A Day in the Life

Honestly, I never considered writing a blog.  Ray is a REALLY good writer.  He is witty but also thought-provoking.  He can look at a sink full of dirty dishes or a penny on the sidewalk and all of the sudden have some deep spiritual meaning connected to it.  His perspective is always interesting.  And perhaps because he is not the most loquacious person in the world, reading what he has written lets me into his brain.  I feel like I know him more.
Me?  I see a sink full of dirty dishes and well.... it's a sink full of dirty dishes.  Usually not a lot of spiritual thought revolving around that (though I DID have a fun perspective change last week, while staring at a sink full of dirty dishes.  But I'll share that another time).
So, why write a blog?  Well, a little over a year ago the population of our household increased about 43%.  The year prior to that our household had increased 75%.  The way we did life had to change.  My top concerns were: laundry, grocery shopping and meal planning, carpool, and sanity.  I had NO idea where to start, but I knew I needed a plan.  So I began to google things like "large family logistics" and "mega families".  Thank goodness that there are pioneers out there, others who have large families with the same logistical concerns I had.  Except these people had found some really great solutions, and they had decided to write books and blogs!  I poured over their material and started to make a plan.  I am SO thankful for their resources!
I am by no means an expert in this arena, but a little over a year later we have settled into some pretty good routines.  There are always things I would like to see go better.  Some areas I have not even begun to tackle.  But some are working quite well and until recently I had not given it much thought.  Then I posted this picture on Facebook

Currently 40 people have "liked" the picture and 20 have commented on it.  I don't think I have received a response like that since our adoption day pics from last year!  Thanks to everyone who left encouraging messages, lunch packing has been more enjoyable this week:)  This picture is what sparked my blog interest.  Whether you have 1 kid, or 20, this parenting thing is no joke.  It is a daily dying to self.  And sometimes you wonder if you are doing anything right at all.  So, I started to think through the last year or so.  What have we been doing that is working?  And what do we need help with?  Hopefully I'll have some ideas that will help you.  And I am hoping you can help me too (a friend of mine suggested an App for laundry.  If one of you could get working on that, it'd be great!)
In regards to lunch packing, I almost always do it the night before.  To say I am not a morning person is a huge understatement.  I'm a bear.  Huge props to Ray, who tackles breakfast duty every morning (I'm talking french toast, pancakes, biscuits and gravy, etc.)  He rocks.
I assemble lunches the night before.  To start the school year off, I had my two teenage girls learn about the food pyramid (which I now know is called MyPlate).  They are responsible to pack their own lunches, and I wanted to make sure it was balanced.  For accountability, they each had to pack a younger sibling's lunch as well.  Which left me to pack the other four kids' lunches.  It worked well for the first semester and the girls learned to make healthy food choices, which was the main goal.  But it really wasn't saving me any extra time.  Packing 6 lunches is not any harder than packing 4.  So this semester I let them off the hook.  They just pack their own lunch now.
Uniformity is key, so right off the bat I purchased these lunch boxes from Amazon.  The brand is easylunchboxes.com.  You can purchase separately the soft carrying case.  Each child has a different color, so if one goes missing, I know who to ask about it.  Lots of things in our house are color-coded to a specific child.  Cups, towels, toothbrushes.  Makes life easier (unless we have a guest come over who doesn't know the system and tries to give Gretchen's green cup to Kristina!  But the kids all know the routine well enough, usually they just adjust.)
Common foods you would find in my kids' lunches:
Deli meat with crackers or whole wheat tortillas.  PB and J.
Yogurt and cheese.
Raisins and craisins.
Always some kind of fruit.  Often: clementines, strawberries, apples, blueberries, blackberries, applesauce, peaches, bananas, bell peppers.
Tomatoes, carrots, edamame.  I have I much harder time with veggies.  If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them!  If they don't have a veggie at lunch, we have at least one at dinner.
Maybe once a month I would give them a cookie or chips.  But rarely.
There aren't typically enough leftovers for me to send in with the kids, so often the teenage girls will eat dinner leftovers for lunch the next day.  Or Ray and I will.
School lunch is over $2/day so it's very rare they eat at school.  I try to keep each person's food consumption between $3-4/day per person.  You do the math on how much that is a month!  But for a family of 10, it's low.  One trip to Starbucks can blow your food allowance for the whole day, so we have to be careful.
So, what do you pack in your kids' lunches?

