This is the final part 8 of our series –managing a large family. Saturday and Sunday are for family time
Come the weekends, these are times we dedicate to our family time. I do not schedule any special cleaning chores on these days. We do our basic everyday chores but that is it. We leave these days free for family outings, bigger projects with Dad, and any personal projects we might want to spend the day doing. I never plan on anything for the weekend. We just go with the flow and see what happens.
My husband is a visionary man who likes to get up and go sometimes. I as his wife, have learned the blessings of being able to grab the diaper bag, some sandwiches and be out the door for the whole day. We enjoy being together, park time is our favorite thing to do.
Sometimes on Saturdays my husband will need us to go do some running into town for parts for our business. We typically all go together and if I didn’t plan ahead for dinner, we might end up eating dinner out. Which for our family can get quite costly. I like to plan easy put together meals for this day. Nachos, tacos, homemade pizza, easy meals like that are quick to put together and usually require no planning ahead to make.
For Sunday meals, I like to make a heartier meal. I plan on making salsibury steak, cheeseburger meatloaf, or chicken dinners.
The weekends are spent together learning and growing with one another.
I hope you have enjoyed our series, Managing a large family. Be sure to check out the other entries if you missed any of them.
Sweet sister, I can’t even begin to say what an answer to prayer this series has been to me. My husband is also a visionary man, and trying to balance structure and routine and being flexible in the right places has made scheduling mighty overwhelming to me at times. I totally see how thus idea can work for our family-I’m the only female in the house and think our oldest son may potentially be a visionary type also like his daddy. This type of scheduling allows more time for our mancubs to spend with their daddy and learn from his wonderful insight and zeal. Thank you so much for this series. tara
Tara, I am so blessed to hear that!! Wow you are the only female?—-You are awesome!!! It is a hard balance but its hard because it goes against what “normal’ society has taught us, we just need to think outside of the box. (smile) I KNOW you are blessed with this type of husband—you sound as though you have learned to enjoy the ride. That is a good thing. Thank you for sharing with me. Be blessed. Amy
My breakdown came today…and I just couldn’t take my life being unorganized anymore. Everyday I am working to try to get my home and children in order. I struggle with trying to get them to help with chores- they will do them but its like u mentioned, having to stand over them and make sure it gets done. I want my children to know my expectations and requirements. Not just for myself but for them to learn the importance of contribution. Did I forget to mention we have 6 kids. We just had a baby 3 weeks ago so I’m really needing the structure and order in my life. I love how u guys have family time when ur husband comes home. That is something I strive for. That the home is clean- enough and dinner made that all that is left in the day is to enjoy the company of the complete family. I love how u also mentioned prayer before u started this. I was going to just jump in and give this a shot but u know what it is important to ask God if this is right for me and if my efforts will be blessed and that I can gather something out of this. Another area of your blog im going to study is ur homeschooling info. I am wanting to homeschool. Last year I did the public school version of homeschool here in our state of Florida. Its called virtual school. The public school offers the curriculum but we have to follow it daily. It was overwhelming to try to balance the home and do schooling. I ended up having to neglect the home most days and manipulate the lessons to cram it all in. I want to go back to homeschooling but where it can be organized, fun and enriching. I too believe that life learning is most important. My kids are 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 and nb…lol they just kept coming like that. I really needed to read this series for encouragement. Thank u for ur inspiration that comes in the form of encouragement to me. I lost my mom last year and she was only in my life for 5 years after being seperated for 20 years after being taken from her at the age of 5. What I take away from ur experience is that no matter how much I may want to give up at times if I keep at it( which I do becuase quitting is difficult for me) something will come through out of the many tries of getting it. Thank u so much. And I never leave comments but i need to give credit where its due…this has been a spark of hope in me again when I just didn’t know where to turn. And last thing I love ur giving attitude of the hospitality meal/snack. My mother was like that. She is filipino and she always made many foods to give away as a gift whenever she would go visit someone…
Your comments have blessed me this morning. I appreciate all that you have shared. This motherhood can be tough and lonely and very demanding. You have what I had lots of little ones and it can be so much. Just take one thing and start working on it. Once that is going start another thing. You will get there eventually, it just takes time to start, implement, and get it routine. Look to God for your strength, and remember you just have to do. It is only one season of your life right now and it will get easier, I promise. I made it and am glad that I have:)Have a blessed day.
Amy, I wanted you to know that you are such an inspiration to me. I have been feeling very defeated lately. I am a mother of 14, my youngest is 6 weeks old and my oldest is 27. My four older children are now adults and not living with us. I currently have 10 children at home. I am schooling 7 of them this year. I have been feeling very lost, frustrated and like our home as gotten out of control. The last couple years I feel like my days have consisted of cleaning and school. Homeschooling was becoming very overwhelming as there is always so much to do between planning, prepping, teaching and marking. And the few hours a day that didn’t consist of school things, would be cleaning a house that felt like i would take one step forward to having it cleaned and organized and then by the next day we’d have taken two steps back.
I was reading your blog this morning. What a blessing!!! It all makes sense. I realize now that I was trying to do to much and not spreading my time out. Also that we have way to much stuff. I now see that I need to take a big breath and start a plan and slowly get our family life organized. I also am big on list but usually spend more time making them then actually completing them. I figure that I would need to simplify those as well. As for the schooling part, I still lost for a solution, but I will keep searching and praying that the Lord guides me to find what I need.
Im looking forward to exploring your blog a little more.
LOri, I woke up and read this wonderful story from you this morning and it made me encouraged. I know that we all can get so overwhelmed because I mean 14 children?!?!? THat is a lot of children and then add the house and then add life and school…it takes a lot of our day. I realize how much busier I am now with more in school that the house does seem to take a back seat at times and then it is super easy to just let it sit and forget about it. I have to do a reconstruction at times in our home too. When things start to overwhelm me, I have to look and see what it is that is causing it and then fix it. I pray you search and find what it is you need. The greatest thing about God is that he says….when you ask, you shall receive. You want wisdom, He will give it. So happy you are here. Have a blessed day!