According to a demographic study published in the Journal of Population Studies in 1979, LDS women born between 1800 and 1869 averaged 9 live births per woman married at 20, and 6 live births per woman married at 25. LDS families tended to be larger through most of the 20th century, but began to decline toward the latter end. LDS birthrates are still higher, but have followed essentially the same trends as the rest of the country; for me... more

6:45 I holler at Joshua, Ethan, Jonah, Lulu, Maizie, to hop into the Suburban and remind them that I can’t be late. Our second counselor just had a baby, so it’s just the president and me. We stop briefly at Zoe’s dance studio to retrieve her, and as luck would have it, I run into a lady with whom I’ve never had a conversation shorter than 3 hours. Or 20 minutes, anyway. Miraculously, when I let her know I have somewhere to be, I’m able to escape in under 5 minutes.

6:55 We pull up to the church parking lot and everyone spills out of the car.... more

3:30 When it becomes apparent that Ethan is just stuck, I suggest that we take Poppy for a walk. Jonah opts to stay behind and write, but Lulu, Maizie and Ethan jump at the chance.

3:45 After locating the leash and getting everyone’s shoes on, I get the older kids watch the babies, and my fellow walkers and I start out down the street. I intend for it to be a fairly short walk, just to get Ethan’s mind off his writing woes, but it’s so nice outside that we end up walking all the way to the hospital where my husband’s practice is.

4:15 We... more

2:00 I holler at Ethan to get practicing because I start hearing definite non-music sounds coming from the living room. I shift Jonah to the kitchen to work on schoolwork.

2:05 I start moving piles of clothes from the window seat in the dining room to the dining room table. I sort everyone’s clothes into piles, add a few stray toys, and make a big pile of towels and blankets that need to go to the linen closet. I notice again that the glass on the window seat windows and French doors (those darned kissy marks!) are in desperate need of cleaning.... more

11:50 I mill into the kitchen and ponder what we’ll have for lunch. I consider homemade pizza (nixed because I don’t want to take time to make the crust), cheese tortellini (scrapped because I have no salad and no garlic bread – both musts) and finally decide on an old standby: chili, rice and cheese, and strawberries. (Say what you will. It’s one of the few meals everyone likes!) I start the rice and chili on the stove, fold a load of laundry, put the next load in, and set the table.

12:10 We eat.

12:15 Joshua finally decides to join... more

9:40 The morning’s healthy breakfast underway, I sort and start the first of three loads of laundry. Jonah and Ethan empty the dishwasher.

10:00 I summon the big kids (who’ve already eaten) from the recesses of the house for a little family meeting. We talk for a few minutes about tweaking our school schedule a bit this week, and I also tell them that the middle kids are going to have to do school in the dining room today so I can get some baking done. I send the big kids off to do school (the first half of their day is spent on three courses... more

I’ve been wanting to do a “day in the life” post for quite some time, and for a while, I considered just writing about what we do on an average day. But, I decided that might be a little too boring and not reflective of the wrenches that get thrown into our lives – pretty frequently, I might add. ;)

I’ve said before that our large family subsists on routines. If it weren’t for routines and rules and expectations, we’d constantly be in a flux of chaos and I doubt we’d be able to get much accomplished. On the flip side, though, I think we strive... more

We're home from our trip and I thought I'd sum up our little travelog with some of the experiences we had with people's perceptions of our family. And just for fun, enjoy a photo of us with my paternal grandmother, taken at my in-laws' house. She's the proud grandma to 20 and great-grandma to 53, not counting any "on-the-way" kids. Amazing.

The Good:

Several times during our trip, people stopped us to tell us how impressed they were with our children and how well behaved they were. Our kids certainly aren’t perfect and... more

The park closed shortly thereafter (at 6:00 – I don’t know why!) so we decided to head back over to Disneyland for the remainder of the night. We had grand ideas of finishing out the evening over there, but by the time we got there, hit the Matterhorn and had dinner, we were completely pooped and decided to close the curtains on our Disney experience. We watched a little bit of the parade from afar and did some quick last-minute souvenir shopping. I took Joshua and Zoe to buy some things Joshua had seen earlier over in Tomorrow Land and sent Curtis and the rest of the kids with the B family to wait for the shuttle. We hurried as fast as we could, but just as we were leaving the Disney... more

Since we couldn’t go on the roller coaster, the B family opted to go see a couple of shows in the Bug’s Life area, and we headed off to go on a few rides. The older kids and I went on a smaller roller coaster I can’t remember the name of (something about the streets of London and similar to the Wild Mouse at Lagoon) and it scared the heck out of me. I didn’t like being whipped out over the edge of the track and jerked from side to side, and Zoe hated it as much as I did. We gave Curtis and the boys the rest of our Fast Passes and Zoe, Maizie, Sofie and I decided... more