There and back again: a large family tale

Our trip to Gleanings For The Hungry in Sultana, CA was a complete success! All the planning and preparation done ahead of time made it a very pleasant road trip and our time working at Gleanings was awesome!

First, the road trip. Though we aimed to be out the door at 3 am, it was closer to 3:30 am by the time we were backing out the driveway. Which turned out okay, because we were able to do what others consider a 14 hour trip in 12.5 hours. We ate all our meals in the car while Super Daddy Driver drove and used the potty only when we stopped for gasoline.

One thing I learned on this trip was that most gasoline stations only have one toilet per gender. That means trying to get 12 people to the potty takes longer than it takes to gas up our 33 gallon 15 passenger van. We could save some time if we went to a gas station next to a fast food place and used the fast food bathrooms instead, as they usually have at least two toilets per bathroom. In fact on the way home at one gas stop one of my older boys did just that. He took one look at the line for the mens room and quickly turned around and headed to the Wendy's next door. Smart kid.

After our time at Gleanings we went to So. California to visit my sister and her family (You know who you are!). It was just another 4 hours south from Gleanings, but it was too short of a visit! We got there Saturday afternoon and left Monday morning. We drove about half the way home and stayed at a Residence Inn (to house all of us we needed 2 suites - older boys in one, mom, dad and the little girls in the other). I can't say enough good about this hotel chain (and I spent three nights at one in another state last month for a sisters weekend with my three sisters. The staff were very accommodating. Check in is usually 3 pm and check out at noon. Well, we got in early and checked to see if it was possible our room was ready, at 11:15 AM! And, it was! They let us right in! Then, we had late flights out and asked for a 3 pm check out and they didn't bat an eye. No problem! That is the kind of service I love. At the hotel my husband and I go to locally whenever we can get a night or two away, they are total scrooges about a late check out. As if the occupants of one room checking out more than an hour late is really going to make a difference! Sorry, but I really like to get a whole 24 hours out of the price of a hotel room. But, I digress....) The beds were great, the rooms spacious for a large family to move around in, a full kitchen and an incredibly delicious ,with lots and lots of choices, hot breakfast (buffet style, but hot and ready!). The awesome breakfast was a great start to our last day on the road, though it may have delayed us a little (how many helpings can we cram in before leaving? I mean, it's included in the price of the room, so let's get our moneys worth! lol!). We had hoped to be home by dinner time that night, but we got in later than that. Never fear, I had plenty of things to munch on. The kids did fine, just the driver was getting weary.

Gleanings: The whole reason for the road trip was so that our family could spend a week of volunteer service. The spring is the best time to go as a family or bring a group of families as the work is easier and almost all ages can participate. The accommodations are hotel like rooms, and three meals and two snacks are served a day from the dining hall. We "led" a group from our church of 9 adults and 26 children (some were teenagers). I think we made a new record for the most children in a group! We mostly worked on the trail mix line and repackaging raisins. Some of the dads worked on pouring concrete projects. We all took turns working in the kitchen before and after meals too.


We also worked one day in the Soup Plant and several days working on washing donated dirty buckets (they are used in the summer to pack the dried peaches in for shipping - not only is the dried peaches a blessing to the people all over the world who receive them, but the buckets are an additional blessing! These dirty, used buckets were destined for the dump, but have been donated instead and volunteers clean them up all year to have enough for the summer dried fruit crop.)

Some in our group were able to work in the quilting room. Donated fabric, batting and quit tops (specifically made by a church group and sent to Gleanings) came together to finish two quilts. Quilts get sent with containers that go to COLD climate countries.

The playground was a huge hit with our group. Like everything at Gleanings, the equipment was donated and volunteers put it in. Gleanings is an extremely cost effective ministry: the land, equipment, buildings, machines, etc. have all been donated - they have no debt and no loans. Even staying there is a donation: you can pay whatever you feel the Lord leading you to pay, though $5.00 a day per person is a guideline for the springtime stays. (that includes food and lodging)

A few of our children in front of a wall in the dining hall that lists all the different countries around the world that receive food from Gleanings. (click to enlarge)

Our oldest three boys working on cleaning up some pallets of buckets that had one bucket with a bad seal and so during the winter some yucky bugs had a cozy home and food supply. They had to find the bad bucket, and then clean up the buggy yuckiness that was all over the surrounding buckets. Then, the stacked buckets and pallet have to be wrapped in shrink wrap again before they can be placed in shipping containers and go overseas.

