My little ones take a lot of physical effort. They need carrying and holding and changing and dressing and feeding and bandaging and tickling, and pushing in the swing…I could keep going but I think the point is made.
My older children take lots of mental and emotional effort. They need to talk…….A LOT! They need counsel. They need a listening ear. They need a very patient mother and father who can listen to their heartaches, complaints and concerns and objections to family rules.
I have found that the key to counseling with my children is to make sure that everything I say is said under the influence of the Holy Ghost.
2 Nephi 33:1 says:
"…when a man speaketh by the power of the Holy Ghost the power of the Holy Ghost carrieth it unto the hearts of the children of men."
I feel like this scripture is speaking to me in my role as a mother. It tells me how I can best reach my children in difficult situations. I cannot explain in words the awesome connection I feel with a child, when I am speaking to him under the influence of the Holy Ghost, and when he, in turn is listening and feeling by that same Spirit. There is almost a tangible feeling in the room. Hearts are softened and our communication is pure.
Compare that to the times that I just "react" to something a child says, and start lecturing and giving my opinions without letting the spirit guide me. I get nowhere when I do this. If anything I feel like it makes things worse.
I have children who are going through big challenges in their lives. I am so grateful for the gift of the Holy Ghost. I am so grateful for its guidance in helping me to know what to say to my children to help them in their lives.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Monday, February 10, 2014
Laundry Day
Yes, we do a lot of laundry at our house. And yes, we have great big front loader machines. But, NO! I do not do all the laundry. Years and years and years ago I was talking to a friend whose children were much much older than my 5, 3, and 1 year old boys. She had five children and mentioned that they all did their own laundry. She taught them at age five or six. I couldn't believe it! But I decided to give it a try.
I got Brandon, age 5 his own laundry basket, and each week I would help him sort his clothes, add some towels and other family items to his wash to make sure the machines were running on full, helped him measure in the soap and turn on the machine. I taught him to prespot his stains and to check the items again before he threw them into the dryer. For a long time, probably a year or two, I was there while he did his laundry. But he got more and more competent. Pretty soon, he could do his laundry all on his own. Did he sometimes mix the lights with the darks? Yes. Did he sometimes miss treating a stain? Yes. Did he need to be reminded to get his things into the dryer? Yes. But he was sorting and washing his clothes all on his own on a weekly basis, and folding them and putting them away as well. That lightened my laundry chores just a little….a very little.
Eventually, Kyle was able to do his own laundry, then Benjamin, and then Jacob and Nathan. By the time Jacob and Nathan were starting to wash their own clothes, we had purchased much larger machines. I recruited Nathan into the "do your own wash" program a little early and he and his older brother, Jacob, did their laundry together. Doing this made sure that the new bigger machines always had full loads. One boy's little clothes just weren't enough for a full load of lights and a full load of darks each week. Doing their wash together fixed that problem. It also turned out to be good because Jacob was there to mentor Nathan as he learned the steps to washing and drying clothes. At folding time they would separate their clothes and each put away his own.
Now their clothes are much bigger. They do their wash separately. They still often do a load of lights together as the bulk of their clothes are darker colors. Now, Olivia and Emily are doing their own wash, usually together, to make sure the washer gets completely filled.
..I have to mention here that they also wash their own bath towels each week. Each child has two of his or her own towels.
We also have "the green basket." We've had this basket for years and I wouldn't be surprised if when we someday replace it we can't even find one in the dated hunter green color. But whatever color basket we replace it with, I'm sure it will still be called the green basket. This basket sits next to the washer and dryer in the laundry room which is right off the kitchen. Into that basket I throw random dish towels, baby clothing, socks etc. When our children do their own wash they are asked to fill up their load with any lights or darks from this basket. The older boys always have room in their lights for at least a few things.
With so many children doing their own laundry, I have assigned each of them a laundry day. On that child's day he has first dibs on the washing machine. If someone else has an emergency, he can still do wash, but needs to be respectful of the "child of the day's" wash.
When Brandon first started doing his own laundry so many years ago, it really didn't result in saving me that much time. But over the years, having many children doing their own laundry, HAS saved me a lot of time. Right now, with seven children still living at home, I am only doing wash for my husband and myself, Sophia and David.
So why is there still always clean unfolded laundry on my couch when my visiting teachers come? Why am I am still regularly dumping the hamper of clean laundry out on my bedroom floor to find clean jammies for the baby?
I don't know. I've only figured out the "getting the wash clean and dried" part of the laundry chore. I still have a hard time getting it folded and put away, even if it is just for four people!!!
