Beautiful Fall, Beautifu Girl

You know you have a large family when...

...your children feel sorry for families with only six or seven children.
...people ask if you're competing with the Duggars.
...even your friends aren't sure how many children you have.
...your family no longer fits in a 15 passenger van.
..complete strangers feel welcome to comment on your fertility and contraceptive methods.
...two of your daughters go for a walk...and get asked by a neighbor if they're foster kids.
...you have to carry three health insurance cards in your wallet- because that's how many it takes to fit everyone's name.
...you take the wrong child to the dentist...simply because your handwriting on the calendar was messy and both started with a "j".
...grocery shopping for 30 children and 12 adults for a two day camp constitutes a "small" shopping trip for you.
You find yourself relating some small incident to your husband and starting with the words, "Well, I only boiled twenty-six eggs for breakfast..."
...you buy a 40 pound box of bananas intending to make banana bread and freeze a bunch for smoothies...but your children eat them all first.
...you find an afternoon root canal relaxing.
...it takes you twenty-three minutes on the phone to schedule your children's dental appointments.
...you've given up on using your toaster entirely and make all of your toast under the broiler in you oven.
...you are seriously tempted by the stacking cribs you see at Goodwill for $19.99.
...you find yourself thinking, "Wow, the house is so quiet and peaceful with only nine children".
...you have enough children to constitute not one, but TWO large families.
...you have a laundry basket devoted entirely to lonely socks seeking their mate.
...when you got to buy your children those cool "spin toothbrushes" because you think they get their teeth so much cleaner...but the store doesn't carry enough styles/colors for your children to each have a different toothbrush.
...when you can't take all of your children to the doctor's office at the same time because the waiting room has only 10 seats.
...when you still have seven children that are required by law to sit in a carseat or booster seat.
...you call the doctor to get your children tetnus shots, and they tell you they don't have enough in the office and need to order more from the health department.
...you take up more than one entire pew in church.
...you take only half of your children to the library, and STILL get asked if they're all yours.
...you go to fill your children's flouride prescription at the phamacy and you clean them out of every pill they have...and it's still not enough.
...you spend sixty dollars on socks...and not everyone gets new socks.
...you go shopping at Costco and the cashier asks if you're having a soccer barbecue.

October 20, 2009

Avi, age four

It's turning out to be a beautiful fall here in Northwest Washington. Crisp, cool mornings. Plenty of warm days with the sun shining. It's been wonderful. If only winter didn't have to come next...

We have this beautiful flaming red bush in our driveway. I don't know much about plants, and have no idea what this thing is, but I enjoy it every fall.

Avi struck this pose totally on her own. What a little ham!

The cool days have brought warm fires in our woodstove, lots of apple-sauce making and of course school work. This year all but two of my children are school age. I truly have a one room schoolhouse...minus of course the handy desks for the children to sit at. Every day is a mad rush to clear off the table for lunch, only to clear it off again to finish school work. It gets a bit crazy. And messy.

When school starts up, 'round these parts, my house falls apart. Forget deep cleaning, even those little ten or fifteen minute jobs fall to the wayside because I'm so busy with school. The last couple of weeks we've started a new routine: cleaning the house on Saturday morning. Shocking isn't it? The first time I announced the plan I'm pretty sure my children thought there was some law against it. Imagine, the audacity of me expecting them to clean...on a Saturday! I've been writing every job I can think of on the dry erase board. The children each pick a job, complete it, then erase it off the board. It's a nice way to see tangible progress. And since my children homeschool and have no homework, it adds some structure to our Saturday mornings.

How do you take care of the housecleaning chores?

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