Time serving together as a family and with other families as well as getting to know the staff and hearing so many incredible stories of God's provision made for an incredible 6 days! One of my favorite parts of each day was chapel. After breakfast each morning there was an hour of worship, sharing, devotional and praying together of the staff and the volunteers. So many incredible stories of what God has done and is doing through this ministry. Letters were read written by children from foreign lands thanking the people at Gleanings that would send such good wonderful food for them to eat. The stories can break your heart, and then praise our loving God for giving a man a vision to take the leftovers, the surplus of the peach growing area of California and use it to feed people and share the gospel with them.

All together, we:

• Cleaned about 1,300 food buckets.

• Packaged 240 pounds raisins (85 boxes).

• Produced 4,560 bags trail mix (240 boxes).

• Packaged 148,000 servings of soup mix (26 barrels).

• Helped to pour two truckloads of concrete for a slab.

• Moved and stacked pallets.

• Completed work on two quilts.

• Took turns preparing meals in the commercial kitchen and cleaning the dining hall.

It was good to serve the Lord at Gleanings! We give this a 10 out of 10 as an awesome short term family friendly mission trip.

Stay tuned for the next installment: What's next?

Falling off the face of the earth.....

Contrary to popular belief, I really am still alive. lol. It has been a busy time since I last posted. We did go on our trip to Gleanings For The Hungry, which I will write more about later. We had a fantastic time and highly recommend it as a family friendly mission experience during the spring. (summer time requires participants to be 13+ in age, but the spring work is easy enough for 3-4 year olds to help with!) I think our group had the most children of any group they have ever had: 26 kids and 9 adults!

The day after we got back from that trip (and we spent a few extra days on the way home to visit one of my sisters and her family who were only 4 hours away from Gleanings) our oldest sons girlfriend/fiance' came for a 12 day visit. She lives in Canada and this was our first time to meet her in person. She and my son met at Gleanings where she and her parents served for 6 months.

Just a few days after she left I left for 4 days with my sisters. Between the four of us sisters we live in 3 different and far apart states, so we flew to a more central location, stayed in a Residence Inn hotel (very nice!), scrapbooked, watched movies, talked, went out to dinner each night, and had a fabulous time together!

So, now I am home again, with no immediate plans for anymore travel or house guests on the horizon. lol. Trying to get back to routine (what's that?), back to low carb eating (traveling is a sure kill for that!),have surgery on my jaw (again, but not the same as the huge jaw surgery I had a year ago), finishing up the school year, have a few birthdays to plan and celebrate and graduate our third oldest. And that is just the next 5 weeks!LOL!

I really hope to get back here soon and share more about out time at Gleanings and to share some very exciting things God is doing in our lives that directly relates to Gleanings. Pray for us as we seek to know God's will clearly.

Food For The Road - Part 4

As mentioned in the previous post one of the major things that helps us with road trips is to NOT stop for meals. Lest you think we starve our poor children, rest assured I pack plenty of food. For a family of 2-3 children I suppose stopping for breakfast/lunch/dinner might not take too long..... But, for a family with 11 children traveling together (our oldest isn't with us on this trip) just placing an order can take 10 minutes...then wait for the food...20 minutes later....(have you ever tried to order 16 double cheeseburgers, without pickles and onions? ugh They always repeat back...SIXTEEN???? Yes, sixteen. Oh, and two double quarter pounders with cheese, a big mac, etc. Stuns them everytime! I think they hate us when we go through the drive through. Throws their one minute per car right out the window!). Even if you eat in the car, that extra 30+ minutes to pull off the freeway, get the food and probably take at least a few small folk to the potty since we are already stopped, don't you know, multiplied by however many number of meals need to be eaten during the day of travel adds up to hours. Hours we do NOT want to spend in a car.

So, I pack our meals and pass them out at meal time in the car. For this trip we are going to leave at approx. 3 AM, giving us about 4+ hours of dark and hopefully sleeping children before "breakfast". Breakfast will be protein meal replacement bars (we are big on protein to fill up tummy's which helps them not want to be munching every minute of a road trip), (we like Zone bars the best - Hubby and I will be trying out the Atkins variety for our low carb/high protein requirements) and grapes pre-washed and bagged into snack size baggies. Lunch will consist of the sandwiches we made the day before departure (the kids write their names on the baggies so I can just throw them in the cooler the morning we leave and hand them out the next day), snack sized baggies of baby carrots and another snack sized baggy of trail mix (the kind with nuts, raisins, etc.). I also have a mid afternoon snack planned: baggies of crackers, and cheese sticks. We plan to arrive at our destination before dinner time so we can get pizza or something once we are there.