I got Brandon, age 5 his own laundry basket, and each week I would help him sort his clothes, add some towels and other family items to his wash to make sure the machines were running on full, helped him measure in the soap and turn on the machine. I taught him to prespot his stains and to check the items again before he threw them into the dryer. For a long time, probably a year or two, I was there while he did his laundry. But he got more and more competent. Pretty soon, he could do his laundry all on his own. Did he sometimes mix the lights with the darks? Yes. Did he sometimes miss treating a stain? Yes. Did he need to be reminded to get his things into the dryer? Yes. But he was sorting and washing his clothes all on his own on a weekly basis, and folding them and putting them away as well. That lightened my laundry chores just a little….a very little.
Eventually, Kyle was able to do his own laundry, then Benjamin, and then Jacob and Nathan. By the time Jacob and Nathan were starting to wash their own clothes, we had purchased much larger machines. I recruited Nathan into the "do your own wash" program a little early and he and his older brother, Jacob, did their laundry together. Doing this made sure that the new bigger machines always had full loads. One boy's little clothes just weren't enough for a full load of lights and a full load of darks each week. Doing their wash together fixed that problem. It also turned out to be good because Jacob was there to mentor Nathan as he learned the steps to washing and drying clothes. At folding time they would separate their clothes and each put away his own.
Now their clothes are much bigger. They do their wash separately. They still often do a load of lights together as the bulk of their clothes are darker colors. Now, Olivia and Emily are doing their own wash, usually together, to make sure the washer gets completely filled.
..I have to mention here that they also wash their own bath towels each week. Each child has two of his or her own towels.
We also have "the green basket." We've had this basket for years and I wouldn't be surprised if when we someday replace it we can't even find one in the dated hunter green color. But whatever color basket we replace it with, I'm sure it will still be called the green basket. This basket sits next to the washer and dryer in the laundry room which is right off the kitchen. Into that basket I throw random dish towels, baby clothing, socks etc. When our children do their own wash they are asked to fill up their load with any lights or darks from this basket. The older boys always have room in their lights for at least a few things.
With so many children doing their own laundry, I have assigned each of them a laundry day. On that child's day he has first dibs on the washing machine. If someone else has an emergency, he can still do wash, but needs to be respectful of the "child of the day's" wash.
When Brandon first started doing his own laundry so many years ago, it really didn't result in saving me that much time. But over the years, having many children doing their own laundry, HAS saved me a lot of time. Right now, with seven children still living at home, I am only doing wash for my husband and myself, Sophia and David.
So why is there still always clean unfolded laundry on my couch when my visiting teachers come? Why am I am still regularly dumping the hamper of clean laundry out on my bedroom floor to find clean jammies for the baby?
I don't know. I've only figured out the "getting the wash clean and dried" part of the laundry chore. I still have a hard time getting it folded and put away, even if it is just for four people!!!
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Planning from our Pantry and Food Storage
I wrote just the other day about getting back into the habit of a weekly dinner menu plan. I started with making a list of our favorite meals, then went from there. But there is more thought that goes into our planning than just, "What sounds good this week?"
With a large family, our grocery bills could be astronomical, but we buy almost all of our groceries on sale, in bulk from Costco and other warehouse type places, or from a produce coop. We buy lots when the prices are good then store the extra in our freezer and cold room. We buy grains like wheat, oatmeal, and brown and white rice in 50lb bags, then bring them home and store them in 5 gallon buckets. We can and freeze fruits and vegetables in the fall. We budget our food money so that when caselot sales come around we can stock up. My husband and I always take these trips together and we fill the back of our van, then bring it home and have the family help date the cans and get them down to the cold room. We only buy meat when it is on sale and then we try to buy more than what is needed for the week, so that we can use it in future meals.
Another way we save money is by buying "real food." In other words, we don't buy much prepackaged, processed food. You pay for that extra packaging and processing and the end result is never as nutritious as the same food that you make yourself with whole food ingredients. For example, we buy potatoes and carrots and onions and stew beef on sale to make our own beef stew, as opposed to buying a can…or 6, which is probably what it would take to fill up our family. We buy oatmeal and chocolate chips, flour and sugar and eggs and make our own cookies that, while still considered a dessert, are still more nutritious than a packaged cookie. I make jokes that one of our oatmeal cookie recipes is healthy enough to eat for breakfast. It is light years more nutritious than much of the ultrasweet "breakfast" cereal on the shelves.
Anyway, back to what I originally wanted to write about.
When I sit down to plan our meals for the week, I first look at the grocery ads for our closest stores, and determine whether or not a trip to Costco will be in my plans for the week. Then I plan our meals based on the sales and based on what is already in my pantry, freezer and cold room. I also decide which sale items are a good enough deal to buy extra for the pantry or freezer. Because we buy lots of "ingredients" on sale throughout the year, our pantry, cold room, and freezer are pretty well stocked with the basics. When I plan, I can count on already having things like tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, peanut butter, tuna, green beans, dried beans, olive oil, a variety of grains, canned fruits, applesauce, condiments, and pasta because they are already in my cold room. I can count on having a variety of meats and whole grains, frozen vegetables, frozen fruits and nuts in my deep freeze.
