Large family, Signe Style

My friend Lisa, has posted some questions on her blog. She wanted to know what people had chosen to do as a large family, and what things people had chosen not to do. Our friend Erin wrote a great response, that really covers what I would have to say.

I would say the big things that we don't do often are eating out and playing sports. We do occasionally go to our favorite Chinese restaurant. I love Chinese food, and have not yet learned to make it very well. They have tables big enough for all of us. We can order several dishes and eat "family style." We don't do appetizers or dessert when we are out, and we drink a lot of tea. When we do sports we do things like bicycling, swimming, soccer, or other things we can all do together.

We also do not travel unless it involves a relative's house. We don't often stay in hotels or fly anywhere. I have started to encourage the grandparents to take the older kids with them when they travel. Mads, got to go to Washington D.C. and West Virginia with her grandma. It was a treat for Mads and I think Grandma had a great time too. We are also very fortunate to have grandparents that live in really nice places. It is resort-like, and we love the change of scenery. We have also done a few vacations where we rented a house and several families went in together. It was a lot of fun and I highly recommend it. I have also considered seeing if there are other families that would like to swap houses as a vacation option. I'll let you know if that one flies.

Things that we do because we are a big family: we hang out together. We play board games, we dance, we play team sports, we sled, we swim, we take family vacations with our extended family. We make use of Grandparents. We support one another. We all go to the same school which as been a huge blessing. When my little ones start kindergarten, Mads will be a junior. I love to have them all at assemblies and class plays. They go to a small private Christian school, which by the grace of God gives discounts to large families.

I try not to do too many activities that involve six people waiting for one person to do something. That said we do do a lot of waiting. We wait at the doctor's office, we wait for kids after school, we wait for people to find all of their shoes, we wait... It is a great lesson in life because there is always something to wait for. We take turns. Someone is always first, and someone is always last. We work on being gracious on both ends.

We do keep things simple. We enjoy being together. We do a lot of hand me downs. We try to reduce, reuse and recycle. We do have our meals together; the school kids even get to eat together at school. We worship together, and have lively discussions over dinner. In fact I mentioned this post to the family, and they had all kinds of things to offer. The bottom line is that they are grateful for our big family and the lessons that it has taught them. They can't imagine life without each and every one of us. And they don't mind adding more.