This week I would like to welcome Becky Jane from Rise Above Your Limits
to TheNorthForty. An amazing woman, she is the proud mother of eleven
children. Below she explains how she managed to keep her household
running and stay sane.
Motherhood is something I’ve wanted since I was a little girl. To have been blessed with 11 children is more than I could have ever imagined possible – literally!
I know a lot of people think CL (my husband) and I must be crazy…I’m the first one to admit that "YES, we are, and I wouldn’t have it any other way!"
For Mother’s Day, I put together some statistics that you might find interesting prove my insanity…you can view them on the link below:
http://riseaboveyourlimits.blogspot.com/2011/05/motherhood-32-years-worth.html
Each child’s birth was a new, exciting, and spiritual experience. Each new born baby had come just so recently from our Father in Heaven’s presence. I could feel His love for my child and for CL and for me. Each birth brought new hopes and dreams for this little one! I was always excited about spending years and years getting to know this new friend the Lord had sent to our home.
Running such a large household took some planning and ingenuity…I had never been the mom to so many kids before, so it was a continual learning process!
Meals and grocery shopping: We were given a 10 foot dining table and benches. When we added onto our 800 square foot home, making it 3100 square feet, we made sure the dining room would accommodate such a large table.
Grocery shopping was a joke. 3 full shopping carts every 2 weeks. When we ‘pulled’ up to the check-out, there was always someone with a comment like, “Are all those groceries for a Scout camp out?” or “You must be having a huge party at your house!”, to which I’d reply, “This is just for my family, and believe me, it ain’t no party!"
Chores: Everyone had their chores to do. Even the youngest could help out by emptying the trash, clearing the table, cleaning up after themselves. The older ones learned to read recipes and cook. Even baking bread, making butter and yogurt by the gallon was something they all learned. More than once, I told my boys that their future wives are going to love them, because they were all such good cooks.
Laundry, dishes and cooking the old fashioned way – we had no clothes dryer (too expensive to run), no dishwasher and no microwave. Can you imagine the dishes that went through our house? We would have had to have 2-3 dishwashers just to keep up! Yikes!…Paper plates became an essential part of our sanity!
Illness: I’ve included this because it was a BIG deal. We were blessed with pretty healthy kids, but when sickness did hit our house it came in full force! Seldom would just one person get sick and often it was a large group of us. To make it fun and easier for me to keep on top of, we would pull out the couch bed, pile on with pillows and blankets, and watch endless hours of movies (we didn’t have a TV antennae, so videos were what we watched). Did you know that there is a 10 version of ‘Return to Treasure Island’! This was one of our favorites for ‘sick time’!
Pets: We had our usual array of animals through the years, like goats, a jersey cow named RoseBud, cats, dogs, ducks and chickens. We raised our own turkeys, pigeons and bunnies too.
Gardening: Growing our own vegetable garden was more for fun than for food. We grew strawberries, raspberries, peas, apricots, and cherries, then let the kids harvest and eat anytime they wanted. We did bottle apple sauce, apricots and tomato juice, and of course our favorite was apple butter…such memories of apples and spices cooking would fill the house with the smells of autumn!
Each child had their own private flower bed in our Sweet Memories Garden. http://riseaboveyourlimits.blogspot.com/p/sweet-memories-childs-garden.html
Holidays and Personal Time: Celebrating the holidays was always a big deal. Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Valentine’s Day, were special occasions that we all worked hard at making memorable. The kids especially liked the traditional catered Valentine’s Day dinner!
Giving personal time to each child was something that was very important. Visiting with the younger ones at nap time while they slowly fell asleep was one of my favorite times.
We read scriptures every evening, attended church on Sunday and every Monday night was set aside for Family Home Evening. We would all take turns preparing a spiritual lesson, song, or treat! CL and I recognize that the Lord is vital to the success of our family.
So now what?: CL and I are nearing the end of raising our family. ‘Only’ 3 left at home now. It has been a difficult, funny, tear filled experience. Lots of trials and growth, countless sleepless night and tons of worrying and laughing. If I had it to do over again, would I?
Yes I would, because now I know 11 amazing, unique people on a personal basis that can only come from being a family!
If I have a motto for our family, it would most likely be something like this: We are not a family of perfect people doing the perfect things all the time, but, we are a family of imperfect people learning to love, forgive and accept each other!
Are you interested in writing a guest post for TheNorthForty? If so, please check out my Guest Posting Policy and send your submissions to tykesmom@the-north-forty.com.
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