Shopping and planning this way also gives variety to our meals that my budget couldn't handle if I was just buying groceries one week at a time. The pantry, freezer, and cold room give us many more options at a price we can handle. There is another added benefit. When finances are tight, or unexpected expenses come up during the month…which in our family seems to happen almost every month, we can still manage to eat pretty well, with just buying minimal amounts of produce.
So…buy on sale, store what you can, and then plan your meals around what you already have in the house, and what is on sale that week.
With a large family, our grocery bills could be astronomical, but we buy almost all of our groceries on sale, in bulk from Costco and other warehouse type places, or from a produce coop. We buy lots when the prices are good then store the extra in our freezer and cold room. We buy grains like wheat, oatmeal, and brown and white rice in 50lb bags, then bring them home and store them in 5 gallon buckets. We can and freeze fruits and vegetables in the fall. We budget our food money so that when caselot sales come around we can stock up. My husband and I always take these trips together and we fill the back of our van, then bring it home and have the family help date the cans and get them down to the cold room. We only buy meat when it is on sale and then we try to buy more than what is needed for the week, so that we can use it in future meals.
Another way we save money is by buying "real food." In other words, we don't buy much prepackaged, processed food. You pay for that extra packaging and processing and the end result is never as nutritious as the same food that you make yourself with whole food ingredients. For example, we buy potatoes and carrots and onions and stew beef on sale to make our own beef stew, as opposed to buying a can…or 6, which is probably what it would take to fill up our family. We buy oatmeal and chocolate chips, flour and sugar and eggs and make our own cookies that, while still considered a dessert, are still more nutritious than a packaged cookie. I make jokes that one of our oatmeal cookie recipes is healthy enough to eat for breakfast. It is light years more nutritious than much of the ultrasweet "breakfast" cereal on the shelves.
Anyway, back to what I originally wanted to write about.
When I sit down to plan our meals for the week, I first look at the grocery ads for our closest stores, and determine whether or not a trip to Costco will be in my plans for the week. Then I plan our meals based on the sales and based on what is already in my pantry, freezer and cold room. I also decide which sale items are a good enough deal to buy extra for the pantry or freezer. Because we buy lots of "ingredients" on sale throughout the year, our pantry, cold room, and freezer are pretty well stocked with the basics. When I plan, I can count on already having things like tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, peanut butter, tuna, green beans, dried beans, olive oil, a variety of grains, canned fruits, applesauce, condiments, and pasta because they are already in my cold room. I can count on having a variety of meats and whole grains, frozen vegetables, frozen fruits and nuts in my deep freeze.
Shopping and planning this way also gives variety to our meals that my budget couldn't handle if I was just buying groceries one week at a time. The pantry, freezer, and cold room give us many more options at a price we can handle. There is another added benefit. When finances are tight, or unexpected expenses come up during the month…which in our family seems to happen almost every month, we can still manage to eat pretty well, with just buying minimal amounts of produce.
So…buy on sale, store what you can, and then plan your meals around what you already have in the house, and what is on sale that week.
Friday, February 7, 2014
Towels
Years ago I learned a great towel tip from my sister in law. Over the years we've used it in our home, sometimes with greater success than others. Recently while searching for towels so our family could go swimming, I realized that we need to reinstate her great idea and utilize it the way it was meant to be. Here's the idea.
You assign each child two matching towels. Every child gets a different color or pattern. Two towels, if hung up after baths or showers are enough for each child to get through a week of keeping clean. I've put hooks on the backs of the bedroom doors so it is easy for them to hang their towels after they shower. If a towel is left on the bathroom floor, I know who it belongs to. If a towel is moldering on the carpet in the bedroom after a shower, we know who's it is. On laundry day, (our kids do their own laundry) they wash their bath towels along with their clothes.
I realized recently, that my little girls had never been give "their towels." They have been using whatever towels they can find lying around, sometimes towels belonging to their brothers and sometimes the guest towels. They have been using a new towel every time they bathe, resulting in lots of extra laundry. Time to get things working again!!
You assign each child two matching towels. Every child gets a different color or pattern. Two towels, if hung up after baths or showers are enough for each child to get through a week of keeping clean. I've put hooks on the backs of the bedroom doors so it is easy for them to hang their towels after they shower. If a towel is left on the bathroom floor, I know who it belongs to. If a towel is moldering on the carpet in the bedroom after a shower, we know who's it is. On laundry day, (our kids do their own laundry) they wash their bath towels along with their clothes.
