Slow Life Down

Do you ever long for a more peaceful slower life?  Over the last few months I've felt like I've been at this point of wanting a simpler life.  I feel like as a family we are slowing life down some.

We are back to homeschooling all the kids and it's going really wonderful.  We have our challenging moments but I wouldn't change it for anything in the world.  Homeschooling is not the right choice for everyone, but for our family it has been great.  When the kids were in school, I felt like our days were so rushed.  Rush them out the door in the morning, only to see them for a couple of minutes when they get home and it's straight to homework, dinner, showers and bedtime.  And then do it all over again the next day.  I feel like life was just passing us by.  I love having them all home with me all day, teaching them and spending time with each of them.  It warms my heart to see one of the older boys do reading with their younger brothers.  I feel like they are going to have a closer bond with each other by spending more time with one another.  We aren't home all day, everyday, we do get out of the house too.  The younger kids are enjoying doing Awana this year and the 2 older boys are in youth group.  We are also part of a homeschool group through our church.  We just went on a field trip to Ritchey Woods last Friday with our homeschool group.  

I'm 25 weeks pregnant.  The pregnancy is going really well and has been going by really fast.  I feel like my monthly doctor appointments are just days apart instead of a month apart.  Baby Reagan is doing great!  Can't wait to meet her in a few short months!

Chris and I have been so blessed by God.  He has blessed us with six wonderful children, soon to be seven!  He promises to give us everything we need and He has.  We have a house to live in, clothes for all of us and food on the table.  We get to spend our days together as a family.  I couldn't ask for more!

        

Adding another birthday to the calendar!!

So, it's been a really long time since I've written a post!  Our family has been busy with life!  We are happy to announce that our family is growing and we are expecting #7!  We are very excited for this new addition to our family.  We are very happy that the baby is doing great!  I had my first ultrasound on May 16!  My due date is January 4, 2015!  I've been much more tired with this pregnancy than the others.  I've had moments of nauseousness, not always in the morning, actually a lot in the evenings.  Smells are the worst for me.  Something will sound great to eat, then once I cook it, the smell gets me and I don't want it anymore.  I got sea bands for the nauseousness and they are helping alot.  The kids are very excited for the new baby!  They are very anxious to find out if it is a boy or girl!!  Mason and Kyndal have already placed their request for a baby sister!  We should know sometime in July!!!

Here is our announcement slideshow that we put together if you haven't already seen it!  

http://youtu.be/A-FQqeXCI7M

We feel very blessed!  I'm looking forward to what the rest of the year brings us!

Ways to save money!

I have been trying to find ways to save money with our large family.  The kids are getting so big and eating more and more.  So, I decided to make some food in bulk and freeze it.  I took this afternoon and made waffles, pancakes and burritos.

The kids love waffles and pancakes for breakfast, but I don't have time to make the daily especially during the week.  I can't afford to buy frozen waffles from the store.  The kids would eat a couple of boxes in one sitting.  So, I made a bunch of waffles and froze them.  Flour is pretty inexpensive.  It was so easy and cheap.  Then the kids just have to grab them out of the freezer bag and pop it in the toaster!

 They are always hungry when they get home from school, so I thought I would make some burritos up too and freeze them.  A couple of minutes in the microwave and they're defrosted.  I love to cook!  It is so much cheaper to take a little time and do this rather than buy already frozen food.  Plus it doesn't have all the preservatives.

I also bought a pork loin for about 20 bucks this past week.  I cut it up into pork chops.  One pork loin made about 35-40 boneless pork chops.  I know to buy boneless pork chops already cut up is very expensive.  Then I put it in freezer bags of about 7-8 a bag for different meals.  I didn't get a chance to take any pictures of them.

Another way I try to save money is by making my own laundry detergent.  It's so easy and it lasts me about a year.  It usually costs about $10-20 for all the ingredients and it's enough to make it again with all the stuff.

There are always ways to save money.  Having a large family is a little more expensive, but if you watch what you buy and how you buy it, you can save money.  Some people with smaller families aren't usually so careful in how they spend their money and some spend as much as we do if not more.  We usually don't go out to eat because that is so expensive for our family.  But we do try to watch for specials when some restaurants do kids eat free nights.  It's nice to eat out every once in a while.  I love having a large family and they are way more important to me than having nice things that are of earthly value.    

Getting Back To What's Important!

