Siblings

 There are 9 kids in my family. 3 boys, 6 girls. It's a big family. At least that is what I've been told over the years. A big family was all I knew, so I didn't necessarily see it as big until some random person would say there were a lot of us. I do remember as a teenager in a seminary class, we were supposed to say how many kids were in our family and where we fit in. I remember feeling a little panicky as I was trying to quickly count where I fit in. I figured it out finally before it was my turn. I kept debating whether I was number 5 or 6. I'm number 6.

My older sister passed away when she was a baby. She was seven months old, and I was the baby who followed directly after her. So, growing up, there were eight of us kids. I loved growing up in my family. I loved being surrounded by all my siblings. I am in the middle of the bunch, and I liked it that way.

I shared clothes with all my sisters. I didn't own a full wardrobe and really didn't need to till I got married and moved out. That is when I realized I didn't have that many clothes. I hadn't known because I had access to quite a large wardrobe, given that my sisters felt like sharing on any given day.

We were homeschooled. That meant we spent more time together than many siblings do. There were other homeschool families that we were friends with, but we spent the most time with each other. We did school work together, we played together, and we fought like crazy together. I'm sure we drove our parents crazy. Growing up, I considered my siblings as my friends. 

We played a lot of make-believe. We had so much fun pretending to be so many different things. We created plays together. One of my favorite things was to lip sync with my siblings. We did that a lot of the time. It was a blast. I miss doing that with them.  We also constantly quoted movies together. We could watch the same movie over and over and over again. We came up with never-ending entertainment.

Being in the middle, I got passed over on some things like chores. I never mowed the lawn growing up. Actually, I did it one time because I asked if I could. The job often fell to my older siblings and then to my younger siblings. I got skipped on that one, and I was totally okay with it. Having a big family meant lots of dirty dishes. For the most part, we didn't own a dishwasher, so we were it. I have many memories of doing the dishes with everyone. We had to at least help with the dishes once a day. It was often all of us kids doing the dinner dishes. We would sing, goof off, or talk. I didn't love doing the dishes as a kid, but we had fun while we did it.

I look like all of my sisters. I was asked if I was a twin with each of my sisters at least once. We didn't think we looked like each other, but we were often told that we looked all alike. One time when Matt and I were dating, he thought my sister was me. She and I were sitting on the couch, and he was sitting in front of me. He kept touching her leg.  She would try to move it away, but he was somewhat persistent in keeping physical contact. We finally pointed out that it wasn't my leg he was touching! I'm sure he double-checked which sister he was touching after that.

We've had our struggles in our family, like all families do, but we also created good relationships with each other. I love all of my siblings and the different relationships I have with all of them. We are a goofy bunch with lots of personalities and styles. It was never boring at our house. We always had something fun going on. It's still never boring. Now, with in-laws and everyone's kids, we have 50 people. It's a full party when we can all get together. Our family is a great family to be a part of. I love my big family.