Normalcy

     It sounds funny, but this year it hit me for the first time in my whole 17 years of living that my family isn't 'normal'. Yeah, my entire family laughed at that. It just never hit me, I think I need to come out of the clouds more often. Not being normal isn't a bad thing at all though; different is good sometimes. :)

     Apparently it isn't 'normal' first off, to have 11 kids in your family. To be able to buy and cook food in bulk (Quadrupling recipes is the norm here) and have all of your siblings (except for the 4 and the 1 year old) to be able to cook at least one thing. It isn't 'normal' to drive a 15 passenger van, and consider it downsizing when you switch to a 12 passenger. And you gets weird looks when you exclaim over how small it feels. ;) It isn't 'normal' to have had 6+ cows, know how to milk them, process the milk, make yoghurt and multiple varieties of cheese, take care of them, and process their meat, all on 1 1/2 acres. To have raised over 200 chickens over the years, both meat birds and layers, and many, many rabbits.

 

       Also to have adopted three siblings from West Africa, that isn't normal. They're awesome. To have all of your siblings know their chores, and being able to do them, I mainly just supervise. *happy dance* We can get the entire house clean in 45 minutes. We have a pretty efficient system, and distribute the work pretty well amongst everyone, and switch things up so no one is stuck with anything. It also isn't normal apparently, to have push-up and sit-up contests, and battles with wooden spoons in the kitchen. :P But they're all awesome, and get pretty intense, so they're fun.


     We buy our yoghurt (the cows are gone now) in 5 gallon buckets, cook 20 lbs of chickens at once, check out over 100 library books per trip, (our largest fine was $1,357.49. We returned every single book very quickly), have a commercial kitchen sink, walk-in refrigerator, and 4 other freezers besides. We've done bulk buys consisting of over 2,000 lbs of Himalayan pink salt, and literal tons of fruit. We dance around the kitchen to Mr. Heatmiser and '80's hits (my parents...not my idea...), get in trouble together, throw the football, and run around in random costumes we put together.

We're just a weird, crazy, wonderful, happy family, not to say we don't have hard times and strife, because we do, but we have Jesus, so it's good. I love being the big different family that we are.
I didn't mean for this to sound like a rant, because it isn't, it's just em celebrating our wonderful differences. :)

Blessings,

~Gracie