Wow! Lots of questions!

Wow! I checked in today and found a LOT of questions and will try to get to them all:

1. I understand what you're saying about the women being expected to get soon after marriage. But what happens when someone is infertile? Is there a stigma? How do the women in that position handle that issue within your community?

I've never heard of anyone having any problems because they can't have children. It's just the same with us as with anyone else. I know some women who never had kids and no one says a thing about them. It's not a stigma at all it's just something that happens.

2. Do the women in your church primarily have sex for reproduction? Do you ever get to just for pleasure?

Yes, sex is primarily about having children and yes we also get to have fun! It's not like we become celibate when we're pregnant!

3. Do you cook/bake as much as u used too? Do you guys use crockpot a lot?

Yes, I am still getting up early in the morning to get breakfast going and making bread for the day is usually part of that. I'm also a big fan of the crock pot! My favorite thing to do is to sear a pork roast in a stock pot with vegetable oil and then put it in the crock pot to finish cooking. That way the seared flavor goes into the entire roast and not just the outside of it! Crock pots are also good for making spaghetti sauce and it's great in the winter for hot apple cider. I love the smell of apple cider and cinnamon all through the house!

4. Since I haven't identified what religious group your family are members of, I wonder about not using birth control. Do you have a religious belief about this, like the Catholic Church?

Birth control for us means abstinence. A woman can always choose not to have sex if she doesn't want to or if she wants a break from having kids. But we don't believe in using birth control unless there is a good reason for it like I know a woman who has fibroids and it would be dangerous for her to have any more children. It's a faith thing for us but we're not crazy or anything about it.

Drea and an anonymous person had the same kind of question about women not having kids and I think I got that answered with #1.

5. Also how do your kids handle being in a poly family, especially the older ones? Do they think it's odd that their family is not the norm, so to speak?

I guess to the older girls this is what normal looks like and they handle it the same as anyone would handle being in any other family. Kids with gay parents probably grow up seeing that as normal, too. I know I grew up with my parents being pretty violent and on drugs all the time and I guess I was like twelve before I realized that not everyone was like that.

The terrible things that happened this week in Boston and in Texas have been on my mind and my prayers go out to those people and their families who have been lost and who have lost loved ones. I can't imagine what they are feeling and how they are going to handle the future but my heart is just sick whenever I stop to think about them.

In Boston there was a Reddit page for buying pizza for the doctors and families at the hospitals and I sent two pizzas to Massachusetts General Hospital for the medical staff in ICU. If anyone wants to do the same thing it would be a nice way of letting those people know you love them:

http://www.reddit.com/r/randomactsofpizza

Megan

dreamgyrl360's questions...

Hey there! I saw your questions and had a quick second to answer them:

Can you tell us what your typical homeschooling time is like?

In the winter it's more structured since we are inside most of the time and then we do class at the kitchen table. Right now that means we have Hannah, Eric, and Emily doing their different things. Eric and Emily mostly work on reading and really basic math and Hannah has high school work she does. In the spring and summer we mix in a lot of outside things like trips to museums and parks.

What materials do you use?

All sorts of stuff for the younger kids. We get some of Hannah's books and stuff through Child Evangelism Fellowship. Not like they sell it all but they make recommendations for stuff we use. I used a lot of the things they recommended for improving my writing and math skills.

Children are a blessing! Do you guys ascribe to the "quiverfull" movement, or no?

'Quiverfull' is a pretty serious term for some people in the church and we don't use it. To me it is all the same because we end up having a lot of kids just like the people who do say they are quiverfull. The differences have been explained to me a couple times and to me it's like talking about Chevy trucks or Ford trucks and saying how they're totally different when they do the same things.

Just my opinion, okay? I see the thing is that quiverfull people have lots of kids because they say they're supposed to have lots of kids. And some of the quiverfull families like the Duggars have more kids with one wife than Steve has had with FIVE wives!

With us the big deal seems to be is that a wife having kids with her husband is a way to help her commit to her husband so when you first get married there is a LOT of pressure to get pregnant right away. You get pressure as a wife and your husband gets pressure too. We're patriarchal and the pregnancy thing is part of that, like the man is supposed to get his wife pregnant as a symbol of him being in charge. After the first baby there is still no birth control but no one is really on you about having a lot of kids. Some women take long breaks from sex so they can have time between babies and no one seems to mind that much.

