The Bugs Go Marching One by One...

It all started a few weeks ago, when a poor, unsuspecting, and hungry girl went to the pantry and took out a box of Ritz crackers. That's funny, she thought. That almost looks like a bug shape on that cracker... Then, the speck on the cracker moved. "We have BUGS!" she yelped.
A few weeks later, on Christmas Eve, that same unfortunate girl looked at the clock and, realizing it was only 9:30, decided she needed a mid-morning snack (because if I...ahem, she....waited until lunch, my her stomach could quite possibly eat itself). She grabbed a box of Wheat Thins, and put some on a napkin, only to see her little buggy friends were back, crawling yet again on her crackers. Her family said they hoped the whole pantry wasn't infested, but left it at that. After all, it was only two little bugs..
Fast forward to last night.
After deciding to have rice with our chicken, my mother began to prepare a box of chicken flavored rice/vermicelli mix.
Absolutely noting in a chicken flavored rice and vermicelli mix should be black.
And they really shouldn't move.
(To be fair to the little bugs, I didn't see them move in the pan. I don't know if the heat had already killed them by the time we noticed. I'm pretty sure though, when I went to wash the pan, one was floating in the water.)
So we went through the pantry. Good grief. They got into a TON of stuff....some stuff we just trashed, knowing there was a very, very, good chance they were in there. Boxes and boxes of side dishes and macaroni and cheese and huge bags of rice and almost all of our opened packages of snack crackers. All over the pantry shelves and walls.
So gross.
Even grosser, after pitching an infested box of Triscuts, a certain family member (not me this time!) exclaimed, "I ate those today!!"
I hope they don't come back....almost all our food is in Ziploc bags and Tupperware containers now.
Oh, well. Extra protein I guess:)

Supersized

A huge bag of brown sugar, purchased at Sam's Club.(That's a lot of cookies)

Fifty pounds of flour.(Plus there's more in the pantry)

An average box of cereal comes with a toy. An enormous box of Corn Flakes comes with a pack of Crasins.(I know a box of Life cereal is a bit smaller than an average box, but it makes it a tad more dramatic:) )

Seven gallons. I couldn't get it in the picture, but there is two more in the door. Plus a half gallon of lactose free milk. Plus a half gallon of chocolate soy milk.(We go through about a gallon a day)

That's an average bag of chocolate chips for us (It's six times the size of a regular bag)

Twelve jars of creamy peanut butter (My mom bought the whole case at Aldi's)

Nine cups

(In size order, also age order)

We've got lots of shoes

(See my tye-dye rainbow crocs?)

A lot of the things you need for a supersized family come in a supersized amount.

(Someone told me we have enough to feed an army)

Names, Names

Alex, AJ, Hannah, Caley, JD, Riley and Zeke.
Alex, AJ, Hannah, Caley, JD, Riley, Zia and Zeke.
I think it sounds pretty good.
Zia and Zeke.
Zeke and Zia.
I guess we really like the Z's.
Soon enough(God willing) the second list shall be true.
That's right. We will soon be an eight kid family, made possible by adopting a six year old Zia.
Zia was born in India and abandoned. She lived in an orphanage for awhile until she was adopted by someone in California. Due to the circumstances, the adoptive parent can't keep her. She is living a group home right now, but we hope she'll come live with us soon.
She'll share a room with Caley and Riley. It'll be like having quadruplets-Caley is 7 months older than JD, JD is 6 months older than Riley, and Riley is 6 months older than Zia.
Just for the fun of it, I thought I'd post all of the meanings of our names. (FYI, we didn't pick names based on meaning, if you can't tell:) )

Alexandra- Defender of the People
Anthony- Unknown
Hannah- Grace
Caley- From the Jackdaw Clearing (WHAT?!)
Jonathan- God has given
Riley- Descendant of Roghallach (What in the world....)
Zia- Wheat, Grain
Ezekiel- God will Strengthen
Emily(mom's name)- To strive or excel or rival
Randy(dad's name)- Diminutive form of Randall or Miranda.

Cookie Conversations

Caley: Mom, Zeke took another cookie.
Mom, taking cookie from his hand: No, no more cookies, you already had some.
Zeke: But mom, I wanted to have free cookies. I had two, now I have free!
Mom: You can't have three cookies...
Zeke: But I want to be strong, and free cookies will make me strong!
Mom: No, cookies don't make you strong....they make you chubby.
Zeke: HEH-HEH!
Me: Well, it's true!
Zeke, running off: You are just makin' a big fat yie!
Caley: Who did a big fat lie?
Zeke: Mom did a big fat yie that cookies make you chubby!
So....power cookies or chubby cookies?

