Grocery shopping for 11

Whenever I tell someone we have nine kids the first question is almost always "How can you afford them?!" I know we've touched base on this before, but apparently it still doesn't make sense to people. We shop frugally and take our time in the grocery store, shopping trips can sometimes last more than three hours depending how long our list is. Since I am currently making the list as we speak I figured it would be a good time to talk about it and no-I don't extreme coupon! I realized couponing actually ended up costing us more unless we were already planning on buying that specific amount of products that we needed for the coupon, but most of the times 10 cans of soup really wasn't necessary! We mainly shop at three stores-Walmart, Target, and Sam's Club. Between these three stores we are able to get everything we need for very little money. Our last Walmart trip where I filled up a cart and then some only cost around $200, which for our size family isn't bad at all. Part of the reason is we buy the store brand of food, there isn't a point to paying an extra five dollars for the name brand. The store brand tastes the same and saves us money so I feel fine eating it, our kids are a little oblivious to what brands of food we're feeding them they just want the food to taste good. A huge part of the question seems to be specifically about milk, milk can be expensive and I realize that. On average our family goes through six gallons of milk a week so I am always buying a lot of it, there really isn't a secret or solution here you just pray that you have enough milk when your toddler cries for milk or your five year old wants a bowl of cereal. Another thing I do splurge on is meat, my kids love meat! Meat is expensive, but I want them to be healthy so I will spend more on it. We use a pound of meat every time we make a meal with meat in it so it does cost a lot, but it's needed. Veggies you can often score a good deal on-Cartwheel which is Target's couponing app that gives you discounts varying from 5%-50% off a product is my hero when it comes to this. There's almost always a coupon for some kind of veggie and almost all the Target brand products are on there! I wish I was full of secrets of how we afford it, but honestly neither of us are ever able to answer this question. We just do it, God seems to be helping us as much as possible and he's keeping us sane during this. If any of you have suggestions of how we can save money on groceries I'd love to hear them!

She has to play on the boy team?!

If you follow our blog you know that our kids are big into sports, no matter what the sport is at least one kid is playing it. Callie recently expressed interest in playing soccer, which I am so excited about! I love soccer and played it pretty much from the moment I was able to walk so this is a dream come true. The moment she brought it up I called a place that has soccer going on right now for her age group and waited for the return phone call. We finally ended up receiving a phone call, but it wasn't exactly the news I wanted. Despite me explaining the situation they still informed me that she would be addressed as a boy since Callie isn't legally her name. I get we could have easily prevented this by changing her name, but that's honestly the stupidest thing I have ever heard. It's a coed team, so it's not really that they're making her play on the boys' team, but they did say if she was older she would have to play on the boys' team! Which is actually against the American Soccer League's stance, but you know I'm just naming the facts right now. This is the first big thing to affect my child and I will not stand for it, she has every right to play soccer and be addressed as "Callie" and with the correct pronouns. I will be fighting this and making sure she is able to play soccer this year, if it's the last thing I do I will change their mind about this. At the end of the day, it may seem like a sport, but remember that when you see tons of stories about transgender people committing suicide. The hate came from somewhere. I won't let my daughter be a statistic, she will not be the next transgender child to attempt suicide.  

Could you Butler size it?

Ah the joys of house hunting, when you have a family of eleven it's even more fun! In our area we don't really have super large houses, the large houses have been made into apartments because apparently no one has nine kids besides us. So we had to finally cave and actually talk to a relator, who is the most patient guy in the world! We finally found a house that we're pretty in love with(when I say we, I mean me) and realized we don't really have furniture, especially Butler sized furniture. So as we house shop we have to also furniture shop and finding furniture, especially a couch, that can fit a large family is hard! I don't know why the average number of kids per family is two and a half, but it makes life difficult when you have more kids. For example, our dining room table currently only fits less than half of our children because so many chairs have broken over time. Hopefully we will be able to find some kind of couch and table eventually and a house to put them in, but right now our relator is focused on "Butler sizing" the houses he's looking at for us. I'm hoping and praying that we find the perfect house sooner rather than later. It's going to be a long school year if we don't!

I Can't Watch it Again!