I guess then we are not the same as quiverfull people but I can see how we would look like that to people in the rest of the world who just ever have one or two kids.

April 5, 2013. Answers to some questions

I didn't have much on my mind to write but there were some questions so I thought I would answer them.

Kitania asked for an update on the family and after some discussion in the house it was okay to post this much:

Steve is our husband. His first wife was Shari and they had three girls, Stevie (Stephanie), Lauren, and Hannah. Stevie and Lauren are moved out and they have husbands of their own and kids of their own now.

Christie legally married Steve after he and Shari divorced. Christie has four children, Eric, Emily, Renee, and Samuel.

Then there's Macy who has her son Jacob.

I have four children of my own, my twin girls Laura and Patricia, Daniel, and Malachi. I'm expecting another baby in late October of this year.

Cydne came into the family in November and is also expecting a baby around the same time I am.

I left some names out of this on purpose because I was asked to.

Then there were some questions put up by one of my anonymous people who like to troll me and hurt me. But I am going to go ahead and answer the questions anyway.

 So are you getting used to being a breeding cow?

We live on a ranch so this question isn't as bad to us as it would be to the person who asked it. Yes, I am getting used to it. In a way it is true that one of my big roles in life now is to have children. And I LOVE my children! Some people say that the more children you have the more you have to divide your love. That's not true! The more children you have the more God surprises you with your capacity to love more than you thought you could! Having my husband come to me and want me to have more children with him is such an amazing compliment! Getting used to being loved, loving more than ever before, and creating love is a wonderful thing no matter what you call it!

Like having his baby growing inside you as a reminder of who the man in the house is?

Absolutely!

How does Cydne feel about being conquered by her new mate?

She seems pretty happy about it. And I'm happy for her and she's been an awesome addition to our family!

Sorry to cut this short but I have to go and chat with a friend!

Megan

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I hope all the Irish people (everyone is Irish today!)  reading this are having a great day!

We've got the corned beef and cabbage (with carrots and turnips) boiling in the kitchen and I had a couple minutes to put up a post.

The important stuff first: Cydne and I are both pregnant and it looks like we're due around the end of October. Can't really tell who will be first so for now we are just putting it in the Lord's hands! She's doing really well with the news and so am I. I was about ready to go again and I missed being pregnant.

We're switching from cattle to bison this year. Beef just isn't doing well for us and the bison can forage instead of needing all sorts of feed all the time. I know this may not mean a lot to city people but out here it's a big comittment to switch to bison.

I don't remember if I mentioned the two kids we were looking at taking in but we didn't. Tab and Stevie took them in and now they are going to try to adopt them. There was a tragedy with their mom and they need a permanent home now and not just a foster home. The situation needs prayer.

It has been crazy busy here and I am so sorry I don't have much time for this lately. I will try maybe after next month when things settle down more around here.

Happy St. Patty's Day and to all the Catholic folks congrats on your new Pope!

February 6, 2013: Q&A

Hello! Just have not been on the computer a lot so sorry for the long delay answering your questions!

Let me get right to it!

1. We homeschool K-12 and the older kids do not go to high school in town.

2. When we moved from Cali a big part of why we moved here was our same church already had a congregation here. So we did not really find a new church.

3. Culinary school was a total of nine months for the program I was in. They have longer programs but this one was what I really needed. I've also made some money cooking so it wasn't too bad! If I ever had to have a job it is nice to know I could cook for a living.

4. The new picture was taken at someone else's place but I liked it because it is so pretty! Hope you all like it, too!

5. Gun control. I don't think I have ever written about gun control. If I have don't anyone jump on me about it. I don't remember everything!

I guess I have to agree with the people who put gun rights in the constitution. They did this after a civil war where the very first battle was when the British government tried to enforce gun control on the colonists. If the British had got away with their gun control then there would not be a USA at all. So it makes sense that the people who had just fought a war for independence would want to keep their gun rights just in case the people ever needed to overthrow their government again. The last time it came up was when the US had a civil war and not since then. To me that is not proof that we do not need gun rights it is proof that what those people thought of all that time ago actually worked.

Part of why I agree with seeing it this way has a lot to do with how I grew up. When my father went to prison me and my mom had to deal with the police searching the house all the time. They never needed a warrant they would just show up and search us like it was our fault what my father did! Then I had to deal with the social workers trying to put me in foster care until was 18.

