Tara Lee Hills - Big Family Mom

Clutter can quickly become a hazard, not to mention a major source of stress, in a big family.  The amount of stuff is multiplied exponentially when everyone from toddlers to teens leave things all over the place. By the end of the day, the house looks like a disaster and Mary Poppins is nowhere to be found to magically put things right.  That’s where my veteran big family mom's daily decluttering tips will avoid the mess and stress in the first place. Tip 1 -  Layovers The journey to put something away may seem like a thousand miles even when it’s under a hundred feet. Breaking up the trip into short layovers helps me get things to their final destination every day. Example:  my lipstick is going on a trip from the diaper bag back upstairs to my bathroom. To conserve time & energy, I set it on a specific stair for a short layover. The next time I (or an age-appropriate child) go upstairs the lipstick travels to my bathroom counter for another short layover. Next...

One of our favorite big family meals is, hands-down, baked burritos. Delightful maxi-Cali flavor, quick to make, and only a few ingredients have made this dish a crowd-pleaser for kids of all ages. It's so simple to make that my son on the spectrum has easily learned how to make it with some coaching from mom. Once the filling is made the burritos roll up easily. A dairy-free version can be made simply by substituting the grated cheese topping for a brushing of salsa. One backbone ingredient is the baked bean component. You can use my go-to baked bean recipe or go canned if you prefer. You can add more ingredients to the burritos such as diced fresh tomatoes, guacamole, rice or anything else that suits your taste (or you just need to clean out of the fridge). To round out the meal we make a quick pot of rice and a simple garden salad. In under an hour, this entire meal can be made and on the table ready to feed your hungry crew.  If this 12-person serving is a bit much for your pr...

  Deep down I’ve often worried that the hidden ministry of a stay-at-home big family mom is too hidden .  Having a thriving social life full of gospel-sharing opportunities is low on my priority list and impractical when I’ve been pregnant or nursing while homeschooling for nearly two decades and consider having only two children of eleven in diapers a win. How could God possibly use my life to spread the Gospel to anyone other than my husband and children?  It’s a reasonable concern from a human perspective. Mathematically,  have few face-to-face, in-depth relationships outside my immediate family and only a handful of people I direct my limited bandwidth of time and energy towards.  How can God use my life when I’m at home ninety-nine percent of the time ? He reminded me of just how when I slipped out for a rare (think annual) coffee date to hear the backstory of my neighbor's salvation this week.  Her story echoed the heavenly perspective repeated throug...

For many years as young Christian parents we chose not to do Christmas presents at all. Just a little stocking and a birthday cake for Jesus to keep things simple.  We grew up with Western cultural Christmases filled with Santa stories, lots of presents under the tree and tons of sugar.  For all the good memories there was also palpable stress from all the work, prep, cleaning, food, cost, etc.  Once we chose to trust God with our family size, our craving for simplicity and budget sanity grew with each child. Now that we are blessed with eleven children, I love how simple, budget friendly and calm our Christmas is. All because of three principles I’ve developed over the years. 1. Budget : I’ve learned the hard way that a single income only stretches so far until the credit card bill comes due in January. To keep things simple we set our budget per child and only do stockings and three gifts under the tree reminiscent of those the Wise Men bore. A bronze-tier gift that is...

One of my greatest fears as a big family mom is parental death. If my husband is a little late coming home on icy roads it can take only seconds before I’m already imagining myself at the funeral, trying to comfort devastated children while spending the long years ahead weeping alone in our bed. But, what if it’s me who goes first? I have walked a tender road with ten c-sections under my belt, each one carrying its own very real risks of maternal death.  Then there’s always the things no human could predict or really prepare for.  Rather than stay locked in helplessness and pre-emptive grief, I have found there are steps I can take to ease my mind in the face of the one guarantee in this life (next to taxes). 1 - Make Arrangements  We made our first will and purchased life insurance when I was pregnant with baby number four.  The peace of mind this one action alone gave me was worth many nights’ sleep (which is a precious commodity for any mom of many!).  Plann...

Growing up one of my favorite meals was Sloppy Joes. There's just something about the tangy, juicy meat barely staying in between the hamburger bun. I'd have to lean over my plate to catch any of the meaty goodness that fell so I could pop it in my mouth later. Now that I have a big (some would say huge with 11 children) family to feed, it's a joy to share this classic crowd pleaser that is easy to make, good for a big family budget and whips up in half an hour.  This has become a regular favorite at our home and my teenage sons, who do the weekend meals as part of our stress free big family chore system  , request it regularly in the cooler weather season (which lasts about 6 months where we live in Canada). The game changer tip that keeps your hamburger buns from quickly becoming Soggy Sloppy Joes is to toast them breifly before serving. I place the dozen burgers face up over two cookie sheets and broil them on the top rack for 2 minutes or less. Then I can scoop a genero...