Children are such a blessing!  I forget sometimes to just slow down and enjoy each of them at the age and stage they are at.  Life can get so busy to where you feel like you're running nonstop.  Either through having too many commitments to other things, or social media, & etc.  I just recently realized that our life was so full of stuff that didn't need my attention, and I didn't feel like I was spending quality time with my children.  I will have time when they are all grown to help outside the home with other things.  I decided I needed to reevaluate my priorities.  I sometimes over commit myself to things forgetting that I'm not like everyone else.  We have a large family that needs a lot of my attention.  And I am definitely okay with this! This is the stage of my life where my commitments are with my children over other things.  God blessed us with these beautiful children and he has trusted me with them!  I take that very seriously.  We only have so very few years with them to mold them for God.  I feel like Tyler is getting so old and before I know it, he will be off on his own.  I want to know that I have raised him to love the Lord and serve Him. 

I feel like social media can sometimes take over my life.  It's very easy to open facebook and get lost on what's happening in others' lives.  When this happens, I feel like I don't talk to anyone cause I already know what's happening with them from reading it.  It really takes away being personal with others.  I hardly ever call anyone anymore cause I feel like I'm communicating with them by just reading their posts.  But the truth is, I'm Not.  I tried to deactivate my account on facebook a few weeks ago, but our families want me to keep it.  For them, it's the only way they see our family and know what's going on with us.  None of our family lives near us.  They all live in Mississippi, Utah, California and areas close to that.  So, I am going to keep it for now, but just won't be reading through others posts very often. 

I'm trying to get back to what's important.  Since cutting back other stuff, I've really made it a priority to read my Bible and spend time with God everyday.  Jacob and I are reading through the Bible together.  We are doing a reading plan of reading through the Bible in a year.  I'm really enjoying it and so is he.  We are also trying to do a devotional as a family.  All of the little kids are in Awana and they love it.  Tyler is in a great youth group and loving it.  They do a junior high bible study every week and then the youth group meets every week.  They are a very active group.  While they are all doing that on Wednesday nights, I get to go to a Bible study that I am really enjoying.  We missed a few Wednesday nights from life being so busy, so I am happy to be back and so are the kids!

I just thought I would share what I was feeling in my heart.  I'm sure others feel the same way sometimes.

 

             

Busy November

November has been a busy month and I have anxiously been waiting to have our pictures done!!!  We were finally able to get them done and I love them!!  It has been so long since we have had family pictures taken.  Our family has grown and changed so much over the last few years.  We have been blessed by two different friends who are very gifted photographers to do our pictures.  It's not easy to get all these faces looking in the same direction!

Of course, we always have to get some playful ones of the kids too!

Thanksgiving was amazing.  My mom was able to come visit for a few days!  We love when family can come visit us since they all live so far away.

I can't believe my baby girl is 3 years old!!  She is the most incredible little girl.  God has truly blessed us with her!!  She keeps us ALL on our toes.  You can turn around for a second and then turn back and she's standing on the counter trying to get something out of the cabinet, she's very independent.  The boys think she is funny and does crazy things.  It's definitely a lot different than having boys.  Her favorite things to play with are her baby dolls.  I'm excited to see her grow over the next year!!

   

Six kids keep you busy, busy!

I love this season!!  Fall is by far my favorite.  I love when the weather starts to cool off and the way the leaves turn colors.  It's just so beautiful!  This Saturday we are going to be doing our family pictures.  I am so excited about it!!  It's been so long since we have had any taken.  We don't even have a family picture with Kyndal in it and she is almost 3 years old.  I guess having six kids keeps you really busy!  It was definitely an adventure trying to pick out clothes for eight people for pictures.  I will be sure to post pictures when we receive them back!!  I'm also hoping we can get a Christmas card out this year with our picture.  I don't think I've mailed one out since Kyndal has been born.  It's amazing how busy you get with six children.  It's hard to get stuff done like I use to when I only had a couple of kids.

Here's a little update on how the kids are doing.  The kids are really enjoying school, the only complaint I get from all 4 of them is that they don't get enough to eat at school. Tyler, Zachary and Logan all made the honor roll at school. Mason and Kyndal are doing well too.  I have been teaching Mason pre-k preparing him for Kindergarten next year.  He is doing really well with it.  Kyndal has came a long way with her shapes and colors.  Everyday we do calendar time with all the daycare kids and from doing that, Kyndal now knows all her colors and shapes much better.  She is also getting better at counting when we do our calendar.  It's hard to believe Kyndal is going to be 3 years old next month!  Where the does the time go?  All of my baby's are growing up, sniff, sniff.     

Summer's Over!!

