Large Family Homeschool Life – Week 31 of 2025

This is the part where I admit I have barely touched the blog in months! It’s been a whirlwind of a summer, with a couple of extended vacations to the mountains, wedding plans, and an overwhelming amount of life going on.

I felt like I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I was constantly in motion, yet never managing to finish much of anything. Every single day I had something that required me to leave the house. My Mom’s appointments, kids’ dentist appointments, wedding dress shopping, and outings with my husband took up every available space on my calendar – so much so I couldn’t even find the time to menu plan and grocery shop – making things even more haphazard.

UGH.

I finally managed 1 day at home. One day to reset my kitchen, cook a few things in bulk, make a menu plan, and finally pull the trigger on getting Walmart+ so I could have things delivered.

On that day I also planned out school for the next several weeks, and finally found the margin in my life to dream of Autumn School plans! Hooray!

So…all that to preface this week’s Large Family Homeschool Life!

This week has been a little calmer than the last several weeks, despite the fact that my washer is leaking and my dryer won’t dry, and nearly every day I had an appointment of some sort that took me out of the house!

First of all, one of the best things I did to make this week calmer was putting together a daily Menu Plan. Writing down what we are going to have for dinner each day and knowing I had what I needed on hand for breakfast and lunch took the stress out of meal times.

We had 3 of our favorite “bowl” meals this week – Greek Bowls, Asian Bowls, and Burger Bowls!

For the first 2 Bowls, I started with a base of jasmine rice and then for the Greek Bowls, I air fried some tomato basil chicken sausages from Aldi and laid out cucumbers, artichoke hearts, sautéed veggies, feta, and tzatziki (Aldi has some yummy versions of this too!). For the Asian Bowls, I air fry Bibigo Chicken Wontons and add the same sautéed veggies, wonton strips, and Asian sauces from Aldi.

The Burger Bowls have a base of hashbrowns to mimic a bun flavor, and then we layered with ground beef, cheese, pickles, onions, and condiments. YUM!

Check out this post for more meal planning ideas for large families:

We also celebrated Ty’s birthday early since he has to travel for the Army on his birthday. He wanted our favorite Oven Stew for his birthday meal and Scotcheroos for his “cake.”

Scotcheroos are usually an Autumn treat around here, but with the lovely weather we had this week where we were able to open up the windows and breathe deep, these seemed quite seasonal!

For school, we finished up studying the Vikings this week. We read in Story of the World and Our Island Story, and did a music lesson from the Middle Ages, and a watercolor lesson from Lily & Thistle.

To see more about our current curriculum selections, go here:

This week, I also put together a Monthly Decluttering List. I have a post on how we declutter, but I felt like I needed to organize it even more by dividing our house up into sections by the month – kind of like FLYlady, but more personalized to our home.

Now that August is here, we will be working on the Den in the basement that serves as both homeschool/library storage and the boys’ room.

Recently, I bought boho curtains made from saris for my kitchen. I just felt like I needed something fun in the kitchen, so I moved in some plants and put up these curtains. They also block some of the intense afternoon sun that comes from that window.

I may take them down for the fall and winter, but for now, they are a fun pop of color in my kitchen!

Another fun pop of color has been these Kantha blankets for our living room:

A friend of mine got me started on these because they are super lightweight, yet plenty warm! She buys them in bulk and then sells them off, gives them away as gifts, and even makes baby blankets out of them! (The photo is of her newest stash – I bought 3 of them from her.)

Our oldest daughter is in the process of moving back home from college, so she came back with a load of stuff and will return for good next week. She starts a new interpreting job near here next week, so she will live with us until she can find a place to rent.

We had to get a large storage unit when my mom moved in downstairs because we gave her the space that we would have used for storage. A few of us took a trip to the storage unit this week to drop some things off and take inventory of what was there for when our 20 year old gets married and moves out. It’s a real mish-mash of stuff down there – from HMMWV parts to chairs to a whole wall of our 24 year old’s things that don’t fit in her dorm room or her rather small room here at home.

Well, that’s all I have for this week. I plan on being back next week with a more detailed week of homeschooling and large family life, so stay tuned!

READ ALL THE LARGE FAMILY HOMESCHOOL LIFE POSTS HERE!