I realized recently, that my little girls had never been give "their towels." They have been using whatever towels they can find lying around, sometimes towels belonging to their brothers and sometimes the guest towels. They have been using a new towel every time they bathe, resulting in lots of extra laundry. Time to get things working again!!
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Getting Back to Menu Planning
The first part of the new year I found myself getting a little bored with cooking dinner. It seemed like I was making the same old meals week after week. I was having a conversation with some friends and was inspired to get back to planning our menus. This is not the first time I've been in a "dinner rut." And it seems that every time I find myself in such a rut, it coincides with an extended period where I've haven't taken the time to plan our dinners ahead of time.
So I began by listing all the main dishes that we eat and enjoy. I divided them into categories such as Pasta/Pizza, Chicken, Beef, Soup/Stews, Mexican, Meatless/Beans, and an Other category that included fish and other meats and anything that didn't fit anywhere else. Then I listed all of our side dishes. I was pleasantly surprised to find that we eat over sixty different main courses at our house. Not all of them are the absolute favorites of every member of the family, but nothing made it onto my list that wasn't a basically well received and eaten by everyone.
I then was set to plan the first week of dinners. We've been doing this for a month now and I'm happy to say that my boredom is over. We haven't had a repeat dinner yet, other than the two Friday nights when we were out and about and just had ham sandwiches and veggie sticks. I'm having fun cooking things that we haven't had in a long time.
Tonight we had chicken pot pie…family style. I cooked chicken in broth in the crockpot most of the day, shredded it up mid afternoon and thickened it with some flour and seasoned it. Then close to dinnertime I added cooked veggies to the chicken and gravy and made up a batch of baking powder biscuit dough. I filled the glass baking dish with the chicken mixture, rolled the dough into a large rectangle and plopped it on top. "Easy peazy, nice and cheesy!!" as my kids would say. I baked it for half an hour until the biscuit top was nice and brown, we made a green salad to go with it and dinner was served. It wasn't a difficult meal, but it did take planning because I had to get that chicken going in the crockpot first thing in the morning. But because I had a plan, I knew in advance what would be needed. When I wait until 4:00 in the afternoon to decide on dinner, I can't do a dinner like this. So we end up with the same old, same old.
The kids too, love to look up on the fridge and see my weekly dinner plan, especially the hungry teenage boys! They dream about dinner all day when it is a favorite like chimichangas or spaghetti. And if they happen to see a night where there is a dinner that is not their favorite (like lentil soup night…which happens to be one of my favorite soups), they can look ahead to the next day when a favorite may appear again. I also find that my girls look at the plan and volunteer to help with dinners that they deem "fun" to learn how to cook.
Tomorrow night is minestrone. I'm thinking one of the kids would probably love to make breadsticks to go with it!!
So I began by listing all the main dishes that we eat and enjoy. I divided them into categories such as Pasta/Pizza, Chicken, Beef, Soup/Stews, Mexican, Meatless/Beans, and an Other category that included fish and other meats and anything that didn't fit anywhere else. Then I listed all of our side dishes. I was pleasantly surprised to find that we eat over sixty different main courses at our house. Not all of them are the absolute favorites of every member of the family, but nothing made it onto my list that wasn't a basically well received and eaten by everyone.
I then was set to plan the first week of dinners. We've been doing this for a month now and I'm happy to say that my boredom is over. We haven't had a repeat dinner yet, other than the two Friday nights when we were out and about and just had ham sandwiches and veggie sticks. I'm having fun cooking things that we haven't had in a long time.
Tonight we had chicken pot pie…family style. I cooked chicken in broth in the crockpot most of the day, shredded it up mid afternoon and thickened it with some flour and seasoned it. Then close to dinnertime I added cooked veggies to the chicken and gravy and made up a batch of baking powder biscuit dough. I filled the glass baking dish with the chicken mixture, rolled the dough into a large rectangle and plopped it on top. "Easy peazy, nice and cheesy!!" as my kids would say. I baked it for half an hour until the biscuit top was nice and brown, we made a green salad to go with it and dinner was served. It wasn't a difficult meal, but it did take planning because I had to get that chicken going in the crockpot first thing in the morning. But because I had a plan, I knew in advance what would be needed. When I wait until 4:00 in the afternoon to decide on dinner, I can't do a dinner like this. So we end up with the same old, same old.
The kids too, love to look up on the fridge and see my weekly dinner plan, especially the hungry teenage boys! They dream about dinner all day when it is a favorite like chimichangas or spaghetti. And if they happen to see a night where there is a dinner that is not their favorite (like lentil soup night…which happens to be one of my favorite soups), they can look ahead to the next day when a favorite may appear again. I also find that my girls look at the plan and volunteer to help with dinners that they deem "fun" to learn how to cook.
Tomorrow night is minestrone. I'm thinking one of the kids would probably love to make breadsticks to go with it!!
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