Learning to Adjust

Part 2-if you missed part 1, check out yesterday's post!

Many people think that with such a large family we must have a massive home. In a word, No. We don't. It was a three bedroom, 3.5 bath that my parent's turned into 6 bedroom-3.5 bath house. We're all used to doubling up (we have our whole lives) but it definitely gets harder as everyone gets bigger. The house doesn't grow to accommodate everyone else growing up. Some days it can be particularly challenging learning how to be married in front of 7 not-married siblings. It was a growth experience for my husband to move in with 10 crazy people after growing up with 2 quiet normal brothers. Never has the expression "you don't marry one person, you marry their whole family" meant more than what he's learned to adjust to. He didn't understand that at a dinner for 11+ people, when your siblings are all vying for their fair share of the food and if you take a drop more than your share someone will call you out on it. :) Don't worry, no one ever starves in the house-they all just have very healthy appetites.

It can be tough when you and your husband want to go to bed and your brother's have a rowdy game of xbox/ps3/nintendo going on on the other side of the wall. It's an adjustment when you want to sleep in on Saturday-your only day to sleep in and your brother decides EVERY Saturday that it's the perfect time to play a game of football complete with diving catches right above your room. You may get headaches when another sibling decides it's the perfect time to play the piano for the 20th time that day and it's 11:30pm at night and you have to get up at 6 the next day for work and the piano seems to pipe into your room through the floor and become more and more amplified. It can be frustrating when you need to get ready for work and someone has decided to take a leisurely shower for 40 minutes in your bathroom. It can be particularly irritating when you finally get into the said bathroom and find out that the shampoo/soap/tooth paste/toilet paper has been completely used up and not replaced. It can drive you absolutely crazy when you finally get the bathroom and find out that there is not a drop of hot water left and you get to take an icy cold shower in the dead of winter. It can be tough when one person has had a bad day and it seems to spread and infect everyone else. Speaking of infecting, it's an absolute pain in the butt when someone comes home from some function sick because, yep! You're about to catch it from them! We all knew we never stood a chance against the swine flu.

Obviously I write this all tongue-in-cheek. I absolutely adore my family and I always will. Hubs has also tremendously enjoyed having a whole new family and siblings to rag on all the time. Think of it like living in a fraternity/sorority house, minus all the drinking, drugs and shacking up. Sisters and mom all sharing closets, brothers and my dad for the most part sharing wardrobes as well. We all each take a day of the week where we are in charge of cooking for the entire family. The washer and dryer run around the clock and it's all hands on deck when we experience snow storms like we did back in December or the tractor decided to die and we have a month left of summer where 7+ acres of grass still needs to be mowed...by hand. We are all extremely close and always kid each other that we will just buy a giant plantation and build a giant house with 9 wings-1 for each of us and 1 for my parents. In a few short months life like this will change forever and we will more than likely never all be in the same house together again. Hubs and I will be moving into our space and brother#1 leaves for military reasons. Whenever life seems out of control for all involved, we stop and remember that for better or for worse, it's a stage that won't last forever and we will all forever look back on this time with fondness. Forgetting the frustrations and remembering the laughter. All the nights all of us crowded around the dinner table eating and laughing together. Weekends spent cheering on our football team. Playing five on five football/basketball/baseball/soccer out in the yard while frying up 10-20lbs of chicken. Holidays spent lounging around, playing board games and cards, crowding around the tv watching movies and playing tournaments of mario kart.

For the most part, life flows pretty seamlessly here, hubs and I have learned SO much in the last year (our first full year of marriage) about each other. It was a huge and different adjustment for both of us to move in like this, probably much bigger for him and it was also an adjustment for my family having us move in as well. It took a long time to even feel like we were married (months after the wedding) and we felt a teensy bit robbed of the "honeymoon" stage of marriage but our marriage grows more rich with each passing day as we grow closer to each other and fall more in love. When people react in shock when they hear how hubs and I have been living the last year and a half, I understand where they are coming from but deep down I know that we wouldn't have traded this experience and all that we've learned for anything.