"I love being a dad. It's like being a chef in a restaurant where all the patrons are picky eaters and the menu changes every five minutes." ~ Jim Gaffigan One of my favorite Laura quotes ever has to be "you people would be a lot easier to deal with if you didn't have to eat!" As much as I love to write about the great things about having a large family, it would be disingenuous to act as if it doesn't come with its logistical challenges. While I intend to shed light on these challenges in this forum over time, I thought I'd start with the one that we have to deal with every single day in the Esshaki house... Food. It seems appropriate to start at the top... the grocery list. Our grocery shopping habits have come a long way since we first got married. As newlyweds we would head to the store every night and buy our ingredients for that's night dinner off the "I'm about to expire" pile. We were broke, and it was fun to see what we...
"Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see." ~ John F. Kennedy There are a lot of questions we get when someone finds out we've got 12 kids. "You know how that happens right?" "Are they all yours?" "What kind of car do you drive?" But the one we get asked most often is " Are you guys done?" There may be no other question on earth where the gap in perception between the person asking and the person receiving the question is so large. For the person asking it, it seems like the most logical question ever. One that they've probably asked 100 times to a 100 couples after finding out they've had their 2nd or 3rd + kid. But as the receiver of the question, I must admit that it sounds like the craziest question ever. Are we done?! Dude, we have 12 kids?! You honestly think this was the plan? Hey babe, we just popped out baby #11, you know what that means... one more 'till we're done, per our arr...