Tales of the Budget Beast and Pantry Monster

The words bulk foods and large families are sort of naturally inclusive concepts. If you have a bulk of children your are going through mountains of food. Adding to the frustration is the time required to shop for such a large family and taking into consideration the massive vehicles we drive, it's a costly venture to run all around town hunting down the best bargain. A godly man I know recently joked to me that his children were eating through their college tuition. Most large families tend to live more frugally than average folks, but with rising gas prices the cost of groceries has become an enormous concern for all families. Unless you are blessed to live on enough acreage to grow considerable amounts of food, the cost of groceries is something you can't avoid. Throw health consciousness into this quandary and you could quite easily spend your life centered around trying to keep everybody feed without sending the bank account into the red!

The Chief and I knew we had to get off the hamster wheel when it came to feeding our family, as a homeschooling mom I didn't have to time to shop during the week, and our weekends were to precious to waste on shopping. So we decided to stock up! Big time! Gone are the quaint canisters that once graced my pantry shelves. They have been replaced by 5 gallon buckets from US Plastics and self dispensing boxes of canned veggies, and what a lovely sight it is! My husband and sons also fixed up some shelving in the stairwell that leads down stairs to our finished basement. It is amazing how much those shelves can hold. We also claimed a coat closet for a second pantry, because as every mom of large family knows, normal coat closets are useless for a family this size anyway. The key to bulk storage and shopping monthly/quarterly is planning, planning, planning! Not only do you need to devise a storage plan, you need to create a master shopping list to keep an itemized list of everything you buy. My Master Shopping List  is a color coded spreadsheet, little frustrates me more than having to run out to the store because I forgot something! Finally train your children to work the system, mark your shelves, buckets, even your fridge drawers, and teach them were things go.

The end result? I shop for bulk foods: wheat grains, rice, beans, rolled oats, sucuanat, etc. once a quarter. There is a wonderful bulk foods market an hour or so south of us that has a petting zoo and lovely little bookstore, we visit this store as a family fun day quarterly. The gentleman who manages the Yoders Country Market, was kind enough to inform us that he places his orders on Friday, so we call ahead and make sure he has the goods we need. We shop at Costco once a month as a family. Costco is a warehouse type store, it costs to join, but they sell many organic items like peanut butter, jam, agave, meats, milk, and some healthy and hygeine items that are paraben/sulfate free, these purchases save us much more money that we spend. We also get a percentage back at the end of the year based on the membership we selected. That leaves us with stopping in Aldi Food Market weekly on our way back from the Chiropractor, for fresh produce and any other bits like milk or eggs. Aldi's eggs and milk are not organic, but they are produced without growth hormones or antibiotics, or so the label says.

A few ending comments, Us Plastics is run by a christian gentleman who sent me a hand written note a week after my order, and included gospel booklet with my order.  I don't know about you, but that just warms my heart, and the Chief and I like keeping our money in the family.You may also snag some buckets for free if you ask around town at bakeries, etc. Due to concerns over food sensitivities we have and leeching plastics we choose to buy new buckets. A word about coupons, due to the fact that we buy the majority of our food from places that don't accept coupons, it pretty much a moot point. I do find online coupons for the few name brand items I buy or seasonal items. I have tallied the cost of our grocery bill and it is on par with the national average, considering that our family is nearly three times the size of the national average (3.14  according to the latest census), I'd say that's quite the bargain...

Penmaship on Purpose

One of the great difficulties of being a homeschooling mom, is...well..., the fact that you are the mom! You are spiritually and emotionally invested in these children, they are more than a job or part time commitment. As a christian you also realize that scripture gives you clear direction about training up your children and redeeming every moment of the day to use for this purpose. We are also directed not to "provoke our children to wrath" (Ephesians 6). As a child, little irritated me more than handwriting practice. It always seemed to be filled with dreary useless drivel. I felt like a robot mechanically reproducing page after page of silly sentences. I have found a few good penmanship programs, like "A Reason for Writing" and "Classically Cursive", however these workbooks can get quite pricey and they still lacked the depth I was looking for.

One day my husband asked me to find a way to work the Shorter Catechism into our school curricula, my initial thought was how in the world will I find time to teach one more thing! As I tried to wrap my sleep deprived brain around the Chief's idea I had an epiphany! Not really as grand glorious as an epiphany, but rather a logical plan, my children would write the Shorter Catechism! In keeping with our classical education ideology they would do it three times over as well, once in manuscript as young children, then in cursive, and finishing up in advanced cursive! Not only was this purposeful penmanship practice that served a kingdom minded goal, it was going to save us some serious cash! I printed out the entire Shorter Catechism for free offline, then found some handwriting paper from Donna Young. I was even able to snag a cool picture from wikipedia for the cover of my binder, along with a brief historical synopsis.

I divided my binder into three sections based on manuscript, cursive, and advanced cursive. I then used my quintessential red pen to write out the individual questions and answers from the Shorter Catechism for each skill level, and placed it in a sheet protector within the binder. The fabulous part is that I am writing the Shorter Catechism myself three times over, which frankly I could use both the spiritual and the penmanship practice! Secondly it's yet another subject we can do with "the one room school house approach" which is my preferred method of educating our children. It working out splendidly in the Via Academy, the Chief is happy, and my precious blessings have penmanship on purpose.

It was Accidentally on Purpose

There are deliberate steps you take in life, purposeful strides you make to achieve your goals. On the other hand for some of us supernatural providence intervenes and takes us a place we never intended to go. The later scenario is our story. It's a tale of blessed intervention on the part of a loving God in the lives of two wayward children, twisted and molded into a kingdom focused family committed to becoming God chasers, and living a life we never knew existed. This is our story...

Ray and I grew up in rural Virgina, a place where the definition of Christianity is ill defined and there aren't really clear jurisdictions as to where "the world" really is. Christian school was okay (for the rich kids) and homeschooling was for weirdos. It was a story I imagine is similar to many people who grow up in the bible belt, where church attendance is a as important as high school football, and unfortunately Jesus is pretty much relegated to mascot status as well. That world is starting to fade away now and the traditions of the church that held the world at bay have begun to weaken as rural communities begin to show the fruit of the social Christianity that they have clung too for generations. We are probably the last generation who will recall such a place in our country. I don't grieve for it, I am glad to see it go and the boundaries between Christians and traditionalists become more defined, but that's another post.

When we were married we knew we wanted something different for our marriage and our family. The problem was we had no idea how to get there or even which direction to start walking. There is an old saying that "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step", that is so true of our life story. The story of our family began with a single honest prayer for guidance offered up in sincerity, and God answered that prayer in a way we could never have expected, taking us across the state and  this country and back again several times over, all the while placing people in our lives to train us.

Fast forward from that single prayer on our wedding day to almost 15 years later, we are the homeschooling family of 7 children and counting. We have been involved with church planting for 4 years in two states, and Jesus is everything but a mascot to us now. As I look around my life since I married there are days when I think to myself "how did I end up here?". Our Journey as been one of twists, turns, heartbreaks, frustrations, and temptations, but today we are finally beginning to see the path in front of us with clarity. Knowing our footing can be sure as we are rooted in sufficiency of Scripture for our guidance and steering clear of the dangerous traditions of man. I hope you will enjoy reading about our journey, there is a lifetime of material yet to be covered, and it all happened accidentally on purpose...