A Catholic family journal. 2026-10-04T00:00:00Z https://manymanytoes.com/ Many Many Toes 2026-10-04T00:00:00Z https://manymanytoes.com/journal/the-start-of-fall/ <p>Fall showed up this week. You can feel it in the mornings now.</p> <p>It's funny how much the season changes things around here. Summer is loose. Kids outside until dark, meals whenever, nobody really sure what day it is. Then fall comes and everything kind of tightens back up.</p> <h2>School</h2> <p>Our school year started back in. By now we're past the first few weeks, which are always the hardest. Everyone's remembering where the pencils go. Grant is learning 3d modeling which is exciting.</p> <p>I really like the rhythm. It's not easy with eight kids at eight different levels. But it feels good to have a plan for the day again, even when the plan falls apart by lunch.</p> <h2>Out on the land</h2> <p>Fall means worrying about the grass turning brown and making sure everything is inside because if it doesn't rain there still the threat of frost. There's always a list. It never gets all the way done before the cold comes, and I've made peace with that. Mostly.</p> <p>The evenings are my favorite part. The sun goes down earlier and the string lights on the porch come on before dinner now. We've been eating outside as long as the weather lets us.</p> <h2>The Church year</h2> <p>Fall is a full season in the Church too. We just had Michaelmas at the end of September. October is the month of the Rosary, and we're trying to pray it together more often as a family. Some nights that goes better than others. The little ones wiggle. The big ones are tired. But we keep showing up.</p> <p>Then All Saints and All Souls are right around the corner.</p> <h2>So that's fall</h2> <p>Shorter days, fuller schedules, and a lot more time together inside. I know winter is coming and it'll get harder in some ways. But right now, this week, it feels about right.</p> 2026-10-03T00:00:00Z https://manymanytoes.com/journal/why-we-called-it-many-many-toes/ <p>Count the shoes by our back door and you'll understand.</p> <p>With eight children, the pile never really goes away. Boots from the barn, church shoes, sandals someone swore they'd put away, and at least one shoe whose partner has been missing for weeks. I once stood in our entryway, looked down at it all, and said, &quot;That's a lot of toes.&quot;</p> <p>The name stuck.</p> <h2>More than a joke</h2> <p>It's a little funny, and we like that. But it's also a reminder. Every pair in that pile belongs to a person entrusted to us: a soul, a personality, a set of gifts and struggles we're responsible for helping along.</p> <p>A home like ours isn't built in big moments. It's built in ordinary ones: one meal, one lesson, one rosary, one pair of shoes at a time.</p> <h2>What this journal is for</h2> <p>We started Many Many Toes to keep an honest record of what we're learning. Some of it will be about the property, some about homeschooling, some about living the faith at home, and a lot of it about the beautiful chaos of a full house.</p> <p>We're not experts. We're just writing it down. If it helps another family along the way, all the better.</p> <p>Welcome. Mind the shoes.</p> 2026-10-02T00:00:00Z https://manymanytoes.com/journal/welcome-to-many-many-toes/ <p>We finally did it. We started a blog.</p> <p>I've been talking about this for a while. Every time something funny or hard or good happened around here, I'd think, &quot;I should write that down.&quot; And then I wouldn't. So this is me actually writing it down.</p> <h2>Who we are</h2> <p>We're a Catholic family. Mom and Dad and eight kids. We homeschool, we live on a little piece of land, and our house is almost never quiet.</p> <p>The kids range from little ones still learning to read all the way up to almost-grown. That means on any given day we're doing phonics at one end of the table and talking about college at the other. It's a lot. It's also a lot of fun.</p> <h2>Why write it down</h2> <p>Mostly for us. The years go fast with this many kids. I look back at photos from five years ago and I barely remember those days. I want to remember more of it.</p> <p>But I also know there are other families out there walking a similar road. Big families, homeschool families, families trying to live the faith at home without being perfect at it. If something we write helps one of them, that would make me really happy.</p> <h2>What you'll find here</h2> <p>We'll write about everyday life in a full house. The property and everything that goes wrong (and sometimes right) out there. Homeschooling and what's working for us right now. And how we try to keep the faith at the center of it all, the feast days and the prayers and the ordinary stuff in between.</p> <p>Most of it will come from me. Mom will write too. And every once in a while one of the kids will take a turn, which I'm looking forward to.</p> <p>We aren't experts. We're figuring it out as we go, same as everybody else.</p> <p>Anyway. Welcome. Pull up a chair. We'll try to keep the shoes out of the way.</p>