Chris Christie delivering his keynote speech on stage at the Republican National Convention last night. (Photo: Getty)

TAMPA, Fla. -- New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who gave the keynote speech at the Republican National Convention last night, told the story of the meeting where he agreed to endorse Mitt Romney at a breakfast hosted by the New Hampshire and Pennsylvania delegations in a Doubletree Hotel by the Tampa airport this morning. Mr. Christie said he made the decision when Mr. Romney and his wife, Ann, visited the Christie homestead last fall for what was supposed to be a quiet business lunch. However, Mr. Christie's children had other plans.

Before the lunch, Mr. Christie said he and his wife, Mary Pat, quickly worked to get their house ready for the Romneys.

"First of all, oh my God, we have to clean the house," Mr. Christie said. "Mary Pat works, I got a pretty busy job, we've got these four kids, and let's just say our house is not always, you know, perfectly tidy."

The house wasn't the only thing they needed to prepare for the Romneys' visit. Mr. Christie said he and his wife also had to sit their children down for "the talk" ahead of the lunch.

"About an hour before the Romneys were getting there, we said to them, 'Listen, remember your manners ... He could be the next president of the United States, so you want to make a good impression,'" Mr. Christie explained.

When the Romneys arrived, Mr. Christie said his two oldest kids "were fabulous." His younger children, Patrick, who was 11-years-old at the time, and Bridget, who was 8 years old, were apparently a different story.

"Patrick and Bridget, on the other hand, felt as if, after the initial introduction that that was a little bit of a perfunctory amount of attention for them from the next president of the United States," said Mr. Christie. "They were looking for a little more."

Patrick was the first to strike.

"We see like a little flash out of the corner of the eye," Mr. Christie recounted. "By the time we turned, Patrick is careening toward the next president of the United States on his rollerblades--and I mean flying at Mitt Romney. And he gets within about two feet of him and then hits those brakes at the top ... he stops short, and he goes, 'How you doing?'"

Mr. Romney was apparently unfazed by Patrick's entrance and ended up having a "conversation back and forth" with the young boy about hockey. Patrick departed a few minutes later as abruptly as he'd arrived, after Mr. Romney asked him a question about hockey that "didn't interest" him.

Not to be outdone, Patrick's younger sister, Bridget, soon made her own appearance.

"Bridget saw Patrick getting all this attention from Mitt Romney and so she decided it was time to make her move," said Mr. Christie. "So, on to the back patio comes Bridget Christie, 8 years old, doing cartwheels, somersaults and handstands in front of the next president of the United States."

Mr. Romney responded by warning the little girl that there were "lots of hard things" on the patio where he was having lunch with the Christies and taking her by the hand onto the grass in the backyard where he played with her and discussed her gymnastics classes.

"For five minutes, I watched him helping her with her cartwheels, engaging her," said Mr. Christie. "She had this huge smile on her face."

Bridget eventually departed "without any grave national incident."

Mr. Christie told the audience at the New Hampshire and Pennsylvania breakfast that he told the story to illustrate that, while many politicians are "godawful" and "awkward" with children, Mr. Romney was "completely confident" with the Christie brood.

"I was sitting there eating this sandwich and listening to him talk about policy stuff. I was thinking to myself, this is a real guy, this is a real father," said Mr. Christie. "I would apply to most politicians the child test, and if they pass that test, you know they live their lives in a way that family is central. And if their family is central to them, your family is going to matter to them too."

At the lunch, Mr. Christie agreed to endorse Mr. Romney. He made his first appearance for the candidate a few days later.

Mr. Romney may have connected with the Christie children, but during his two quests for the presidency he's earned a reputation as a bit of an awkward campaigner. Mr. Christie finished by saying he hoped the qualities he saw in Mr. Romney at that lunch last fall would be on display when the candidate makes his closing speech at the RNC later this week.

"I hope that that Mitt Romney comes across on Thursday night. It's going to be a challenge, it's a challenge for anybody ... It all looks easy until you get up there," Mr. Christie said. "I hope that Mitt Romney comes across. I suspect he will."

Ann Romney (Photo: Getty)

TAMPA, FL -- In her speech at the Republican National Convention tonight Ann Romney will try to refute the notion she and her husband enjoy a "storybook marriage."

"I read somewhere that Mitt and I have a 'storybook marriage.' Well, in the storybooks I read, there were never long, long, rainy winter afternoons in a house with five boys screaming at once. And those storybooks never seemed to have chapters called MS or Breast Cancer," Mr. Romney will say, according to an advance excerpt of her speech distributed by the Romney campaign. "A storybook marriage? No, not at all. What Mitt Romney and I have is a real marriage."

