We just found out that our 7th baby will be arriving sometime around January 7th. Yippee for us! It is amazing to me that our family still seems so small. Really, we aren’t a small family compared to what is usual and acceptable in today’s society. Many larger families are put on display because of the curiosity they generate and controversy they stir up.

Take the Duggers who are expecting number 18 in January. One Eight. You should see their house – built completely debt free! They have one of those indoor playgrounds for their kids. They homeschool and they spend quality time together regularly. I am perplexed by those who criticize them saying things like, “how can they spend enough time with each child?”, when the children aren’t leaving the family to go to school, their mom is a stay at home parent, and they eat dinner together every night. They get better time together than most families with just 2 kids!
And now there is this family, Jon & Kate who have 8 kids and their own reality show. They kinda cheated though, you think? Granted the woman grew 6 babies at once, but still. I haven’t ever seen the show but I have seen pictures of their family. Wow are they a cute bunch!

Whenever anybody hears that I have six kids I often get the question, “You have twins somewhere in there, right?” As if having multiples somehow softens the shock or voids any irresponsibility on my part. Like twins don’t actually count.

I guess you could compare it to money. Although it is the same amount of money in the end, it appears as if you have more money if you have a stack of ones opposed to having just one ten dollar bill.

I don’t have twins. I have a stack of ones.

I have wanted twins but I always realize after giving birth that God knew me too well to go and give me twins. It’s that whole ‘He won’t give me more than I can handle’ thing.

So, I guess having 7 kids with no multiples puts us permanently on the edge of crazy in most peoples’ eyes. I don’t know, maybe their right but we’re happy so what does it matter?

Happy Mother’s Day!

Today at church our pastor played this really cute video in honor of us moms.
So, here is Comedian, Anita Renfroe’s ‘Momsense’ video – sure to make you smile on your special day whether you have seen it before or not. Enjoy!

A week or so ago there was an incident at the church involving the youth group. We park our motorcycle trailer in the church parking lot. We need a place to store it and the church occasionally needs a trailer so it is the perfect trade-off. Apparently a little crowd of teens decided to punch a hold through it while the leaders where getting their dinner ready.
Youth. Group. Kids.

Now, I am not saying that all youth groups are bad. I’ve yet to run across one I would send my kids to but I am sure there are some positive teen groups out there. I don’t blame the leaders for youth group issues but I am tempted to call out their parents.
These same parents, the ones whose kids find it acceptable to vandalize property, are the likely ones to say that the youth groups are failing because people like my husband and I are keeping our well behaved, Christ-centered kids home on Wednesday nights.

Not quite sure how I feel about being responsible for our local youth group’s negative behaviors. I guess our trailer’s vandalization (is that even a word?) was our own fault???

Sorry, but I am just not willing to risk my children’s souls, the souls of their children and their children’s children. They will have plenty of years to be a responsible witness and example when they are grown and firm on the truth. At their young, tender, impressionable ages right now we should not be setting the ‘save the world’ title on their shoulders. That is a lot of weight to bear at such a young age – most kids can’t carry it, they stumble and fall and then their parents wonder what happened to their sweet kid.

I read somewhere that when you get a group of teenagers together that at least one teen will introduce corruption to the others. I have had, in my younger days, personal experience with this and I saw it last week with our trailer incident. One of the culprits was a nice boy who seemed out of place next to the others, who all looked scared but also a little too cool and worldly. The one boy was repentant and ready to pay for his bad decision.
What was he doing there in that social circle, I wondered. Of course, it was just a mistake on his part and on the part of his parents – we’ve all done it, dropped our guard for a minute, but that doesn’t excuse the mistake. We must take action to prevent further events.
Just as adults must take measures to cleanse their lives of things that cause temptation, we must also do this for our children who aren’t always able to make wise decisions when faced with such alluring ideas.

Many try to convince me that sending my children to the wolf pack is the only way to convert the wolves; however, my children are just sheep. Wolves eat sheep and I am not prepared to sacrifice them.