They're all gone at school, summer is officially over at the Fresh house!  I can't believe it's the first day of school already.  It feels weird that I already have 4 kids old enough to be in school all day.  I pray they all have a good day and make friends quickly.  Zachary really struggled at the Ice Cream Social for meet the teacher night.  He doesn't adjust to change well and he was having a meltdown at the school.  He wants to go to his old school and say's he doesn't like his new school.  He was also struggling with getting up early in the morning again.  I have been waking them up early the last 2 days trying to get them adjusted to waking up at 7am.  He's not a fan and he has meltdowns at night when it's time for bed and in the morning.  This morning was no different, total meltdown over putting on his socks and brushing his teeth.  He was doing better by the time he had to get on the bus.  Hopefully he will adjust quickly and feel rested for school and have a better attitude.
Here are a few pictures of them on their first day of school.

 Tyler is all ready for 8th grade!

Jacob is looking cool for 6th grade!

Zachary is finally in a good mood for 3rd grade!

Logan is super excited for 2nd grade!

Kyndal wanted in on this action of pictures!!

 

So did Mason!

 

Zachary wanted to do a silly picture with Mason!

 

Logan loves his little brother and sister!  So sweet!

Mason and Kyndal are the only one's home with me now, plus my daycare children that I care for all day.  Soon, next year, Mason will be in Kindergarten.  Then I will only have Kyndal and soon after that, we will have our new little one too(can't wait)!     

New House

We are very excited to tell everyone that we are moving.  Not very far, but still it's exciting to be moving.  We have lived in our current house for the last 8 1/2 years.  We moved in Christmas Eve, 2 weeks before Zachary was born.  It's amazing that when we moved in this house, that we only had 2 kids.  Now we are moving out with 6 kids.  We have definitely had great times in this house as we have been expanding our family.  Most of our kids have learned to walk in this house and this house holds a lot of memories.  I would say that Zachary is having the hardest time with the move.  He doesn't want to leave our current house.  I'm sure he will change his mind once we are moved in to the new house.  We went to the new house last night and the kids loved it.  The back yard is at least twice as big as our current back yard we have now.  We are a large family so I was very excited to hear that is has 3 1/2 bathrooms.  Here are a few pictures of the house.....

   

I love the kitchen, it is very open!

The laundry room is huge, for me anyway!!  This is just one side of it!

This is one side of the backyard from the deck!  The kids had fun last night

 running back and forth across it!

Having a Large Family

If you would have told me years ago that I would have 6 children, I would have told you that you were crazy in the head!!  But now I wouldn't change it for anything in the world!  When we go to the store as a family, everyone feels the need to comment on how many kids we have.  They say some crazy things..... are they all yours? you know what causes that right? how do you manage? why would you have all those kids? you're not having anymore are you? wow you have your hands full!  What people don't realize, is that having a large family is such a blessing.  We have so much love for each other and it's always a party in our house.  Yes, it is loud and crazy, but Chris and I are loud and crazy kind of people!  So, it works for us!  It was nice to see that I'm not alone on getting these comments.  I just wish people would take notice of the things they are saying to others! 
 I was online looking up information on large families and came across a lot of great posts.  Here are a few that I saw:

Q:  You got your hands full!
A:  I wouldn't rather have my hands full of anything else!

Q:  How many kids do you have, anyway?
A:  I dunno.(gets them to stop talking)


Q:  Don’t you have a TV?
A:  If you think TV is better than sex, then you are doing it wrong.
 
Q:  But you’re stopping now, right?
A:  Of course! Lots of people have nine kids. Nine kids is nothing. Of course, our van is longer than most people’s driveways. We own two milch cows just to supplement breakfast. And with the money from our Additional Child Tax Credit, we bought a small island in Capri. That’s life with nine kids.
But to consider having ten kids? You’re right, that would be cuh-razy.

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/simcha-fisher/snappy-answers-for-stupid-questions-about-your-big-family#ixzz2OYvlv4ES

Here's a you tube video that I love.  We've heard all these remarks toward our family!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaD8xat6VDw

Something I noticed a lot of people saying on these other sites are how they wish people they knew would be more supportive of them having a large family and to show excitement when they are pregnant(as if it was their first one).  A lot of people today think you should have 1-2 kids and that's it.  1-2 kids isn't for everyone.  Some people don't want any kids and that's great for them, but some of us want to have a large family and we shouldn't be criticized for it.  Having children is a personal choice for everyone to make on their own.  I just thought I would share some of my personal experiences and findings online about this subject.