Ms. Romney's speech also includes a promise to American voters that her husband "will lift up America":

"This is the man America needs. This is the man who will wake up every day with the determination to solve the problems that others say can't be solved, to fix what others say is beyond repair."

Update (10:33 p.m.): Ms. Romney's speech ended moments ago. The Romney campaign has provided the full text of Ann Romney's speech as prepared for delivery:

"Luce, thank you for that kind introduction.

I want to talk to you tonight not about politics and not about party.

And while there are many important issues we'll hear discussed in this convention and throughout this campaign, tonight I want to talk to you from my heart about our hearts.

I want to talk not about what divides us, but what holds us together as an American family. I want to talk to you tonight about that one great thing that unites us, that one thing that brings us our greatest joy when times are good, and the deepest solace in our dark hours.

Tonight I want to talk to you about love.

I want to talk to you about the deep and abiding love I have for a man I met at a dance many years ago. And the profound love I have, and I know we share, for this country.

I want to talk to you about that love so deep only a mother can fathom it -- the love we have for our children and our children's children.

And I want us to think tonight about the love we all share for those Americans, our brothers and sisters, who are going through difficult times, whose days are never easy, nights are always long, and whose work never seems done.

They are here among us tonight in this hall; they are here in neighborhoods across Tampa and all across America. The parents who lie awake at night side by side, wondering how they'll be able to pay the mortgage or make the rent; the single dad who's working extra hours tonight, so that his kids can buy some new clothes to go back to school, can take a school trip or play a sport, so his kids can feel… like the other kids.

And the working moms who love their jobs but would like to work just a little less to spend more time with the kids, but that's just out of the question with this economy. Or that couple who would like to have another child, but wonder how will they afford it.

I've been all across this country for the past year and a half and heard these stories of how hard it is to get ahead now. I've heard your voices: “I'm running in place,” “we just can't get ahead.”

Sometimes I think that late at night, if we were all silent for just a few moments and listened carefully, we could hear a great collective sigh from the moms and dads across America who made it through another day, and know that they'll make it through another one tomorrow. But in that end of the day moment, they just aren't sure how.

And if you listen carefully, you'll hear the women sighing a little bit more than the men. It's how it is, isn't it?

It's the moms who always have to work a little harder, to make everything right.

It's the moms of this nation -- single, married, widowed -- who really hold this country together. We're the mothers, we're the wives, we're the grandmothers, we're the big sisters, we're the little sisters, we're the daughters.

You know it's true, don't you?

You're the ones who always have to do a little more.

You know what it's like to work a little harder during the day to earn the respect you deserve at work and then come home to help with that book report which just has to be done.

You know what those late night phone calls with an elderly parent are like and the long weekend drives just to see how they're doing.

You know the fastest route to the local emergency room and which doctors actually answer the phone when you call at night.

You know what it’s like to sit in that graduation ceremony and wonder how it was that so many long days turned into years that went by so quickly.

You are the best of America.

You are the hope of America.

There would not be an America without you.

Tonight, we salute you and sing your praises.

I'm not sure if men really understand this, but I don't think there's a woman in America who really expects her life to be easy. In our own ways, we all know better!

And that's fine. We don't want easy. But these last few years have been harder than they needed to be. It's all the little things -- that price at the pump you just can't believe, the grocery bills that just get bigger; all those things that used to be free, like school sports, are now one more bill to pay. It's all the little things that pile up to become big things.  And the big things  -- the good jobs, the chance at college, that home you want to buy, just get harder.  Everything has become harder.

We're too smart to know there aren't easy answers. But we're not dumb enough to accept that there aren't better answers.

And that is where this boy I met at a high school dance comes in.

His name is Mitt Romney and you really should get to know him.

I could tell you why I fell in love with him -- he was tall, laughed a lot, was nervous -- girls like that, it shows the guy's a little intimidated -- and he was nice to my parents but he was really glad when my parents weren't around.

That's a good thing.  And he made me laugh.

I am the granddaughter of a Welsh coal miner who was determined that his kids get out of the mines. My dad got his first job when he was six years old, in a little village in Wales called Nantyffyllon, cleaning bottles at the Colliers Arms.

When he was 15, dad came to America. In our country, he saw hope and an opportunity to escape from poverty. He moved to a small town in the great state of Michigan.  There, he started a business -- one he built himself, by the way.