Our Adventure!

We really need to get out more.
With seven kids, you don't get out much, besides church on Sundays.
We learn this every time we do go out.
Take today for example.
We were surprised with a trip to the big mall a few towns over. We were going to see Cars 2. Cars is a family favorite movie. We've seen it so many times, all nine of us have practically memorized it. Especially Mater's lines. (And, Mater is often quoted, sometimes multiple times a day.)
"Ya hurt yur what?!"
"McQueen and Sally, parkin' in a tree, K-I-S-Sumtin'-Sumthin'-Sumthin'-T!"
"Well dag gun!"
Back to the point.
Once we entered the mall, my siblings were THRILLED with the escalators. We ended up going up and down on them probably about 4-6 times, each time being met with a cheer and/or happy dance by a handful of them.
Ain't we fancy, with PIZZA at the FOOD COURT for lunch!
A couple boxes of candy, four bags of popcorn, and four sodas to split during the movie was more than we dreamed of.
While sitting at the (food court!!!) table during lunch, a certain seven year old brother pointed to a store across the way and exclaimed, "Hey look! It's Disney World!"
"Um, that's not Disney World. That's a store were they sell Disney toys and stuff," I clarified.
"Oh."
Upon entering the mall and going up the stairs the movie theater lobby, all my siblings were happily looking over the ledge at all the shoppers. My dad has went to get the tickets. Mom waited...and waited...and they all just kept looking over.
"Do you guys know what this place is?"
"No,"
"It's a movie theater!"
Yes, they would have stood their people watching all day and not knowing that we were going to see a movie in a few hours had we not told them.
We hadn't been to a movie theater together for about 4 years.
So, we had a super fun time today, in the Real World. We window shopped around the mall, had lunch in the food court(!) and watched the sequel to our all time favorite movie.
What a day!

We Can Do It!

Colossians 3:23-Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as if working for the LORD, not men.





That includes taking some other random persons dirty sock out of the back of a cabinet, along with a lot of other random stuff, and cracking your head on the top of the cabinet on the way out.(Alright, maybe not the head banging part)



Oh, yeah. The Clean Team scrubbed the new house today. My mother, sister, brother and I spent the afternoon cleaning out our new house(moving next week:D). Floors, bathrooms, cabinets(inside and out!) doors, you name it we cleaned it. I asked for the blue shirt and polka dotted kerchief, but instead got yellow rubber gloves and a broom. Sigh. The unjustness of life. I commend my mother who scrubbed the bathrooms till they shined. Those 3 bathrooms were NASTY. Anyway, that verse I put up there, because it came to my mind as I was scrubbing the shelves in the linen closet. I thought of that during the afternoon, reminding myself to that not only am I washing these shelves for the rest of my family, I'm doing it for God. That made me scrub a bit harder:-). I'm sure you are wondering what I meant by the sock comment above. Let me tell ya. I was cleaning a cabinet. A very deep cabinet. I saw something in the back. Mom came over and used the broom to push it closer. It WAS a sock! EW! And a huge package of straws that was spilling. And an unopened magnifying glass. I ran for the rubber gloves when I found out that I was responsible for taking them out, since I was cleaning that cabinet. Gag me. I did it, but as I was pulling my head out of the cabinet, I banged my head on the top. OUCH!! By the time we finished, we had a fairly clean house, and four hot, tired, people. But it's done. Ready for all our stuff. Whew.

