Big Family Food and Fun: August 3-9, 2025

Here’s our Big Family Food and Fun: August 3-9, 2025 post!

We enjoy a Sabbath rest from Saturday evening through Sunday evening – so I turn off my computer on Saturday afternoons and miss posting some of these pictures. I’ll catch up on our last Saturday activities before launching into our new week!

Saturday, August 2

Dinner on Saturday evening was very simple: I scrambled 20 Eggs and air fried Chocolate Crepes from Costco. We’d already given the kids their baths because…

We had tickets to a Salt Dogs game! The Lincoln Library had given us free tickets as part of their Summer Reading Challenge, and we were finally able to take advantage. Malachi joined us, plus our friend Sam and his friend Angelina met us there.

Had to get a picture with the Saltdog!

The weather was perfect and we were able to stay for about an hour and a half. Did the kids actually watch baseball? I would say no, not even a little bit. Though Keith had his baseball mitt and ran after any balls that came our way in hopes to take one home. (We did not, in fact, take one home.) Our night was lots of fun and we were so happy for the adventure!

Big Family Food and Fun: August 3-9, 2025

Sunday morning we ate a plate full of Breakfast Cookie Bars while getting ready for church.

We had a beautiful houseful of people join us for lunch that day.

We had a big Nacho Bar with Taco Meat, Smoked Chicken, and lots of topping options.

There were 36 of us gathered that day.

I can’t say enough good about days like this. They are my favorite – having a houseful of people sharing a meal and sharing life.

I’d made a double batch of Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars and three batches of Homemade Ice Cream (Vanilla, Peach, and Butterfinger) for dessert. The ice cream was gone by the time lunch ended.

Matt and I normally enjoy Community Group time in the afternoon, but we had rearranged our plans to enjoy dinner with our group for a special time together that evening. So at 4:00, we sent our kids downstairs to watch a movie with Elias and Malorie while our group gathered. We made Pizzas together for dinner. And do you see that beautiful Carrot Cake? Cindy made that for us to enjoy. It just so happened to be my birthday, and the entire day was incredibly rich and sweet. How perfect for her to make her special cake to top off the day!

After we grown ups got our pizza and headed to the living room (and hid the cake), we let Elias and Malorie know that they could feed the kids. We were missing two of our group members. Otherwise, we had the most lovely evening, sharing life and stories that involved both laughter and tears. It was wonderful. What a great birthday!

Monday morning, I ate a piece of Carrot Cake with my morning coffee before the kids got up. Don’t tell.

We spent the morning at home, with Auggie having ABA therapy and the other kids playing. We farmed out the kids all afternoon while Matt and I rested. The only picture I took all day on Monday was this one. Our friends, the Baker family, brought over delicious Lasagna, Fruit, and Bread to share and we had dinner together. It was wonderful!

Tuesday was a very full day. Acacia had speech therapy in the morning, and we loaded up everyone to ride along so that we could make the most of our time.

Matt dropped us off, then he took the other six kids down the road to run around at a park while Acacia had her speech session.

From there, we all went to spend a few hours at the Bee Me Sensory Gym. We’d heard about it through the Lincoln Autism Family Network, and they were offering complimentary family passes. This gym far exceeded our expectations and the kids had such a wonderful time climbing, jumping, running, and rolling – for hours. This place meets all of their sensory needs and then some. Amazing!

This was our last full week of summer break, and our goal was to give the kids lots of fun adventures. So from Bee Me Sensory Gym, we walked over to Slim Chickens for lunch. The kids had earned free kid’s meals from our Library Summer Reading Program and I had birthday money from my dad and his wife to pay for mine and Matt’s lunch. Super fun! ALSO CRAZY. They sat still and ate for the first ten minutes because they were very hungry after a morning full of play. But then they started to scatter and be needy and we vowed never to go into a restaurant ever, ever again. ;)

Later that afternoon, I took Brayden, Kiya, and Keith to serve at our our weekly Food Distribution. I was so proud of all of them for how they worked together and worked hard to clean and hand out food to clients.

