'd feared. They are determined to stop the wedding. By pretending to be attacked by a storm of bees, they quickly have the entire wedding party and guests running for cover, things get even more out of hand when a food fight ensues. In the middle of it all, you realize how much you truly dislike Mrs. Quickly and put a stop to the wedding.
However this still doesn't solve the problem of your single state ... but your ingenious children have a plan. They suggest you marry Cora Byrd. A preposterous idea, but one that might actually work. Cora is quite attractive, and you do like her quite a lot, in fact, if you really think about it, you might actually love her. But what are her feelings for you? Well, she's been in love with you for quite some time but was never able to say anything because she's your maid. While everyone is still gathered, you decide to get married right then. Nanny McPhee transforms Cora into a bride and with the permission of your children, you say "I do!" With that all the family's problems are now solved and Nanny McPhee's work is done. "When you need me, but do not want me, then I must stay. When you want me, but no longer need me, then I have to go."
You and Cora are very happy together, and the children now have two loving parents. What more could you ask for? Oh, maybe just one more!
You name your baby boy Oliver Blane Bailey. This is your ninth son!
The BaileysArcher Chance ~31~
Nessa Serenity(Molloy)Helen Aurora (Turner)Isabella Joan (Windsor)Cora Grace (Byrd) ~38~
August Nelson ~20~
Christopher Ellis (Curran) ~15~
Simon Peirs (Curran) ~14~
Patrick Seamus (Curran) ~12~
Hunter Joseph ~10~
Spencer William ~10~
Anthony Jasper (Curran) ~9~
Justus Nero ~6~
Oliver Blane ~nb~
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