It does take some work to get 11 of everything bagged into separate baggies, but it makes it so easy in the car! Once I bag up all of one thing, say trail mix, then I put all the little baggies into a gallon zipper bag and stow it in the tote I keep up front between the driver and passenger seat, along with the ice chest.

I packed baggies of nuts, had made cheese and meat sandwiches (Franz bakery makes a 4 net carb bread and I use one slice, toast it and then slice it carefully in half so that ONE slice makes two thin slices - just enough to hold the mayo/mustard and the cheese and meats inside)the day before, and cheese sticks for Hubby and I. Hubby likes to munch on sunflower seeds while he drives (he does all the driving - what a great guy!) so I have those ready with a paper cup for the shells.

Last thing is fluids. I mentioned before we don't do a lot of them on the road. At breakfast, having protein bars with some grapes is usually enough moisture to hold off thirst. Older kids get their own bottle of water to drink and keep with them (with warnings of drinking small amounts). For the younger kids I will keep their cups in the ice chest till they are thirsty and then allow a couple sips, depending on how close we are to stopping for gas, etc. Baby gets her cup with milk or water unlimited, but she has a diaper, so no problem! LOL!

I think that wraps it about up. Only thing left to post is how it all turns out.

Our Travel Plan - Part Three

The Situation: 640 miles, ten kids, and a huge desire to not spend one minute more than necessary traveling. We want to get where we are going in the shortest time possible (while being safe too of course). (Edited to note there will be 11 of our kids going now)

Our Solution:
1. Leave very early in the morning, around 3 AM, so that there will be about 4 hours of the trip that the kids will actually sleep through. Put them to bed in their travel clothes the night before and maybe let them stay up a bit later than usual **ahem**, wake them, walk them half asleep to the potty and then tuck them into the car with their pillow and cuddle blankie. It is dark out, they are sleepy and the car motion lulls them quickly back to sleep.

2. Make as few stops as possible. We accomplish this by bringing food to eat in the car (that will be breakfast and lunch for this trip) so we don't have to stop to eat and so we (hope to) only stop when we need gas. We could lose hours of time stopping at every rest stop to use the potty, but we encourage kids to hold on a little longer. We also purposefully do not pack a large quantity of fluids to drink, just enough to keep everyone hydrated, but not tons of extras (as might be used to pacify bored or hungry kids). We usually have to stop twice for gas and maybe one extra potty stop at the most, but sometimes we have made it with just using the potty when gassing up the van.

3. Plan things to entertain the youngin's. Last year we listened to books on CD (our favorite was James and the Giant Peach read by Jeremy Irons) for car trips of about 2 hours each way and that was great! On previous 550 mile one way trips we strapped a combo TV/VCR with a 13 in screen to the back of the drivers seat, which was only good for the first two rows of seats in our 15 passenger van (which has 4 rows of bench seats by the way). This wasn't the greatest solution, but did help break up long travel days. This year we have a ceiling mounted DVD player to watch movies on and even those in the back will be able to see the screen. Busy work, with coloring or small toys they can play with (without lots of pieces that might get lost in the car) such as an Etch-a-Sketch or the smaller MagnaDoodles give kids things to do. Depending on if you have kids that get carsick, you either need to dose them with a travel med. so they can work on coloring a paper without throwing up, or find ways, like the books on CD/Tape that they can listen to while looking out the window. I was a very car sick prone kid and still am as an adult. I can't read in a car or even look down at a map for more than a few seconds, without getting queasy. When I was younger I coped by sleeping during travel. As an adult and co-pilot, I take the smallest dose I can of motion sickness medicine to ease my discomfort. I mention all this just so other parents can be sensitive to car sickie kids and make appropriate plans for their travel entertainment.

This is our main plan. Next is planning the food to take along so that we can save all that time NOT stopping for "fast food" (it is never fast with our size of family! LOL!).

Getting Ready... Part Two

Wow, thanks for all the comments! I'll try to answer as many as I can here.

Yes, we are going to borrow a car-top carrier. Even still, with a minimum of 12 luggage bags and some sleeping bags, that will be full up. It will however take some of the strain off the cramped quarters inside the van. Just have the ice chest, bag of food,pillows, blankies, backpacks, and things to keep the kiddo's occupied* during the trip. * see below for more on that

Puke bucket! Great thing to remember to take along! Thanks! Though I'm thinking something with a lid would be prudent.....

