My Marvellous Mother

For those of you who have just joined us, I'm doing a series of posts about my family members. Today, I'm posting about my absolutely amazing Mum.

Have you missed Dad, Jacob, Ben, Sophie, Abigail or Caleb?

Mum is the middle child of three children in her family. She doesn't have much of a background of a big family, yet she handles it magnificently! :-)

Mummy is truly incredible. :-) She has 9 (soon to be 10) children and homeschools 8 of us! She runs the family, cooks a lot of the meals (although we do some of the cooking, particularly the baking) plus she is a full-time schoolteacher to us! At one time she had 8 children 10 years old and under, and that is a big undertaking! The magnitude of the pile of washing, (or rather, piles) the amount of food to cook, the number of children being homeschooled and the number of drains on a busy mum are all phenomenal. 

Yet Mum does it all without complaining! She is so patient, if we don't understand something difficult in a schoolbook she will patiently explain it again... and again.... and again...... and then the next day have to do it all again because we have forgotten it! 

Some people have told us that they think it must be really easy to be the mother of a big family. It's really not that easy!

Mum says that most of our photos of her aren't very nice so she requested a photo of our family be put on here instead. :-) So here it is.

Mum tells us of a day a few years ago when the window cleaner was here. Ben who was then 3 started smearing the windows in mud after the window cleaner washed them! He thought he was 'helping'. 

Mum also found the window cleaner's dirty footprints all over the kitchen floor because he neglected to take his shoes off when he came inside. :-(

Mum made the guest bed with clean sheets because Grandma and Grandad were coming the next day to stay for a while. When she left to do something else, Ben and Johnny, two and three at the time, got into the bed and smeared their snotty noses all over the clean sheets. (They had the flu at the time.) 

That's not all.

One of us little kids had used the toilet and forgot to flush it. (you can see it coming, right?) Ben found a used toilet roll and decided it would make an ideal boat. Guess where he sailed it? Yup! In the toilet bowl!

Since it was winter and everyone knows that it's difficult to dry washing during the winter, (and we're talking LOADS of washing and massive piles of dirty, wet nappies!) Mum tentatively decided to put some shrinkable garments into the dryer. She put the switch on 'low' and hoped it would be alright. It probably would have been alright, had not the helpful two and three year old boys come along and managed to switch the dryer on to 'maximum'!!!

Mum found this after she found the muddy windows, the dirty footprints over the freshly mopped floor, the snotty sheets and the 'boat' in the toilet. Yes, it's easy (?!?) raising a big family. 

I know it is really difficult. And I honour Mum for doing such a great job in spite of great challenges! Mum does such a wonderful job. I am so blessed to be part of her family. 

I love you, Mum.