Q's and A's

We've been asked many questions over the years. Many questions. So I decided that today, I will post the answers to these questions and others that haven't been asked but I'm sure some people wonder about.
Q. Are they all yours?!(This question is usually posed to my mother)
A. *Sigh* Yes, they are all ours. We aren't babysitting. Nope, not foster parents. We adopted them.
Q. What is it like to have so many brothers and sisters?
A. It's usually fun. You can almost always find someone to play with you. Board games always have enough players. Sometimes, though, it's frustrating when, say, you want to be alone, or want it quiet, and every single room you go into has a person in it.
Q.What on earth do you drive?
A. We drive a 12 passenger van. Side note, if you ever see such a large van, please be courteous and don't park super close. There is only ONE door to get in and out. Many a time do we have to go single file to the opposite end of the car, and then squeeze in one by one, trying to be sure that everyone is in the right order so we don't have to climb over each other.
Q. What happens when you go out to eat? Isn't it expensive?
A. 'Going out to eat' for us is Cici's Pizza, where we can all eat for about $50.....or we stop and get burgers from the dollar menu at McDonalds. We all look forward to Christmas Eve, when we go out and have Chinese food...one of the few times during the year we go to a real restaurant.
Q. OK, how do you COOK for that many?
A. You get used to it. Doubling the recipe becomes almost natural. Checking the ingredients on the back of prepared foods to figure out who can and can't have it because of allergies becomes almost natural. I fear the day when I get married and move out...I only know how to cook in large quantities. Just kidding. Sort of.
Q. Do the kids fight?
A. Ha! Ha! Hear me laughing. Yes, we fight. They range from petty squabbles to my youngest brother sneaking into a room and tackling his big brother from behind, which tends to make them look like the shorter, black versions of Kip and Napoleon Dynamite.
Q.Is it always noisy at home?
A. Usually. Once again, you sorta get used to it. It isn't as loud as you might think though.
Q. How does your mom teach so many different grades?
A. Most of our homeschool work is independent. We read a lesson in our textbooks or on the computer and then do the work. When it is something that needs to be taught, we take turns: I might work on my math problems while mom teaches the ABC's to my sister, then when they are finished mom and I discuss Arctic vs. Antarctic.
So that is a peek into Big Family Life. It usually all works pretty well. And it's usually a lot of fun.

Ten Reasons You Know You Have a Big Family

You know you have a big family when...
-Mom comes home from grocery shopping, thrilled that she "didn't go overboard", spending only $90 on $120 worth of groceries-for the week.
-You don't need any friends to make a full baseball team
-You go out to the second refrigerator in the garage to find eight cartons of milk, with regular milk, chocolate soy milk, and lactose free milk, on almost any given day-except those days when (horror of horrors) there is only two and you have to get to Kroger immediately!
-You realize that it's cheaper for mom to become a swimming instructor than it is for all the kids to take swim lessons
-You make every secretary hate there job when the whole family's crowded around the desk and we say, "Alright, we need seven appointments..."
-Your family gets compared to the Biblical character of Jacob's in church
-Every child has a sixth sense to notice any other extremely large passenger van on the road
-Entering a supermarket, everyone stares at you, not because your family is making a scene or acting any different then the rest of the shoppers, but because of the number of people who are walking down the aisles together
-You open the closet to find at least 32 shoes in front of you, if not more
-You've mastered cooking in large quantities without the use of nuts, certain amounts of milk, and food coloring, because of food intolerances and allergies

Bunnies and Storms

We have a new family living on our property. Two rabbits have made themselves at home in our backyard. My youngest brother has christened them Flopsy and Peter(I wondered what happened to Mopsy and Cottontail).They've been hanging around our yard for two days now. This morning dad tossed out some carrots for them. I asked my 4 year old brother which rabbit I took a picture of, and he promptly answered, "Peter,"















That would be him right there^



Yesterday when we were watching them from the window, our 10 year old Elmer Fudd was ready to go hunting in the backyard. Fortunately for the bunnies, the most powerful thing he has is a Nerf gun. Instead of going hunting, he had to go finish some schoolwork. Poor Elmer.







Last night we had huge storms. Scratch that. We were supposed to have huge storms.*coughs* On the Doppler radar, there was dark red and pink all around us. Hail, wind, tornadoes, thunder and lighting....then you see my town. An hour glass has formed on the radar. The thinnest part is right over us! This caused an uproar from Mr. Fudd, who, not only likes Nerf guns, also likes big storms. It's actually quite amazing. The family joke(and I use the term "joke" lightly) is that storms can sense my weather-loving mother. They avoid her at all costs. She said she wanted an award for keeping the town safe. No matter where we live, storms always run away from us. Did you see the damage in Joplin? Fellow citizens of my city, you will never ever have to worry about that happening here.

Not Normal?!

Hey you

Yes, you

Come a little closer, I want to tell you something

Not that close! I'm claustrophobic! There you go

My family isn't normal.