Kimm, if you can sleep while your hubby drives and the kids are in various states of wakefulness, my hat is off to you! LOL! My wonderful guy will only be getting home from work 6 hours before we plan to leave. Did I mention he works a 12 hour shift, with an hour commute each direction? And, that he will just be coming off his "long" work week of 4 of those 12 hour shifts? Sorry, but I feel it is my duty to stay awake to be sure the driver stays awake. We talk, quietly, as we leave in the wee hours of the morning so that the kids spend at least SOME of the travel time asleep (put them to "bed" in their travel clothes, get them up at 3 am, to the potty and into the car with their pillow and blankie and hit the road!), listen to music (nothing to sleepy) munch on sunflower seeds (even okay for low carb - yeah!) and go as far as we can without making a stop. More on our travel without stopping method later. Sure to entertain! LOL!

Boaz's Ruth, necessity IS the mother of invention! LOL! Five carseats isn't too bad in a 15 passenger van, as long as you realize that some carseats only fit in a center type buckle and likewise some carseats HAVE to be used with shoulder straps. Right now we are running two that use centers and three that use shoulder straps. The law for carseats in our state is such that kids have to be in carseats until they graduate high school they are 6 years old AND 60 lbs. I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't know many kids who are 6 and 60 lbs. It's not that I don't think carseats are a good thing, just take up way more real estate in a car than just the child would. The "up" side is that the kids sitting next to carseats have a place to lean their heads while they sleep!

Okay, here is the part about entertaining the kids. First thing is that I am bringing those Crayola coloring books with the invisible markers, AKA Color Wonder, for the younger kids. I weighed my choices - still have cheap crayons and Rose Art Markers from the back to school sales last summer.... and I took advantage of the awesome deal Kim shared for white copy paper from Office Depot (I mean 100 sheets is only 3 cents, the kids could go wild!) so I have plenty of paper for them to use.... BUT, the thought of melting crayons, broken crayons, someone bored enough to color on a carseat, window, etc. , not to mention pen ink, washable or not, and what to do with all that used up paper? Sorry, not going there. Yes, it would be more frugal, but it wouldn't do much for my blood pressure. The Color Wonders have no color to them, the color is in the paper, which also is spiral bound, so not floating all over the car. The kids will each have a backpack of their travel things in the car, so they each get a book and a set of markers (and, as per Kim's great suggestion, I will bring a couple dead marker's caps in case we lose one along the way!). Some of the kids have Gameboys to entertain them. But, the granddaddy of them all is the DVD player we had installed last week in the van. Yes, is was expensive (got to love tax return time, well, when you are getting money back that is!) but oh my, it is pretty cool! It has a 17 inch screen! We were either going to have to go with two smaller screens (so people in the back part of the van had a screen they could see without binoculars!) or this one humdinger of a monster!


View from side doors with screen down. (click to enlarge pictures)







View from back seat of 15 passenger van.







View from side doors with screen put away.






I also have in mind to print up a few bingo or scavenger hunt type games for the older kids, with prizes to pique their interest. I found this website with lots of great info and games to print at home to take on our trip. Here is another good one.

Well, that is enough for now. Will post about our traveling with less stops method later. Included in that will be my plans for low carb eating for hubby and I while on the road.

Feel free to post more questions!

Preparing for a road trip - Part One

I happened to think while writing to one of my blogging friends that I have also had the pleasure of meeting in REAL life, MamaK, that blogging about an upcoming road trip our family will be taking might be of interest to my readers. I'm sure some might wonder how a family with twelve children DO a road trip. Am I right?

We will be traveling to Gleanings For The Hungry for a week of service, which will be an approx. 14 hour trip for us. Our family car is a Ford 15 passenger van. On this trip, ten of our children will be going with us (the older two have jobs). I don't know how many of you have actually spent any time IN a 15 passenger van, but it isn't actually spacious if you have 12 people, for which 5 must be in carseats inside it. There is no space for baggage such as a standard car would have a trunk. So, suitcases, sleeping bags, ice chest, diaper bag, travel toys/amusements, must all fit inside the van with us. **gulp**

On the way "home" we are going to go 4 hours farther away to visit family (names are not used to protect the innocent! LOL!) for two days and then drive about half way home, stay in a hotel one night and then drive home the rest of the way the next day.

What I am going to attempt to do is blog about my plans, especially while trying to keep the cost down, and packing and on-the-road strategies in hopes that this information will be:
1. Helpful, perhaps for your own future road trips.
2. If not helpful, at least entertaining!

Stay tuned!