Month: July 2017

Bending

This was in a frame on the wall at the dentist office where we took Annette to have her tongue and lip ties revised at just ten days old.  Maybe I was super emotional at the time, or maybe this is spot on, but it hit me strongly that day.

On Children
 Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

———————————————————————-

I have heard of children referred to as “arrows” or talk of having a “quiverful” of them.  Its a neat description, but what struck me here is that the work of the bow is to bend.  Yes, my children are arrows and they will fly swift and far; I am the bow and my work is to bend.  That bending speaks to waking up nights with crying babies, bending.  Serving meals and washing countless dishes, bending.  Giving more of myself than I ever thought possible, bending.

Lord, let my bending be with gladness.

Chore Charts

This is the chore system we’ve been using for the past year with good results.  Each child has 1) a helper chore – they do this throughout the day whenever it needs to be done, 2) a morning chore, and 3) an afternoon chore.  My 12 and 10 year olds switch chore charts weekly and my 7 and 5 year olds switch weekly as well.  This way they get different chores but they are still age appropriate.

Chore charts are laminated and posted on the bottom half of the refrigerator where the kids can reach them.  They use a dry erase marker to check off the chores as they are done.  Everything wipes off with a kleenex easily.  I love having it all together like this so I can quickly see who has done what and give reminders.


Across the top are the helpers for the week – emptying the dishwasher, setting the table, and clearing the table.  My “set table” helper is also who I call on for meal prep help when I need it.  We have a prayer helper who gets to read the list of names we pray for and help Daddy with the incense during evening prayers.  My girls (ages 12, 10, 7) rotate through the helper jobs.  We include Isaac (5) in the prayer helper rotation.  I could probably add him back in to the other helper jobs now too but we tried it earlier last year and he was struggling with the jobs.  I switch the names on Monday morning.


My big girls (12, 10) morning chores are feeding and letting out the dog or sorting laundry (gathering all the dirty laundry and taking it downstairs and sorting it into baskets by color).  Their afternoon chores include cleaning a bathroom sink and mirror (we have two bathrooms to clean), folding a load of laundry and putting it away, cleaning a bathroom toilet and floor, tidying and vacuuming the mud room, or refilling bird feeders and sweeping the porch.  On Fridays everyone picks up one room of the house so that I can vacuum everywhere.  On Mondays when I switch things for the week Lucy and Julia will switch charts.

My 7 and 5 year olds either feed the fish or go through the house putting fresh hand towels in the bathrooms and kitchen.  With so many people in the house we change the towels daily.  In the afternoons they swiffer the kitchen/ dining room area, empty  small trash cans on trash day, wipe light switches and door handles with a disinfecting wipe, fold laundry, tidy rooms, and add more toilet paper to the bathroom cabinets.  Not all in one day of course!  Esther and Isaac switch charts on Mondays too.

I have the chart set up so that I have a laundry helper to fold and put away a load nearly every day.  When it is Isaac’s turn (5) I usually put in a load of washcloths and kitchen towels so that they are easy for him to fold.

There are a few things we need to work on.  As you can see, the younger two often skip a few of their chores throughout the week.  I offer a choice of a small candy or 50 cents for a completed chore chart at the end of the week.  My bigger girls usually get everything done and choose 50 cents.  I may increase this a bit so that they have more to divide up between save/give/spend and because they have been doing a great job helping out with things.

Our kiddos know that everyone working together helps our house run smoothly.  If we are struggling with chores I will sometimes tag something fun on the end: “Lets finish up our chores and then we can all go for a walk.”, or “Once we get this living room picked up we can get out a big puzzle.” and so on.  Of course sometimes its: “Get your chores done now or else!”.  We have a quick general clean up time before bed where everyone picks up toys and things that get scattered around the house.  On Saturdays we will sometimes work together on extra chores – picking up sticks outside so Daddy can mow, helping mom put away groceries, etc.  Sundays we try to keep for church and relaxing/ doing fun things together.  I remind the kids often that “many hands make light work”.

“How long do you think it would take Daddy to pick up all these sticks by himself?  If we all pick up 10 sticks, how many is that?  Wow!  How nice it is that we have so many people here to help!  How many hands are working right now?  6×2=12 thats so much more than just one person with two hands!” and so on.   Teamwork!

Costco Trip- gluten, dairy, and egg free

Here is a photo of our Costco haul today.  All of this is gluten, dairy, and egg free except for the Udi’s bread and the Kind bars.  Sorry about the sunny spot- I was trying to snap the photo and get this all quickly put away because it was dinner time, baby needed to nurse, and three out of my six kids were screaming.


tortilla chips, popcorn, veggie straws, cheerios, multigrain chips, bread, frozen: chicken breasts, chicken nuggets, blueberries, strawberries, pineapples, and mixed fruit, peanut butter, juices, raisins, garlic stuffed olives, applesauce pouches, fruit pouches, protein powder, black beans, gummy kids vitamins, batteries, jam, toilet paper, body wash, cooked chicken, turkey, avocados, strawberries, pluots, and a folding wagon not pictured! 🙂

What are some of your favorite Costco items to get?

Summer Menu – Gluten Free, Dairy Free, Egg Free

When I finally buckle down and do it, meal planning saves me so much time!  For a while I was creating a new menu each week but with the baby coming I decided to make a simple one week menu that we could just repeat for a while.  This one has fairly simple meals that are family favorites and I don’t have to think too hard about making them.

I’ve planned breakfast, lunch, dinner, and an afternoon snack.  Now to be quite honest, some weeks we stick to this better than others.  Most mornings I just have the kids get up and make peanut butter toast for breakfast.  If we have leftovers I often opt to use those up and skip cooking another meal.  Of course I do things like forget to thaw the meat or avoid making dinner till the last minute, so we switch meals around if we need to.  Overall though, this is what I have on hand each week.

I also created a master grocery list to go along with my menu.  On the left hand side are things that we usually need (milk, butter, etc) as well as specific items needed for the meals I have planned.  On the right hand side are things we usually have on hand but that I may want to double check and be sure we have.  As for the Costco items, we make a big trip every three weeks or so.  I shop once a week at our local grocery store for everything else.


Both of these documents are laminated.  I hang the weekly menu on my refrigerator.  The shopping list stays in my cookbook binder.  When I am making my grocery list for the week I will refer to the laminated list and check the pantry and fridge to see what we already have and what we need.  I usually don’t need to buy this whole list at once.  Sometimes I’ve grabbed extra spaghetti sauce, etc on sale so we don’t need any.  Other times I’ve skipped a certain meal the past week so we still have items needed for that.

Last week my husband offered to do the grocery shopping for me.  I knew that we needed quite a few things so I just made a copy of the list and crossed off what we already had and added on a few random items like lightbulbs that we needed.  Yay for a mostly ready made grocery list!

Now as far as the allergens, we are free of gluten, dairy, egg, sesame, cranberries, pecans, and walnuts.  I do have eggs on my list becuase I make scrambled or hard boiled eggs for some of the kids.  Others of us eat a lunchmeat sandwich or something else at that time.  The kids eat Udi’s bread which contains egg; I eat Sami’s Millet and Flax bread (no egg, it does have a cc warning for gluten though).  We use corn tortillas, Tinkyada pasta, smart balance butter, cashew milk…. Questions about anything?  Feel free to ask!