We got home just in time to enjoy a family gathering to celebrate my birthday (again!). Not all the kids were available to come to Sunday lunch, so this gave us an excuse to have another dinner together. Elias made our Smoked Chicken, and we had Cream Cheese Corn, Green Beans, Rolls, Mashed Potatoes, and Kelsey’s Cucumber Salad.

I was so glad for this precious time. I don’t know how long all of us will live in the same city, but for as long as we are together, I’m going to love it and be so grateful for it!

Brayden was so sweet when he saw me get up and take a picture of everyone visiting in the dining room. He asked if I’d like to be in the picture, so he washed his hands and took this shot of us…

Every time these guys get together, they bring up memories from childhood that have us all rolling with laughter. I loved that Brayden was sitting here listening and enjoying his awesome big brothers.

Wednesday morning, I put together two large casseroles for our upcoming Sunday Lunch. We had brought home several bonus items from Food Distribution the day before. (There was extra food donated that day, but fewer clients than normal. So we brought home three bags full of food!)

I used some Taco Meat and Spanish Rice that we’d been given, along with some of our own ingredients at home, to put together a casserole like this.

We’d brought home some ham, so I made a big Ham and Potato Casserole. Both of these went into the freezer to pull out, bake, and serve on Sunday.

Arrow came to hang out with us that morning. His aunties were very happy to take over and feed him the tasty breakfast that his mommy had sent over with him.

And then, Uncle Auggie was happy to be his entertainer. :)

We ate leftovers all day for all three meals – which felt great so that nothing went to waste and so that we cleaned out the fridge! When Auggie went down for a nap, we left him home with Malachi (and Justus, who happened to be there for a while) – and we took the other six kids to the pool to enjoy their free passes from the Library Summer Reading Challenge.

Elias and Malorie were able to go with us, thankfully. Four adults per six kids feels much better when there is water involved.

Matt and I hung with the three little girls in the kiddie area while Elias and Malorie took the other three to the bigger pool.

We met up after an hour and a half and had a snack – apples and Little Bites (thank you, Food Distribution, for the treat!).

Then, we took the little ones to join the big ones in the actual pool. Phew, I get nervous with so many littles in the water. Did they have on life jackets? Yes. Were there life guards? Yes. Was I still counting heads constantly? Also yes.

Brayden had an Open House at his middle school that evening while I stayed home with the others. We juggled ABA therapy, dinner, and playing. Some people peed all over the floor, others spilled barbecue sauce, or maybe that was the same person who did both. Either way, we survived the evening and slept well that night.

Thursday morning, we bravely took all seven kids to grocery shop. Our grocery list was long and there wasn’t another good day to go. So we packed water bottles and snacks and off we went!

Matt stayed with the kids in the van while I went through Aldi as fast as I could.

Then we took all of the kids into Costco with us. We put the four littlest kids into two different carts and I filled the carts as fast as possible. My main goal today was to get food we needed to make our transition into the school year as smooth as possible: easy breakfast foods, easy lunchbox foods, lots of fruit…

Thinking ahead, we ordered a Costco pizza to take home and eat for lunch so that we could tackle the huge task of putting away all the groceries while feeding hungry kids.

Here’s a look at the kitchen, and you should have seen the pantry. ;)

Justus dropped off Little Sweetheart for the afternoon.

Then our friend Bruce stopped by for a while. Keith got his “favorite” plastic bag stuck up in a tree and Bruce saved the day by throwing a stick high up in the air toward the bag until it finally came loose!

Before shopping, I’d baked a Spinach Cake. I frosted it and served it for an afternoon snack.

That afternoon, Kiya helped me put together 32 Breakfast Sandwiches for our fridge and freezer. It feels great to have these ready and available for our first week or two of school!

I heard the mower running and peeked outside to see this: Keith mowing with Daddy helping. :)

At Costco and Aldi, I’d picked up a larger than normal amount of ready-to-grab snacks like granola bars, Yoggies, raisins, and veggie straws. We have three adults in the house who are starting up a new school year plus three of our kids who will be packing lunches. I will likely not keep up with this as the year moves forward, but the hope is that this will get us off to a great start as we ease in and settle in with a big new routine. Here’s what our pantry counter looked like as I was getting snacks organized. Of course, the kids wanted to sample all of it and I didn’t let them. Mean.

