We normally take our beach vacation in the beginning of September. We do this because when most kids start back at school, the rental rates for beach houses drop dramatically. Consequently, most of the children we meet at the beach are fairly young and my children find it very easy to make friends with younger […]
Does it mean anything to you if I say, “I am not throwin’ away my shot!”? If not, then you clearly aren’t as obsessed with the musical, Hamilton, as my children are. Brett discovered the music to the Broadway play, Hamilton, over a year ago and fell in love. That led to purchasing the Hamilton […]
For a farm family, we do a lot of traveling. Jim and I put a focus on this because we want our children to realize that the world is a much bigger place than the small hometown in which they live. As you can imagine, it’s a bit chaotic getting a family of ten on […]
We are currently on vacation. Because farm life is very involved and the animals need to be taken care of seven days a week, we try to get the family off the farm several times a year. One of our favorite places to visit is the Atlantic ocean. I actually grew up on an island […]
Grandma and Poppy are here for a visit. They’re a great help to us when they’re here. This week, Grandma has been helping me a lot with the garden. Today we harvested yellow beans, tomatoes, celery, onions, carrots, beets, peppers, green cabbage, red cabbage, brussels sprouts, watermelon, pumpkin, and blackberries. While we were working together […]
Anyone who has ever owned livestock knows that a lot of time and decision making is spent on hay. I know that sounds silly. After all, hay is just dried grass. How hard can that be? I’m here to tell you it is in fact very difficult. Imagine having to go food shopping for all […]
Over the past 9 years, most of my focus has been on my business, my husband, and on my children (sometimes, but not always, in that order). It has worked very well because I was able to integrate my time with all of them since we have the privilege of homeschooling and working together on […]
There comes a time in everyone’s life when we face another milestone. The Jonas family has reached one. We have the pleasure of announcing our daughter, Brett’s, engagement to a wonderful young man, Mason. For those of you who watch us on Facebook Live, you’ll know that Mason has worked with us for almost two […]
I admit it, I’m a math geek. I loved studying math and sciences and got my degree in Engineering. I’ve always loved to read, but I never particularly enjoyed writing papers about literature. But when I was in school, I was not a history fan. I thought history was quite boring. Who cared about memorizing […]
The other night, Emery put some chicken in water to turn into chicken broth. After simmering them for several hours, I removed the chickens. When they had cooled sufficiently, I started picking the chicken off the bones. As you can imagine, this is a rather brainless task, so my mind started to wander. I had […]
Life as a Jonas means one thing: there is no such thing as a typical day. However, so many people have asked what a day looks like for our family that we decided we’d try to show you. This is what yesterday looked like for me (PJ). 7:00 AM Alarm goes off. Normally it is […]
My children are growing up. Jade (the youngest) just turned ten years old! I no longer have any children in the single digits. I have three with their driver’s licenses. By the end of the year, I will even have one who is twenty-one and legally able to consume alcohol. Life is changing. In a […]
We have a very public business and my children interact with a lot of new people they only meet once on a daily basis. Because they’re children, they are generally brutally honest with what they share with people. This usually doesn’t cause a problem at all because we aren’t trying to hide anything. The fact […]
Have you ever felt overwhelmed? I certainly have. I work very hard to avoid being overwhelmed, but it can (and does) happen despite my best efforts. When I’m feeling that way, I can often feel paralysed. I’m not sure which way to turn or what effort to make or how to reduce my stress. I […]
Our family is a bit atypical in that we don’t drink soda and we don’t drink juice. Instead we drink lots of water, goat milk, and smoothies made with either goat milk, goat milk yogurt, or water. Occasionally we’ll drink coffee or tea, but that’s it. While we do drink quite a bit of goat […]