Our family

  This is us! We are one big family of 13 plus a daughter-in-law and a grand baby on the way!! Yes, we keep on growing but I absolutely love it! So, let me introduce our family to you, First, my awesome husband, Kyle he’s a wonderful hubby and loving Dad to all our kiddos. Then, there’s me, Michelle a wife of 23 years and mama to 11 beautiful kids. Kaston is our first and he’s married to Emily the only blonde haired beautiful lady in the picture. Mac is second, Collin is third, Elizabeth our first daughter is fourth in line, Kelly is fifth, sixth is Garrett, seventh Christopher, eighth is our second daughter Isabella, ninth is Sophia, tenth is Natty Cate and lastly but ever so sweet is our Audrey who just turned the big 1! I know what you’re thinking wow! That’s a lot of kids how do you keep track?  Well, we love each and everyone of them separately they all have different personalities and along with that they have different needs so we approach each one of them differently but love every single one of them with our whole hearts! We have been through a lot together and sometimes these kids have helped me through some struggles just as much as we have helped them. We can learn so much from our children! We have always pulled together in tough times and I’m so proud of our family for that.

   While we have a good bunch of kids we also have our fair share of crazy and chaotic times as well. There are many days where I feel like we didn’t get much done or the kids are bickering way too much. It’s hard sometimes and in today’s society I feel like I compare to unrealistic and unreasonable expectations. Did I let the kids watch too much t.v.? Play on electronics too much? Did I give them enough personal one on one time? Did I yell when I should have been a little more patient? Does my house look picture perfect? I can answer yes and no to all of these questions. As can anyone sometimes we need a reality check and usually it’s my husband who calms me down or brings me back to reality. Are we doing our best for our family? That’s all that really matters. We really have no room to compare ourselves to other people. There is no other family like ours we were all individually made different than anyone else. Absolutely no one is perfect everyone has things they want to work on. Believe me I could make 20 other lists of stuff I want to work on!!
How I make it work daily for me is striving on routine and schedule. This works well for us especially during the school year. Right now with it being summer I’m a little more relaxed but if we get too relaxed we get cranky kids that didn’t get good rest. Sometimes it’s okay though and we deal with the crankies together and all is well especially at the end of the night. Our kids have daily chores which would be included in our routine. I believe this is good for kids not just in a big family but in all families it teaches kids responsibility and our family works better when everyone is helping out not just mom and dad. We do try to get out of the house as much as we can.  Currently we live in an area that is a bit remote but has a lake and river we can enjoy with the kids. When going anywhere we have to plan not just for the expected day but for the unexpected as well. We’ve been unprepared before and it’s not fun. I make sure we always have snacks, drinks or sippy cups, plenty of diapers and wipes and now we just keep extra of those in our van. Being fully prepared means we’ll have a much more enjoyable time whatever we’re doing.


   So, there you go a small peek into our lives but I’ll be sharing more, so much more!! I hope I can be a little help for someone out there. Even if it’s just letting people know big families are awesome, a lot of work but pretty awesome!

 Like I said, this is us! Welcome to the family!