Ooooh!  I’m so excited I think I’ll burst!  I have been wanting to start this for weeks and weeks and here it is!  I hope I can calm down enough to be coherent!

This is my brand new Mr. Linky called Help for Growing Families.  A place for more experienced moms of several children to share practical advice and helpful hints with new moms just starting out and with each other.

Almost all young (ok, all of us) moms are looking for helpful ideas to make their jobs a little easier or possible.  When God sends us many gifts it can be lonely territory.  And it can feel like you’re sailing in uncharted seas.

God has a plan for us though.  He tells us in Titus chapter 2:3-5,

3 The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things;

4 That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children,

5 To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.

So, every week I’ll be hosting Help for Growing Families here at Ship full O’ Pirates.  I’ll be putting the Mr. Linky post up every Monday evening at about 9pm cst.

What kind of advice and practical help am I talking about?  Anything that makes life with lots of children in one family easier or more do-able.  Sometimes you just need to know how to get all that laundry done and kept in orderly fashion.  (Ah, laundry, my arch nemesis!)  Or how about how to feed ‘em all without goin’ broke and having to give up gasoline!  Or maybe you have a good way to grocery shop with all of your children with you.  Any helpful, mothers-of-several type advice.  Every week, girls, just write a helpful bit of advice and link up here.

Here’s my 2 cents for this week.

There was a time when we had to house all of the Pirates in one bedroom.  That’s 5 boys in one 11′x10′ bedroom.  Yes it was a tight fit, but we got it done.  Here’s how.  One set of bunks, full-size on the bottom and twin-size on the top.  And a crib.  Oldest Pirate gets the top bunk all to himself.  Three middle sized Pirates on the bottom bunk, but turned sideways.  This is ok, and it works because these were very young Pirates (read short).  And of course, the baby Pirate goes in the crib.  This makes the room rather full, so the dressers go in the hallway or in another bedroom.  5 Pirates, one bedroom, no problem.

Now, dazzle me with your clever ideas and wise advice.

Enter your name and then, in parentheses, a 3-4 word description of your post in the first box.  In the second box enter your link to your post, don’t put the link to your home-page, just the link to the post.  Feel free to use the cool banner I made, and be sure to mention Help for Growing Families in your post and link back here.

Help for Growing Families Participants

1. ANGIE
2. Melissa (Be diligent)
3. MamaOlive
4. Amy
5. Sallie
6. Petersonclan (Bulk Cooking Day 1)
7. KimC (sock system)
8. Shyla (dealing with a small laundry room and just getting it done already)
9. Michelle (laundry made simple)
10. Nancy @ Homemade Blessings (Stress Relief)
11. Motherofmany
12. Lisa in ME (mothering season)
13. Andi (train them)

Powered by… Mister Linky’s Magical Widgets.

Related posts:

  1. and the winner is…

This entry was posted on Monday, November 3rd, 2008 at 9:00 pm and is filed under Extra-Categorical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

10 comments so far

 1 

great idea! But, I’m not sure I like being in the “aged” category, lol!

November 3rd, 2008 at 10:10 pm
 2 

I hope I did it right. Anyway, my advice this week is very short. :-)

November 4th, 2008 at 1:51 am
 3 

KimC emailed to tell about your meme and asked folks to participate… hope it is successful meme for ya!!

God bless!!
Sallie

November 4th, 2008 at 8:07 am
 4 

Hi! I’m new over here and found you through Kim at Life in a Shoe (although I’ve heard of you other places!)

What a great idea. I’m looking forward to reading all the helpful ideas, and hopefully participating now and then.

Blessings!

November 4th, 2008 at 11:31 am
 5 

[...] growing families. If you are a mom in need of tips, check it out! If you have a great idea, link up here and share your tip with the world! I shared our laundry [...]

November 4th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Lisa in ME
 6 

I just added “my 2 cents”. ;-) Great linky!

November 4th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
 7 

Ack! Didn’t get here in time. I will participate next week, instead!
:-)

November 4th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
 8 

Hi Mother Hen,

What a great idea! I was wondering, though, how to get the banner. I was able to copy the button, but I don’t know how to copy the banner. Help!

Suzanne

November 5th, 2008 at 10:29 am
 9 

@Suzanne: Hi Suzanne, I’m happy to help you get the banner on your post. Go to the banner on my post and right click on the banner. You’ll see a little pop-up menu, choose “Save Image As.” This is the part that might be different on different computers, but I’ll tell ya how it goes on mine. My computer opens a little window titled Save Image. The name of the image is highlighted. Write that down, then click the save button. That will download the banner as an image in your computer. Now my blog is WordPress and I see yours is Blogger, so we’re gonna have differences here, for sure, but here goes. Go to your dashboard and go to the post where you want the banner, click on the part of the post where you want the banner to appear. On my blog I click a button named Add Media at the top of the post box, that opens another little window where I click the button called Choose Files to Upload. That opens a window where I can select from a list of downloads. Next click on the name of the banner, remember, the bit you wrote down. Then click the button named Open. This takes me back to the previous window and I click the button named Insert Into Post. There ya go. If that doesn’t make sense or doesn’t work, let me know and we’ll try another way.

November 5th, 2008 at 11:00 am
 10 

Terrific idea!! I didn’t make it in time either, but I can’t wait to read everyone else’s posts!

November 6th, 2008 at 9:35 pm