One of our favorite budget friendly, big family breakfasts is Baked Oatmeal. It’s simple to make, flexible for dairy, gluten & sugar free and can be made with a variety of fruits for fun flavors. This yummy crowd pleaser whips up quickly in one bowl and can be made the night before to make things simple in the morning. Fruit (or combinations) can be added to the simple cinnamon & vanilla flavored base recipe such as chopped apple, raisins, cranberries, chopped dates, blueberries, raspberries or even mincemeat! You may even have a fun flavor addition that you family enjoys that you could experiment with using this baked oatmeal recipe. We enjoy this baked oatmeal awesomeness at least once a month for a Sunday morning breakfast before church. I love how quickly it prepares the night before and that it bakes up quickly in the morning for a simple yet heart warming and tummy filling breakfast. You can save time by just popping it in an unheated oven then turning on the heat to 350 ...

If I could go back in time and talk to my younger self when I only had four or five children there is so much I could say. I only planned to have three or four children yet by God’s grace and wisdom, I am the mother of eleven children earth side. If I could go back, of all the things I could tell that younger Tara, who was so unprepared for motherhood and had no other Christian big family moms in her life to talk to, I would tell her these three things. You can learn new things.   I had this idea that when I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree then I would be done learning. Ha! My God given love of learning may have been crushed through grinding gears of the institutional school experience, but it was still there waiting to be coaxed back into flame. The amount of information I lacked about motherhood presented a divinely perfect opportunity to learn new skills and grow in ways I never could have asked or imagined (Ephesians 3:20).  I have learned how to organize a ...

Some days I just don't want to cook at all. All inspiration is gone and I'm debating ordering in, but for a family with eleven children that is a luxury we keep to only a few times a year (if that!) Tasty nutritious meals that that take little to no thinking, can be prepped in ten to fifteen minutes and cook easily are my new best friend.  That's why I love this recipe I just discovered! This one-and-done recipe brings together three of my favorite things: potatoes, sausages and veggies. All the macronutrient main food groups are covered. Roast them all up together and serve. Super yummy! This one is so good and so simple. You can make it even more simple by substituting the potatoes for frozen perogies if you like. Sweet potatoes can be be switched or mixed for the carbohydrates. I meal plan a week in advance to save time, money and stress at the grocery store so I typically use bell peppers or brussel sprouts for the vegetable component, but you can use whatever you like...

When the smoked hams go on sale at the grocery store we sometimes grab two. Such a delicious way to feed a big family with a multitude of meals. This week we picked up a bone-in smoked ham and got 3 1/2 meals out of it. First night was simple with a quick honey mustard glaze and side of roast veggies & potatoes. Second night I chopped up most of the leftover meat to whip up a broccoli, ham and cheese casserole that also made a lovely lunch for the adults the next day. The third day was the entire reason we picked up the ham in the first place. Pea soup. My brother in law used to hate pea soup because he only ever had it out of a can with lame bits of ham every 14 bites. Then he politely tried my homemade crockpot split pea soup and was completely blown away. With fall in the air 'tis the season of soups and I am happily employing my 8 quart crockpot for another season of simple, budget friendly, delicious and nutritious big family meals. My rotation of family favourites has alr...

Ahhh autumn.  Pumpkin decorations, pumpkin spice and pumpkin chili! This family favorite recipe has become my go to Wednesday night crowd pleaser. I can prepare it easily the night before by chucking everything into the crockpot then simply turn it on in the morning.  This is a budget friendly, versatile, gluten & dairy free recipe that feeds 10-12 easily. Adding pumpkin is a simple way to add more bulk to this tasty home cooked meal which feeds more mouths while keeping it budget friendly. If you decorate your home or porch with some pretty pumpkins in the fall, consider re-purposing them into a delicious, versatile ingredient that you can add to this chili recipe and others such as pumpkin pie loaf, crustless pumpkin pie or pumpkin muffins. You could buy store bought pumpkin puree or, if you are feeling industrious, budget conscious or creative consider making your own. It’s simple, fun to do with the kids or on your own and pays off handsomely. Here’s how I do it: Once ...

I had my first day back to homeschool all planned out. The white board was ready, everyone’s schedules neatly printed out with handouts, orientation done the day before so we could just get ready, set, go.  Then someone woke up puking, the clothesline broke mid-morning with two loads of laundry on it, and the baby was waking up just as I was about to sit down to do the middles lessons. Instead of breaking down, freaking out or gritting my teeth to (barely) bear it here's what I did. First, I took three deep breaths in through my nose and let them slowly back out my mouth.  I used to think this advice was kind of ‘woo woo’ mystical stuff that put me off as a conservative Christian woman. Turns out God designed our brain to respond to stress with the fight or flight response and we can gently take the reins of our physiological response by sending a ‘calm down’ signal to the amygdala part of our brain . I’ve tested it out time and time again, even while nursing a baby and it wor...

