My brother Eric, my sister-in-law Meggan and their five children Noah, Selah, Jonas, Ezra, and Violet just left us on Monday night after spending almost two weeks in the East Coast.  They were with us for the first three days and the final five days of their trip.  Our house went from three people to 10 people and I learned a few things about having a large family.  (Or perhaps more precisely, having grown up the oldest of five kids, I learned these things as an adult with my own family.)

1. The noise, oh the noise.  It’s everywhere, all pervasive, and for the most part, lovely.  It does get a bit hard to think sometimes but is never lonely!

2. It’s much easier having a baby with older siblings around.  For example, whenever I needed to get something done, I would just say, “Jonas, will you come and keep Ellie happy please?” and he did!  Or I would ask Noah or Selah to hold Ellie for a minute and they would.  You saw the picture of Ezra playing with Ellie.  Ellie has been crawling around pretty bored for the past couple days!

3. Food flies away amazingly fast.  I mean, seriously, where does it go?  Usually I make one batch of bread (three loaves) every two weeks and it’s plenty.  This time, I made two batches of bread and it wasn’t enough for 8 days.

4.  Once the kids are big enough to help, every-day tasks become easier too.  The first day they were here, we had to cut up a bunch of apples which we had foraged and were going bad.  With all of us working on it (even 4-year old Ezra with a knife!),  we made short work of 9 quarts of applesauce and everyone had fun.

5. It’s more fun and easier to raise your kids when you have two women around.  (I suppose this isn’t technically a big family thing unless you believe in polygamy. But sisters and/or close friends count in this too!)   Meggan and I together were far more productive with our six combined kids than we would have been working on our own.  I also loved having someone to talk to during the day, someone who wasn’t one.

6.  The house gets really dirty, really fast.  I have a lot more sympathy and admiration for my mom now!

7.  You have to be really careful not to lose a kid when you’re driving in two cars.

8.     The little kids are sure a lot of fun but the older ones open your eyes to all kinds of things you were never even interested in before.

9.  It really helps to have good friends who want to come over and play with your kids.  This allows you to do things such as get the dishes washed after dinner.

10.  Life is never dull.  (Although life really wasn’t ever dull with only Nik and me either, life definitely isn’t dull with six kids in the house!)

We miss you E/M/N/S/J/E/V!!!