You could have responded to that earth-shattering statement in one of two ways. You could have thought....
A) "Of course your family isn't normal! You have seven kids of different races(most who are a different race than your parents), drive a large maroon van wherever you go, and your poor mother still has her sanity! You call that normal?!"
or
B) "WHAT?! Not normal?! What are you talking about???"
If you were to tell my siblings that we aren't normal, they probably would have responded "B!"(In their brains anyway. They all have a tendency to to answer the "right" answer, even when that isn't what they think). Sure, we all know that we are a little different than most people, but you don't realize how irregular you are when you are living that way, if you know what I mean. Let me give you an example.
Setting: Christmas Eve, 2-3 years ago. The entire family is in the living room taking pictures.
Characters: My parents, sisters, brothers, and me.
"Let's have all the girls by stand by the Christmas tree!" says mom. My sisters and I happily oblige, wearing our brand new red and green nightgowns. We pose in front of the tree and smile. Mom and dad start to chuckle.
"What? What's so funny?" we ask.
"One of these things is not like the other...." mom sang. I looked around.
"I'm taller?" I suggest
"No..."
"I don't have clips in my hair!"
"Not quite..."
I thought for a moment. Then another. I couldn't figure it out.
"What?" I finally ask.
"Could it be the only white girl surrounded by black girls?"
OH! So that was it! I suppose I did look a bit funny.
You know, the funny part now is I didn't realize that I looked different from my sisters at first. None of us ever really pay attention to that kind of stuff. When I see my 10 year old brother, I don't see him as my only white sibling. He's just my brother. Same with all my other siblings. Like I said, we don't realize how unusual our family is. Any outsider could easily point out multiple "weird" things about our family. Yes, we could too, but we have to sit down and consciously think about it. I don't see a single thing wrong with our family setup. Different, yes. Bad or strange, no. I wouldn't trade my family or my life for anything else in the world. We ARE different, but I love it!

PS......I added a new scrolly thingy to the bottom of my blog! What do you think??

Graduation!!

*I apologize for not blogging in over a week, I've had a severe case of blogger's block(see below)......*



Happy Graduation Day! We started in early August, so today was our last day. I just came back from the "cafeteria" for our "last day lunch"......thankfully, we did not have a typical any-leftover-the lunch lady could find-lunch. We did not have mystery meat left over from September. We had peanut-butter and fluff sandwiches. Before that, we had our 'Graduation Ceremony'. We told the 'class' some of our favorite things we learned this year. We got awards(including Best Singer for my youngest brother, who daily treats us to his rendition of the Mighty Machines Theme Song). And we played Pomp and Circumstance through my mom's(ahem, teacher's) laptop, as we all walked to the front of the living room as my mother(TEACHER!) announced what grade we were graduating into.....8th, 6th, 4th, 2nd, 2nd, 1st, and pre-school. Beautiful. My dad(The Principal!) gave my TEACHER(I did it right!!) a Giant Hershey's bar and a card signed by all of us('scuse me, her students). How appropriate. A Pronoun Bar(hey, it's a Her-she bar, isn't it????)for the teacher.


Blogger's Block-when the brain of a usually wonderful blogger has been temporarily impaired, and the blogger cannot think of anything worthwhile or interesting to write about. Attempting to blog while suffering from Blogger's Block can result in extremely boring blog posts, rambling posts, or staring at a blank screen for hours, which can result in eyestrain. See Writer's Block

Easter

Why, oh why do all the thunderstorms have to hit my town between 11pm and 4am???

I mean, don't get me wrong, I usually love a good storm, but honestly.

Yesterday, I was like Buddy the Elf: "I got a full 45 minutes!"

Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but still. When they say everything is bigger in Texas, that includes the storms. Saturday night, I was up at 11, 2, 3, and 4:30, and never fell back asleep after that. Despite the fact that we'd been up half the night, with thunder and lighting and power outages, we had a great Easter. Seeing as some of us don't like ham very much, we ended up having fajitas and enchiladas. And, the younger kids had to do the Easter egg hunt fairly quickly, since some of the eggs were filled with M&Ms and would melt under the Texas sun. My brother just came in saying how we just got about 4 drops of rain.(There were severe storms all around us). Of course! It's daytime! How could there possibly be any storms?! I don't mean to complain, it's almost funny. Almost. Now, if all the rain around here would move west to all the wildfires....
Anyway, aside from the storms, we had a fantastic day yesterday, the most important day in our faith. For some reason, the Resurrection has been more important me this Easter. As I get older, the significance of Easter has been more clear. I grew up knowing that "We celebrate Easter 'cause that's when Jesus died on the cross and rose again so we can go to heaven!", just as every church-going kid will tell you. Last year, I really realized that having nails put through your hands(among other things) would hurt horribly. And that Jesus did it for me. I'd always known that, but it just became more real last year. This year, the Resurrection was extremely important to me. That was better then jelly beans and bunnies to me.
How was your Easter? I'd love to hear about it. Leave a comment and let me know!