The social workers are the worst! You have NO rights when these people show up at your door! They can kick in your doors, search your house, steal stuff, and you can't do anything about it because they's "here to help". A lot of them are really slimy and creepy  people, too! And you have to put up with it or they can ruin your life.

You can also go on You Tube and see LOTS of videos where cops are beating people up and even killing them for no good reason. And if you look you find that the worst cops for abusing people are the cops in places where there is the most gun control. When I was in California I always worried when the cops would show up and now we're in another state and the cops are good people you can trust. The cops here make it pretty clear that they protect people but the cops in a lot of the gun control states act like they rule everyone. They get pissed off if anyone gets them on video, they beat people up who talk about their rights, and like in New Orleans they straight up murder people when they think they can get away with it.

It is crazy but when you think about it the people who live in places with gun control are the ones who need guns the most! They need them to protect themselves from criminals, sometimes the police, and sometimes the social workers.

It is also crazy that the same people who complain the most about police abuse are the same people who want gun control. WTF are they thinking?

I hope you don't think I am all into guns because I am not. To me they are something you just need around in case you need them. Like having a spare tire in your car not because you are into spare tires but because you might need it someday.

I wrote a lot there! Thanks for the question! It was a good one!

Megan

January 5, 2013

Thank you for all the nice comments and emails! Macy really appreciated them.

She also asked me to respect her privacy so other than this much I am not going to post any more on the baby. Please understand that.

Christmas and the New Year were kind of quiet, of course. My mom was up to visit and it was nice to see her. She and her boyfriend went to Yellowstone on the way home and really liked it. They are talking about leaving California and moving to Idaho to get away from the craziness in California. Her boyfriend runs a printing business and says if he spills some ink that it is a crazy big deal and he is supposed to spend all sorts of money cleaning it up. He says it is just cheaper to move to Idaho then to deal with all of that. They drove through Idaho on the way home and said there were some towns west of Boise they want to go look at in the spring. It would be nice to have my mom living closer to me and the family.

Cydne is doing fine. Like anyone else I guess she is doing a lot of growing up in a short time. She seems a lot more serious than before and that makes sense. She is doing a lot of sewing for everyone and we all got a lot of dresses and stuff from her for Christmas. She likes Western style so we all kind of look like a ranch family when we all wear her clothes. I am telling her to try selling her stuff online and she is thinking about it so she can make extra money. I will post the link to her site if she ever does this.

Steve and Tab are hecka busy with the work up in North Dakota. Steve even hired some of his workers from California to go help and that is a big deal. He says if some pipeline gets built from Canada he will bid on some of the work and that will be really awesome for him!

Christie is starting up her tax season and that means we don't get to see her much again until after April. It's crazy that she is in the house but might as well be somewhere else when she is so busy. I'm helping her out with the baby and I don't mind because Malachi is pretty easy to manage so having another baby to manage is not a problem.

There is a chance that we might be taking in a boy from a family that is having real hard problems. The father is going to prison for killing someone when he was drunk driving and that leaves his family needing help. They are a couple with four kids and the wife is keeping her two youngest but is hoping to get her two older kids taken in. We're looking at taking in the 11 year old boy. He's really nice and would be a lot of help around here. They need to do this because the couple lost their house and the wife is staying with her sister and the sister doesn't have enough room for everyone. We are all agreeing that we don't mind doing this but we're also keeping it in prayer.

I am back down to about 100 chickens again. Sold a bunch of them for meat in the last couple months and put the money away for feed and stuff. It is really quiet in the barn now but the remaining chickens seem pretty happy and I am getting a good amount of eggs from them.

We've had bison on the property again and we've put out some hay for them on the far side of the ranch to keep them away from the cattle. Haven't seen any wolves so far this winter but we did get our fox come back to visit. He's looking kind of old and has a little gray on his snout. We put out cat food for him and he likes it.

That is about all for right now. It is a cold Saturday and I have bread baking for dinner so the house smells really nice right now.

I haven't done questions for a really long time so if anyone wants to ask anything go ahead.

Happy New Year!

Megan

Sad News

Macy's little girl, Rebecca Ann, died yesterday. Rebecca had breathing problems at birth and on the 24th we took her to the hospital. They flew her to Salt Lake City and yesterday morning she passed away from pneumonia and sepsis. We will be having a funeral on Saturday.

God be with you all and I would appreciate your prayers for Macy right now.

Megan