He raised a family. And he became mayor of our town.

My dad would often remind my brothers and me how fortunate we were to grow up in a place like America.  He wanted us to have every opportunity that came with life in this country -- and so he pushed us to be our best and give our all.

Inside the houses that lined the streets of our town, there were a lot of good fathers teaching their sons and daughters those same values.  I didn't know it at the time, but one of those dads was my future father-in-law, George Romney.

Mitt's dad never graduated from college. Instead, he became a carpenter.

He worked hard, and he became the head of a car company, and then the governor of Michigan.

When Mitt and I met and fell in love, we were determined not to let anything stand in the way of our life together. I was an Episcopalian. He was a Mormon. 

We were very young. Both still in college. There were many reasons to delay marriage, and you know?  We just didn't care.  We got married and moved into a basement apartment. We walked to class together, shared the housekeeping, and ate a lot of pasta and tuna fish.  Our desk was a door propped up on sawhorses.  Our dining room table was a fold down ironing board in the kitchen.  Those were very special days.

Then our first son came along.  All at once I'm 22 years old, with a baby and a husband who's going to business school and law school at the same time, and I can tell you, probably like every other girl who finds herself in a new life far from family and friends, with a new baby and a new husband, that it dawned on me that I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into.

That was 42 years ago. Now we have five sons and 18 grandchildren and I'm still in love with that boy I met at a high school dance.

I read somewhere that Mitt and I have a “storybook marriage.” Well, in the storybooks I read, there were never long, long, rainy winter afternoons in a house with five boys screaming at once. And those storybooks never seemed to have chapters called MS or Breast Cancer.

A storybook marriage?  No, not at all. What Mitt Romney and I have is a real marriage.

I know this good and decent man for what he is -- warm and loving and patient.

He has tried to live his life with a set of values centered on family, faith, and love of one's fellow man. From the time we were first married, I've seen him spend countless hours helping others. I've seen him drop everything to help a friend in trouble, and been there when late-night calls of panic came from a member of our church whose child had been taken to the hospital.

You may not agree with Mitt's positions on issues or his politics. Massachusetts is only 13% Republican, so it's not like that's a shock.

But let me say this to every American who is thinking about who should be our next President:

No one will work harder.

No one will care more.

No one will move heaven and earth like Mitt Romney to make this country a better place to live!

It's true that Mitt has been successful at each new challenge he has taken on. It amazes me to see his history of success actually being attacked.  Are those really the values that made our country great?  As a mom of five boys, do we want to raise our children to be afraid of success?

Do we send our children out in the world with the advice, “Try to do... okay?”

And let's be honest. If the last four years had been more successful, do we really think there would be this attack on Mitt Romney's success?

Of course not.

Mitt will be the first to tell you that he is the most fortunate man in the world. He had two loving parents who gave him strong values and taught him the value of work.  He had the chance to get the education his father never had.

But as his partner on this amazing journey, I can tell you Mitt Romney was not handed success.

He built it.

He stayed in Massachusetts after graduate school and got a job. I saw the long hours that started with that first job. I was there when he and a small group of friends talked about starting a new company.  I was there when they struggled and wondered if the whole idea just wasn't going to work.  Mitt's reaction was to work harder and press on.

Today that company has become another great American success story.

Has it made those who started the company successful beyond their dreams?

Yes, it has.

It allowed us to give our sons the chance at good educations and made all those long hours of book reports and homework worth every minute.  It's given us the deep satisfaction of being able to help others in ways that we could never have imagined.  Mitt doesn't like to talk about how he has helped others because he sees it as a privilege, not a political talking point.  And we're no different than the millions of Americans who quietly help their neighbors, their churches and their communities.  They don't do it so that others will think more of them.

They do it because there IS no greater joy.

“Give and it shall be given unto you.”

But because this is America, that small company which grew has helped so many others lead better lives. The jobs that grew from the risks they took have become college educations, first homes.  That success has helped fund scholarships, pensions, and retirement funds.  This is the genius of America: dreams fulfilled help others launch new dreams.

At every turn in his life, this man I met at a high school dance, has helped lift up others.  He did it with the Olympics, when many wanted to give up.

He did it in Massachusetts, where he guided a state from economic crisis to unemployment of just 4.7%.

Under Mitt, Massachusetts's schools were the best in the nation. The best.  He started the John and Abigail Adams scholarships, which give the top 25% of high school graduates a four-year tuition-free scholarship.

This is the man America needs.