Are you sure you should be having more children? You already have (fill in the number of socially unacceptable number of children). How can you provide for all of them? It’s irresponsible. Clucking tongues. Shaking heads. Reproving eyes. Yeah. I’ve been there. Heard that. Felt all the pressure to make other people feel better about my life. It started after we had a massive heart change back when I had ‘only’ three children under three. We chose to surrender control to God concerning our family size . It had to be a God because, honestly, who voluntarily chooses to do have more than two children for fun? Rather than a few years of babies and toddlers, it’s been my entire child-bearing season of life spanning from my late twenties into now, my mid-forties with eleven children ranging from seventeen to a 8 month old breastfeeding baby. In the early years, others would take liberty to question this socially unconventional, but historically normative practice. Their pressure rattled me the...

I hoped this would never happen to me. For fifteen years I’ve been trusting God with the timing, spacing and circumstances surrounding welcoming each and every child He entrusted to us.  Eleven children via 10 csections with good recoveries and pregnancies each time.  Until baby 11. The planned csection was standard & quick. Things took a turn when they were sewing me up. There was a lot of bleeding. Things got really tense for the medical team as they escalated the situation and got my bleeding under control. It took 3 hours to get me out of the OR. I was told then that my womb was, in their estimate, “very fragile’. Once home, I recovered well and as a veteran mom got into my post partum swing of things easily.  Then baby 11 started sleeping like a champ twelve hours straight at three months. I knew what that meant. My cycle kicked back online shortly.  I knew it was medically inadvisable, more like medically dangerous, to become pregnant before the baby's firs...

One of my biggest fears as a young family mom was summer break. Would it be a break since my many homeschooled children would be with me 24/7 almost every day of the year? What if I didn't do enough things with them to keep them entertained like everyone else? How could I be refreshed by September when everything started up for a new school year again? I had to find a way that worked for me. So I did. First, I found out the extent of the law where I live so I could confidently set boundaries on when and how we would homeschool. I have the freedom & flexibility to take a 3-month summer break starting in June when the weather is best in my part of the world. After testing a few approaches, I've found that keeping up math 3 days a week for 3 weeks and then taking a whole week off helps us keep math skills sharp come September and have some good structure to the day. Sharing a longer audiobook or radio theatre while working on longer form handicrafts (whittling, crochet, knitti...

Laundry! It can be the bane of a big family mom's existence. As your family gets bigger, so do loads of laundry. I knew when I trusted God with my family size that I was also trusting Him to help me learn how to run a big family home with joy, simplicity, and smooth efficiency. I have a system that gets all the laundry done before the weekend, with minimum effort from me, and keeps my laundry clutter-free at all times. Knowing how many moms struggle with laundry, how could I keep this to myself? Before I get into my five simple tips, I'll be honest with you. You may be struggling with mountains of laundry because your family just has too many clothes. Cutting down on the sheer amount of clothing you have will mathematically reduce how much gets washed every week, needs to be folded & put away, and how much you store for future hand-me-downs (a very common big family trick of the trade). If you could use some help cutting down the clothing clutter I walk big family moms on h...

When the normally cheap chicken hot dogs hit four dollars for a dozen I knew we were going to be feeling it in our big family grocery bill real soon. With 11 children to feed the effects of inflation are felt on every front, especially in the grocery bill. I’ll admit that I’ve had a few moments where I’ve simply stopped to pray these past few months. It takes faith, courage and spending savvy to face inflation like a Provers 31 woman and smile. One thing that’s helped me is knowing that I’ve learned a thing of two over the years from other big families who were just a little further ahead on the road of life than me. I knew my many littles would soon include fast-growing young adults who would need more calories. I’m glad I did some research and began implementing money-saving tips on large family groceries then. It’s helping us go through these tighter times with more calm confidence. Since there appears to be a recession on a rise, I’m sharing a few tips that I’ve learned to help...

Do you find yourself yelling at your children more than you'd like to admit? If so, you're not alone. Yelling is one of the most common ways that parents lose their cool with their kids. It's also one of the worst things that you can do for your relationship with them. In this blog post, I will discuss some tips for stopping yourself from yelling at your children. I'll also talk about how to handle the underlying causes in a healthy way so that it doesn't lead to yelling in the first place. Follow these tips and you'll be on your way to a calmer, more peaceful home life! One of the main reasons why parents yelling at their children is because they're feeling stressed out. Lack of sleep, stress in other relationships, financial stress: it all adds up, especially for big family moms. If you can find a way to manage your stress in a healthy way, you'll be less likely to yell. I know this because one of my worst mom moments involved yelling. I have gone fro...