My review of

These Customizable Fruit Roll-Up freebee codes were such a hit during the bloggy giveaway carnival so imagine my delight when I snagged a few more codes to giveaway! YIPPEE!

When we received the first set of codes I gave one to my daughter for her to try out and review. She designed hers for her girl group’s new review blog! How cool!

I haven’t blogged in a few days – we have been busy with graduations and going away parties. Our dearest friends moved away.
I also got my new laptop last week. It is very cool to finally be able to see my screen again! However, this meant changing files, learning to navigate Vista (and learning to dislike Vista), and try to recover all my old emails and email addresses because my computer, the day Ryan brought this new one home, started really freaking out and I am having a hard time getting anything off of it.

Anyway, we have some down time until Friday when things get busy again (Ryan commissions!). Prayfully I will be able to get caught up with my house work, reading, and blogging. Blogging is my favorite but, being a non-necessity it gets put on the back burner first when things get hectic around here.

I have another cool giveaway for you guys today. I will be posting it later on. For those of you who were last weeks winners – don’t worry! I am getting to all of you today!

Let’s see…
There will be a post about laminin (thanks to Seven!)
I have a few books to review, too.
A parenting post
A movie recommendation
And an announcement

Stay tuned!

Our mailman is terrified of our dogs. Luke, our large black lab/boxer mix weighing in at a whopping 90 something lbs can be scary, no doubt. He warns people to stay back with just his puffed neck and back hair and his loud, deep bark. He is an excellent watch dog.
But our Jack Russell? Okay, so maybe he could make a person nervous with his little ‘twinkle toe’ style run and the way he tilts his head to the side and perks his ears up can be a little unsettling.
We had only had little Jack for a few days and he was about as big as a teacup(notice for all you past readers, Jack was mo, is now Jackaroo. Talk to Kait if this confuses you – he’s her dog). Our nice postman, the one who trampled my cloth diapers once when I had them neatly de-staining in the sun out of the line of walking traffic (he really hates our dogs) walked by delivering our credit card offers.
He froze, terrified as the little puppy went up to sniff his shoe and asked, “Is he vicious?”
I wanted to say, “I don’t think so but if he threatens to maim you just step on him.”

I didn’t say that. I just told him no and had Kait go pick Jack up before he did something really frightening like roll onto his back for a tummy rub.

Isn’t it funny how the oddest fears seem to grip us? When I was a kid I had this irrational fear of alligators.
You might be thinking, “duh, alligators are scary. Not so irrational”.
Well, I was scared that they were hiding under my bed. Not too probable. To this day I have a fear of them. I don’t think they are under my bed anymore, there are far too many other things being stored under there – an alligator would never fit; but I am still scared of them – envisioning one of the greenish beasts reaching up out of a lake and carrying somebody off to their death before my eyes.
Mind you, we don’t have alligators up here in WA state.

My point is, many of us carry around these irrational fears. Either me and my alligators, my postman and our little dog, or my husband and clowns. He isn’t really afraid of clowns, he just doesn’t like them.
Whatever, Ryan.

I was told by somebody once that fears meant a lack of faith. I was concerned after that about my faith not being up to snuff; however, I know better now.
Fear can be healthy. It can cause us to do good instead of evil. It can make us stop and think through our consequences before we continue on with something. It has caused my children to obey me without question which has kept them out of danger time and time again. When we use fear in a constructive way it is a good emotion.
It is when we let fear take us over that it becomes dangerous. I may have a fear of my children being hurt or killed but I can’t keep them hold up in the house for the rest of their lives. I can’t let my fear keep us from living.

Like the postman. He has been delivering mail forever. He has a fear of dogs. Has that stopped him from doing his job? Not once! He plugs on, bringing us letters from loved ones, toys we’ve ordered, and bills we can’t wait to pay.

Life is riddled with unknowns and fear is sure to grip us from time to time. God is in control though. He has good plans for us. Just remembering that can help keep us from allowing fear to conquer.