This is the man who will wake up every day with the determination to solve the problems that others say can't be solved, to fix what others say is beyond repair. This is the man who will work harder than anyone so that we can work a little less hard.

I can't tell you what will happen over the next four years. But I can only stand here tonight, as a wife, a mother, a grandmother, an American, and make you this solemn commitment:

This man will not fail.

This man will not let us down.

This man will lift up America!

It has been 47 years since that tall, kind of charming young man brought me home from our first dance. Not every day since has been easy.

But he still makes me laugh. And never once did I have a single reason to doubt that I was the luckiest woman in the world.

I said tonight I wanted to talk to you about love. Look into your hearts.

This is our country.

This is our future.

These are our children and grandchildren.

You can trust Mitt.

He loves America. 

He will take us to a better place, just as he took me home safely from that dance.

Give him that chance.

Give America that chance.

God bless each of you and God Bless the United States of America."

A still from the DNC's dancing horse ad. (Photo: YouTube)

DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse told ABC News yesterday that he was sorry if new ads hitting Mitt Romney on his refusal to release his tax returns offended Ann Romney. The ads in question featured Ms. Romney's dancing dressage horse, Rafalca, which is headed to the London Olympics. In the ads, the DNC uses footage of the prancing horse to make the claim Mr. Romney is "dancing around the issues" of his taxes and personal finances.

“Our use of the Romneys’ dressage horse was not meant to offend Mrs. Romney in any way, and we regret it if it did,” Mr. Woodhouse said. “We were simply making a point about Governor Romney’s failure to give straight answers on a variety of issues in this race. We have no plans to invoke the horse any further to avoid misinterpretation.”

Mr. Woodhouse's apology may have been prompted by another ABC interview featuring Romney campaign surrogate and potential vice presidential nominee Tim Pawlenty. Mr. Pawlenty said it was "really low" of the Democrats to poke fun at Ms. Romney's dressage horse as her horseback hobby is part of her therapy for multiple sclerosis. For her part, Ms. Romney brushed off the attack ads in a Good Morning America interview.

"It makes me laugh," she said.

View one of the DNC's dancing horse ads below.

Mitt and Ann Romney campaigning in New Hampshire. (Photo: Getty)

"Probably the toughest time in my life was standing there with Ann as we hugged each other and the diagnosis came," Mitt Romney says in the clip. "As long as it’s not something fatal, I’m just fine. I’m happy in life as long as I’ve got my soul mate with me."

The web video features Mitt and Ann Romney as well as their sons discussing Ann's multiple sclerosis. The Romney boys praise their father's handling of her diagnosis.

"He really stepped up. He let her be sick, let her take the time that she needed," Tagg Romney says.

Watch the Romney campaign's World Multiple Sclerosis Day video below.

Mitt Romney petting a dog (not Seamus) during a campaign stop in 2008. (Photo: Getty)

Mitt Romney addressed the "Crategate" scandal in an interview with radio host Bill Cunningham this afternoon. Mr. Romney blamed the furor over the incident where he strapped his dog in a kennel on the roof of his car on partisan members of the press and Democratic political operatives.

"I think this campaign is going to ultimately become about jobs not dogs," Mr. Romney said with a laugh. "Some members of the media, and certainly the DNC and the White House itself, are going to do everything in their power to divert the attention of the voter from the failure of the president to turn around the economy. He came into the office with the economy in a serious slide, it was his priority and it's not one that he had focused on and solved. ... So, they want to talk about dogs and I want to talk about jobs."

The rooftop ride, which was first revealed in a 2007 Boston Globe profile of Mr. Romney, has received considerable media attention in this election cycle (including in the digital and printed pages of this publication) and inspired protests fueled by the stealth PAC-backed group Dogs Against Romney. In an interview with ABC News' Diane Sawyer Monday, Mr. Romney's wife, Ann, maintained the dog, Seamus, "loved" riding on the roof of the family car. Ms. Romney has also said Seamus went on to live a happy life in California with Mr. Romney's older sister, Jane, after his rooftop ride. However, a trusted tipster told The Politicker two of Mr. Romney's sons said the dog actually ran away after his journey and, this week, Jane Romney's ex-husband said there's no way she had the dog following the infamous road trip.

President Barack Obama has a canine controversy of his own. On Monday, conservative blogs and the Romney campaign pointed to a passage in President Obama's 1995 memoir in which he revealed his stepfather fed him dog meat during his childhood in Indonesia. That story inspired its own Twitter hashtag-- #ObamaDogRecipes.