Yes, They Are All Mine.

What a day!  Art lessons in the morning, lunch and then it was out the door: library, Trader Joes, drop off something to a friend, CVS, Post Office, Target, Whole Foods and the Chinese Market.  Whew!  I hate errand day.  But, if at all possible I want to do all the errands on one day, so that the rest of the week I can stay home and get in my groove.

There are many things I don't like about errand day--the in-and-out of the car and carseats with the six children, it always taking longer than I hoped, having to take the kids to the potty in public restrooms (ever have to figure that one out with six kids?!  You can't exactly leave them in store alone, but the older ones are getting a bit big to be all crowding into the bathroom with me and the little ones and then repeating, "Don't touch anything" like it's a mantra.), and the comments.  If you have a large family you know the comments to which I'm referring.

Are they all yours?

You have your hands full.

Is it school vacation?

Are you done now or will you have more?

I can't stand it!  I have an arsenal of snarky comments and say with a smile.

You should see the ones I left at home!

No, I like to take all the neighborhood children with me to the grocery store.

No, I don't have my hands full.  I have my heart full!

I'm running a day-care for curly-haired Asian children.

Today I didn't have to give a single snarky remark.  Today was phenomenal.  I had to pinch myself.  Am I still in Southern California?  The land of 1.6 children per family driving a Prius?

At the library the librarian said, "We haven't seen your family in a while!  So nice to see you all again!!!!"

At Whole Foods a nicely dressed man, about in in 50's (if you're an HRC person let me say, he really reminded me of Pastor Karl!), was waiting at the meat counter for his order.  We pulled up with our cart and I noticed that he kept looking at us.  "Here we go!" I thought.  I made eye-contact.  He smiled and said, "I LOVE IT!  LOVE IT!  Keep up the good work!"  So, I replied, "Wow.  Thank you.  You just made my day.  I think I'll blog about it."  He said, "I LOVE seeing big families.  This is great!  You've made MY day!"  As we both waiting for our orders he complimented the family again. I said, "Well, we don't often get that reaction around here.  Thanks."  He said, "Oh, don't stop!  People need to see big families.  It's sooooo good!"

Later at the Chinese Market, the checker counted by children out loud, "One, two, three, four, five, six!  You have six kids!!!"  Yep.  "OK.  Just a minute." she said.  Off she went to another counter and came back with six packages of Ocean Creature crackers.  She handed them out one by one as she counted the children again.  Then with a huge smile she gave me a thumbs-up.  "Big family.  Very good."

When we got home and relayed all these interactions to Daddy, Meg said, "Maybe we should start running our errands on Wednesdays every week."

From: http://amazingsix.blogspot.com/