"I like adoption" (Asa, age 6)

Last week was a normal week.  We were driving home from school, which usually means I have at least 5 kids in the car with me.  I drive a Honda Odyssey (thanks to my sister and her husband, who gave us a sweet deal several years ago).  The Ody seats 7.  Ray drives a Honda Pilot (thanks to our local dealership, who also gave us a sweet deal because our family is in ministry).  Ray calls the Pilot a "truck".  The truck seats 8.  I am telling you this so that you understand that our family cannot ever go anywhere together.  We always have to take two vehicles.  Good thing gas is so cheap....
Anyway, we were on our way home.  Normal day.  Six kids in the back seat and one teenager up front with me.  Out of the blue Asa says, "I like adoption."  I chuckle and without even thinking say, "Me too, buddy.  Me too."  I am not sure what the other kids thought when he said this.  Honestly, they may not have considered it much.  With a houseful of young kids (who lack filters between their brains and their mouths and who are painfully unaware of social taboos) we have learned to speak in pretty plain language about the world of foster care and adoption.  It is what it is.  BUT, as the Mom of Asa, the one who knows what makes him tick, I was wondering what in the world was going on in his sweet little head.  Why was adoption on his mind in that particular moment?  Asa didn't give me much of a chance to ponder, or ask questions.  He continued (and this is where writing is so much more difficult than having a conversation) "You're pretty much all here because of me."  As he said this last part he pointed his finger in the air and did sort of a sweeping circular motion in everyone's direction.  I laughed REALLY hard.  Because now I knew exactly what was going on in the mind of my little boy.
The backstory (approximately 3.5 years ago): We had just bought our first house.  Asa is 3 and Gretchen is 1.  Our family is.... normal size.  Which is what we now call small.  One night at dinner Asa recognizes that our table has two additional, unoccupied seats.  He motions "who are those for?"  Again, this writing thing is hard because Asa is still in speech therapy today and at 3 years old Ray and I were pretty much the only ones who could understand him.  It probably sounded more like "Who dose fo?"  "Those are for our friends.  In case we ever have anyone over for dinner" I tell him.  Undeterred, he says, "I want two more babies."  Dramatic pause.  And a little more history.... I always wanted 3 or 4 children.  Ray wanted 2.  Period.  End of discussion.  And after 7 years of marriage I was also convinced.  Two was perfect.  So I smiled and began to explain to Asa that Daddy and I already had two babies, and we thought that was enough.  A satisfactory answer, I thought.  And the conversation moved on.  Until the next night at dinner.  And the next night.  Over the next several weeks Asa was persistent in his request for not one, but TWO more babies in our house.  We continued to tell Asa that we believed our family was complete. And to us, it was.
It was not long before we were riding somewhere in the Ody (before the days of the "truck") and Asa noticed (gasp!) that there were ALSO two available seats in the van.  Again the requests.  For weeks.  And again our response.  Same as before.
One night I was tucking Asa into bed and he asked me "Mom, when are you and Dad going to have more babies?"  I'm a say-it-one-time kind of parent so, to be honest, I was getting a little irritated by this ongoing dialogue.  "Asa, we have discussed this.  Daddy and I are happy having you and Gretchen.  We are all done having babies."  Asa looks me squarely in the face and says "I am going to pray that God changes your mind."
...
We tell that story now and again around our house.  We like our kids to know that it WAS an act of God that got us to where we are.  Sometimes our adopted kids will thank Asa for saying that prayer many years ago.  I like to thank Asa for that prayer.  Sometimes people wonder how Asa and Gretchen feel about our growing family.  Is there jealousy?  Do they get one on one time?  Will they grow up resenting the decision we've made?  I smile.  I think about Gretchen wrestling with Sarah and laughing so hard she can barely breathe.  I think about Asa and Jessica playing video games together (Asa's love language).  I thought often about our adopted kids' bond to Ray and me and wondered how that would all work out.  But one of the most amazing things I have ever witnessed is the bond that has formed between our adopted kids and our biological ones.  It's a little slice of heaven every day.  Heaven, right in my living room.  How's this all going to affect Asa and Gretchen?  Well, I think they're going to be just fine;)
So, I'm gonna have to agree with my son.  I like adoption.  I like it a lot.  Good prayer, little guy.