Since we were bored and didn’t have anything else going on (ha), we decided to shuffle kids’ rooms around. Actually, we had big reasons for this and feel it will be a good move for the kids – putting all four girls in one big room and moving the boys to a different space. They were all so excited about this that they were very willing to help in any way that they could. We had started the process on Monday, slowly but surely, and we were finally ready to move the beds. Thankfully we only needed to move two beds as the other beds could stay where they were and simply change occupants.

Somewhere in there, I smoked Brats and Hotdogs, made Corn on the Cob, and cut Strawberries for dinner. The corn was yellow going in and ended up with a lot of brown spots when it cooked. Weird. And disappointing.

Justus and Little Sweetheart were there and Justus took Brayden with him to Worship Rehearsal for the evening. This was such a gift for Brayden and I heard from Justus later that he was a great help with Little Sweetheart. I love this!

We finished dinner in time to walk/bike to the elementary school for their Open House. All the kids got to meet their teachers and find their desks. This is such a big night with so many kids and so many classrooms to visit. I reflected back to two years ago when we were new to Lincoln, new to the school, new to everything and everyone. Now, we feel so much more settled in and we feel so much more comfortable. I was so thankful that night to recognize the peaceful difference in how I felt compared to two years ago on the same night. Thank you, Jesus.

Back at home, we finished putting clean sheets on every bed so that everyone could sleep in their “new rooms.” There was still more work to be done, but the beds were in place and that’s all that mattered that night. That and the fact that the new blue rug was awesome and fantastic for rolling around.

No surprise – it took everyone a little bit longer to settle in that night. But it was a happy transition, so we were grateful.

Friday morning, I browned the six pounds of hamburger meat I’d purchased the day before. After it cooled, I separated it into four freezer bags for easy future use.

We ate some of the Breakfast Sandwiches we’d made the day before. Keith was being a very good daddy to his animals that morning, making sure they had a nice place to sit and a good breakfast.

Josie and Auggie decided to move outside to eat their Breakfast Sandwiches. We moved the picnic table to the shade because it was already getting hot that morning.

We finished cleaning up the kids new rooms by doing what I was most excited to do: sorting through all the kids’ stuff that they’d accumulated in their rooms and either get rid of it or find a better home for it. Phew, that felt good! This ended up being a very healing experience for our two older littles. There’s a lot of emotion tied to their stuff – from stuffed animals to toys to scraps of paper. Resetting their rooms helped reset their hearts. This was so needed.

Then, a new friend who will be moving in with us arrived and the kids helped take trips into the house with some of her things. They were so excited to help!

That afternoon, we farmed out the kids. Elias is back to work for the school year, so Bro Time has ended for the season. Eva took Brayden, Kiya, and Anna. Then we took Keith, Acacia, and Josie to Ms. Kathi’s. Kathi sent me this fun picture of the cool kids in their shades taking their babies for a walk.

Eva took her crew to the library and I laughed out loud at these photos she sent me!

Back at home later, we made Chicken Nuggets and Tator Tots for dinner, eating in shifts because of ABA therapy needs and hunger levels. The kids helped me prep for a big outing to the zoo on Saturday. We had plans to meet up with another large family so Brayden and I made 18 Uncrustables for a picnic lunch. Then Acacia and Josie helped me make 10 little Turkey and Ham Sandwiches on rolls. Kiya worked on Breakfast Cookie Bars for Sunday. And then I spent a long time washing dishes and getting the kitchen reset for the next day!

Breakfast Cookie Bars fresh out of the oven!

Saturday morning, Kelsey and Little Sweetheart came over for a little while.

Friends from York came mid morning. We’d planned to eat a picnic at the zoo. But an early morning storm had come through town and the zoo needed to wait and open at noon so that they could do some clean up. We rethought our plans, hung out at our house for a while, ate our picnic lunch together in our dining room, and then headed to the zoo!

This was such a sweet time together! Our kids had earned free train tickets thanks to their Library Summer Reading Challenge. So that was an extra great treat this zoo trip!

We came home to give Auggie a late nap, then spent the afternoon getting the house ready for Sunday.

And that was our week!