Big Families

A friend of mine sent me this and I died laughing.  SO many of these are TOTALLY true about my "little" family! :)

You know you have a big family when…

…you cannot carpool with anyone else, ever.

…you actually laugh out loud when you see things at the grocery store labelled “family size,” knowing you’d need at least four of them for your family.

…your children make so much laundry that you not only have light loads and dark loads but also pink loads, light blue loads and dirty pillowcase loads.

…you often quantify your children using fractions. “One half of the kids are at the park.” “I can’t talk; three fifths of my children are still awake.”

…you don’t actually even have enough dining room seating for your family now that the baby was born. And the baby is two. So you eat in shifts.

…color coding things for each child like school folders, shoe bins and toothbrushes is difficult as most stores don’t carry that many different color variations of the same item.

…you were asked twice today if “they are all yours.”

…there aren’t enough bedrooms in your house to send everyone “to their room” when they need breaks, so you send one kid to your bed and another to the hallway to separate everyone.

…you never sit by anyone else at church because your family takes up a whole pew.

…when you enroll your children in a new school mid year, they need to add a new teacher.

…sometimes you lie about how many children you have just so that you are all allowed to sleep in one hotel room.

…you’ve at least considered getting an extra washer and dryer.

…you would need to take out a loan just to get everyone a pair of new shoes.

…just one more pregnancy will mean you must buy a new car. And it will be one that has the words “passenger van” in the name.

…you and your husband don’t even mention to anyone that you are considering adopting because you know no one will believe that you seriously want an evenbigger family.

…you gravitate towards other people with bigger families because you know they just get it. And you also know your children’s antics and screams won’t bother them.

…you can group your children in at least seven different ways. “The boys,” “the big ones,” “the little ones,” “the oldest two,” “the babies,” etc.

…your church friends no longer can keep track of all your children’s names.

…your closest friends have stopped being able to keep track of all your children’s ages.

…even you have stopped being able to keep track of all your children’s birth weights.

…you have to count on your fingers to figure out who was born in what year when filling out medical forms.

…your whole family cannot fit on one couch.

…in your mind, you’ve designed a bathroom with two bathtubs.

…it’s not out of reach to think that you and your husband could easily have 25 grandchildren.

…when you go to family camp, your family gets their very own cabin.

…you never need to put one child’s old clothes or shoes away, as there is always a child who is just one size smaller who can start wearing them.

…even though the zoo, the local museum and your favorite waterpark offer family passes, yours doesn’t qualify for one. And you refuse to pay the “large group” or “classroom” pass. So you just stuff your youngest two in the back seat of your stroller and cover them up with a blanket when you check in and hope someone will still let you in under the family discount.

…when eating out, you often must split up into three groups. And you are almost always split up into two. “Why don’t you and the little boys sit at the table and the rest of them and I will sit in this booth next to you?”

…your photographer charges you a large group rate when taking your family portraits.

…you regularly must add lines (on school forms, VBS sign ups, insurance papers, etc.) so that there is room to list all your family members.

…it takes you over 15 minutes to notice that two of your children are missing. It would take over 30 to notice that just one was.

…you watch your friend’s four children for the afternoon and you can hardly even notice the extra people.

…when you check out at the supermarket, whoever is bagging groceries usually asks, “Having a party?”

…two children ago, you stopped flying anywhere as a family as it is now just so expensive you may as well simply buy the whole dang plane rather than buy enough tickets for your family to all travel in one.

And finally, you know you have a big family when…

…a line of actual school lockers in your mudroom is one of your hottest fantasies.