Large Family Homeschool Life – Week 1 of 2026

Welcome to 2026!

Technically, I started writing this post in week 52 of 2025, but since the year turned over on Thursday, I’ve titled it Week 1 of 2026.

Perhaps it is just me, but 2025 zoomed by. I remember anticipating the year 2025 because my husband was home from a year long deployment and for some reason I like the number 25 – it seems easy to remember. But now it is gone, and I find myself wondering what 2026 might have in store.

Last week, Christmas was a bit “muted” due to sickness running through the house. This week was supposed to include Christmas festivities with my mother-in-law, but she ended up with bronchitis, so the last 2 weeks of our year have been rather quiet and calm. And I am thankful for that.

We had our family Christmas on Christmas Adam (12/23) as usual and the marrieds went home to prepare for their own celebrations on Christmas Eve. I cooked up 3 roasts from this recipe, and made corn casserole, sweet potato casserole, a spaghetti salad, dressing, and lots of Christmas candies!

In many ways, our Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners mirror each other with only a few variants in dishes. They are recipes we only have this time of year, so we like to savor them a couple of times.

For Thanksgiving, we ate our meal on my October pattern Franciscan Pottery and for Thanksgiving, we used our Christmas china combined with pieces of our wedding china which happens to be emerald green and gold filigree. (Remember the days of wedding china?!)

As 2025 came to a close, I began considering a word for the coming year. In the past, I’ve had words like Home, Nourish, Share, Study, and my all time favorite – Abide. This year, I feel like I need something that truly conveys where the Lord has me right now, and I believe that word is RESTORE. I will be sharing more about that as the year progresses, but I’ve already seen where this word is spot on just a couple of days into 2026.

We are taking off from homeschooling until January 5, so at the beginning of this week, I found myself with very little to do! It was so refreshing to have a day without somewhere to be, something to do, and someone needing something. I did a lot of planning, and studying my Bible, and just enjoying the day with the kids.

However, as the week wore on, I began to realize just how much stress I’ve been under in the past few weeks, and how much things need to change. More on that in a moment…

On Tuesday, I went shopping and had a hair appointment. Our son turns 17 on New Year’s Day, so I needed to get food for his special day. I’ve had a lot of people ask if our daughters who were born the week before Christmas feel like their birthdays get smushed into Christmas, but it’s really this kid who ends up getting the short end of the stick. All the Christmas festivities have worn us out, nothing is open on his birthday, and his presents sometimes feel like an afterthought. New Year’s Day was a fun day to be born, but I’ve really had to stay focused to make his day special ever since!

The boys also planned an overnight Winter Video Game Grind and Football Game this weekend with 6 of their friends – 3 from across the street and 3 from a nearby city we used to live in. One of the moms stayed over so we enjoyed catching up.

If you’ve read my post from the past on not doing sleepovers, you’re probably wondering why we would allow this…

These boys have been friends for years, and as I said, the mom stayed over too. Our girls are 2 floors away and are not allowed to participate in the party (they ended up going across the street for the evening to hang out with the sister of one set of boys who was also feeling lonely and left out as the only girl in her family). Often, the boys do these parties when they can camp out in the backyard, but this time they all stayed together in the den.

My 15 year old is the one who plans these overnight game nights. This time he planned a Hot Cocoa Bar, playing football, and grinding out their favorite video games. I am so thankful for other parents who don’t mind my boys’ zany ideas and the fact that it often involves staying up as late as they can! They are making amazing memories, and they are all such great kids!

Here’s a photo from the September Bash…

One thing my 15 year old likes to do for these parties is smoke frozen pizzas and dips. He made a Loaded Cowboy Queso and Street Corn Dip, and I bought him 4 pizzas to put on the smoker.

Now about that stress I mentioned earlier…

Starting mid-December, I began racing through the holidays. Our pastor said something that really resonated with me last Sunday – “We race to Christmas and then we race through Christmas.” And while I try to stay very cognizant of how much I’m trying to do and overdo during the holidays, I tend toward doing too much without even realizing what I’ve done and then by January 1, I’m a stressed out mess who needs a good cry and a nap.

Can I get an amen?

I have already made some decisions concerning next year…

• No Grinch Party – We have had a Grinch Party every year for a decade, but now, I am officially passing the baton to the married families if they care to do this themselves. We’ll still watch the movie, but I’m not going to do the party foods anymore – especially not the weekend before Christmas like I did this year.
• Sharing the meal load – The marrieds will each bring a meal to share during the time they are here. That way I am not cooking a big Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Easter dinner plus trying to feed everyone a decent meal all the other days. We are now at a place where the marrieds and their families nearly double our current household numbers and this is only going to rise in coming years…substantially. I need help and I’m ready to ask for it. (and they are more than happy to contribute)

There are a lot of other things I’ve been mulling over lately, but I’m not quite ready to talk about them, but suffice it to say this year of RESTORATION is one that is going to require me to really be serious about my walk with the Lord and how I manage my home, homeschool, blog, and life. I’m excited!

Here’s a 2026 fully focused on Christ!