Homeschooling

I love homeschooling. Homeschooling, the only place of learning where the kitchen is the cafeteria/science lab,meaning you occasionally have to eat your sandwitch next to someone's science experiment. Homeschooling, where baking cookies and playing with babies counts as Home Ec. Homeschooing, where Wii Fit is gym class on rainy days. It's my personal opinion that homeschool is about a milllion times better than public school. For one thing, you don't have to move at the pace of the rest of the class...I'm taking 9th grade Language Arts, but still working through 7th grade math. That's unheard of in public school. I have hours of free reading time. School usually only takes me about 2-3 hours, instead of 7 hours of public school, leaving me with much more time for reading and sewing and other things. I don't have to get up nearly as early. I don't have to take the bus(unless you count our van...the license plate says it's a private bus). See? What's not to love about homeschooling? :D

A Crash, a Boom, and a Bang!

We certainly had an interesting evening yesterday.

At around 4, my dad and I were in the kitchen, and my mom in the living room. We heard tires screech, and my mom exclaimed "Car accident in the front yard!!". We ran to the window, to find a (very nice, may I add) black SUV, with the left corner smashed in, and get this, our neighbor's brick mailbox looking like it exploded all over his yard and ours. My parents went out, and my sister and I ran to the front window. Our hearts were racing. A young man came out of the car. He claimed to be going 10 miles an hour, and swerved because an animal ran out in front of him. Later, that story changed to 15 MPH, and he was reaching for his glasses. My mom called the police. Turns out the guy lived down the street, and was able to drive the car home. My dad, 3 of my siblings went out and helped the neighbors pick up all of the bricks(like I said, the went everywhere). We had pulled our trash bins out the the front yard, and piled the bricks(and metal and glass from the car) into the bins. Then we had the issue of getting them back around the house. The weighed a ton! We were so thankful for a few things....

No one was hurt

We hadn't parked our car out front

It was 4 o'clock-that is usually the time my mom and my aunt are buckling my cousins in the car to go home, but thankfully, they had stayed home yesterday.

Like I said, and interesting evening!

Crazy Days are Here Again......

Little brother spilled his milk, the baby's screaming, sister needs help with math, somehow brother's science textbook has been conveniently been misplaced, the phone's been ringing all morning and this and that and this and that and AUGH!!!!! Deep breaths.....deep breaths..... Sometimes, everything seems out of control and all you're praying for is a better afternoon-You've given up on a good morning. Relax! One thing I've noticed is, sometimes, life seems a lot worse than it actually is when I haven't read my Bible yet that day. Often, a little quiet time (and some lunch) makes the afternoon ten times better than the morning. Sometimes, I feel like curling up in a ball and crying my eyes out because nothing has gone right, but I have to realize(something I'm not always great at) that things aren't so terrible. God's got it under control. I have to realize that, even though I feel like I'm having the worst day ever, God understands I'm upset, but it all is for a greater purpose, he isn't a horrible God who allows people to have a bad day just because he enjoys seeing people upset and sad and angry. I don't always know why things are happening the way they do, but I do know that God isn't tormenting people, and that He wasn't just bored that day, and decided that, for some entertainment, He'll make everything seem to go wrong for me. Everyone has rough days. Maybe everything has gone wrong that day, but when you put it in perspective, life isn't so bad. I'm not trying to make you feel like a bad person for having a bad day, or trying to tell you "it's not that bad" when it really was that bad, but think about it: You have a house. You have food. You have a God who cares about you and your horrible day. Sometimes, we have crazy, horrible, stressful days but we are blessed beyond realization, and, in the wise words of Little Orphan Annie................ "The Sun'll come out Tomorrow!"

After reading a post on another blog by a big sister of a big family, I decided to start my own, because the author was right: A lot of people just don't get how big families work. A lot of people think that the big sisters have too much work, or act like the second mommy. But really, everyone has to work to make the house run smoothly-not just the big sister. Yes, we have to help out a lot more than, say, a family with two kids, but it's not all work. One benefit-there is always something to do, or someone to have fun with. We have seven kids, and on the weekdays two of my cousins come over while their parents work. So we have my brothers, who are 10, 6, and 4, my sisters, 10, 7, and 6, and then my two cousins, 16 months and 5 months. And, no, none are twins. The reason we have some who are almost the same age is because we've adopted two different times. Things are always happening around here! But I love it. Even if I do have more responsibility than your average 13 year old sister, God has put me in this position for a reason. Sometimes it's hard, but "All things work for the good of those who love Him". I embrace my role as a big sister, knowing that this is my God-given resposibility, to be a good role model to my younger siblings, to love them and be patient with them, and to help my mom with things like cleaning and cooking, among other things.