Like many Christian families we try to make our Sundays as family oriented as possible, so naturally when it's storming we make it a movie night. Because it's almost my mom's birthday we watched a movie she chose and let me just say I might never let her pick again! She chose to watch "Miracles From Heaven" which may sound sweet and innocent, but it was really hard to watch. This movie hit home way too hard for me, the little girl and I had pretty identical stories(except I didn't fall out of a tree to cure myself) but the main plot of being on your death bed and then making a remarkable recovery was pretty spot on. You would think this would make me happy to see someone else going through something so similar, but it honestly just made me super sad and scared that it could come back or something. There was one part that really seemed to stand out to me and get me really upset, when they put in a feeding tube. Little back story about me, I had a feeding tube for about a year and a half and had a super bad experience getting it placed. When they tried to put mine in the first time it went in my wind pipe and I ended up chocking-worst experience of my life! The moment I saw them put it in it was automatically a trigger warning for me and I couldn't focus on most of the movie after that. As happy as the ending was and as amazing as the actors were I can't watch it again, it was like I was watching myself get sick again and I don't want to imagine that. So fair warning to all my friends who have fought for their lives, this movie may bring up some bad memories.

But wait, what's her name?!

It recently came to my attention that people thought we legally changed Callie's name. It might make us sound like the world's worst parents when I say this, but no we haven't yet done that. Before you get ready to stone me to death let me just say it's not because we don't love her new name, we just haven't had the time or money needed to legally change her name and reissue everything. We decided that for legal purposes until we legally adopt her, her name will be "Noah Paul". You're probably wondering how this effects school, it really doesn't or we're hoping it doesn't. We met with several people from the school recently and they agreed to call her "Callie" and thanks to Obama she gets to use the bathroom she wants. I am beyond glad that the school is willing to help us out and give her a new beginning, it means the world to us. Now, back to the name the only time I really notice that her name we call her isn't legally her name is when I make a doctors appointment. Luckily the doctors know(obviously) the situation we are in and normally figure out who I'm talking about. We did make sure Callie was comfortable with the name situation, because at the end of the day she is the one who has to deal with it. She said it was fine, she realizes everyone calls her Callie so she's not too worried. We also did make sure she knew sometimes teachers might call her "Noah" by accident and she just has to gently remind them that her name is "Callie". Hopefully by this time next year we will have legally changed her name! Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

I'm Proud to be Transgender

Callie informed me she wanted to help me write the blog post today, with over 100 posts published I am gladly accepting suggestions! She seems to have a lot to say right now so let me give you some background. We recently have started reading Jazz Jenning's new book "Being Jazz", it's a much more grown up version of "I am Jazz!" and I debated on allowing Callie to listen in on what it had to say. After a lot of begging and pleading from Callie I decided to go for it, she needs to know what may happen in her life so we might as well prep her. As we were reading the book I decided to stop occasionally and ask her some questions about it, one part has really stuck out to me and that's what brought us here today. There's a part in the book when Jazz is talking about a Q&A where she was asked what she would do if a magical fairy came and was willing to make her into the person she should have been from day one. Jazz answered by saying "I would break the wand in half.", I paused there and asked Callie what she would do. After a few moments she smiled and said "I would break it too, I like the way I am." Because of the mature answer I decided to follow up with some more questions, why would she break it being the biggest question naturally agreeing to the fairy making you be, well YOU, is the easy answer. Face it, life would be so much easier if these two girls were born in the correct body, but both have decided they don't want that. Callie's answer kind of shocked me when she told me "It might be easy, but it's not me. I'm me because I'm transgender. I'm proud of it." She's four and comfortable in her own body, I'm 21 and still not okay with my body! With all the hate that a LGBTQ community has been getting I am impressed that a four year old is able to stand tall and say they are okay with the way they are amazes me and I think it's time we shed some light on positive stories from the community. Callie recently told me this "Being transgender is hard, but it's okay because I'm different so I'm special." So to all our LGBTQ family out there, you are special.

Insurance Sucks

Having multiple kids with health issues has taught me something. Insurance sucks! Our insurance is so bad with what they cover vs what they don't cover it's honestly starting to bother me. We have one child with diabetes who needs a specific pump, a pump which has been proven to work the best for kids with diabetes our insurance doesn't think it's a necessity-tell me how my child's LIFE isn't a necessity? Luckily, we were able to fight that and they eventually decided to cover part of it, but it was still annoying that I had to prove my child's worth to them. Then the biggest one, Callie and her need for anything transgender related. That means, counseling, blockers, and the biggest one the hormones. Our insurance was very straight with us, these things will not be covered because they don't have it on their list of "mental health issues". Fabulous. Luckily, we have sometime to fight this one before it becomes too big of an issue and we informed yesterday that one insurance company has already started to cover these things so yay! We are making progress, but it's just the first step in a big process to make sure that all transgender people get the chance to transition and be their true authentic selves. This is something that should have already happened, but because transgender people are seen as less than they always get the short end of the stick. It's extremely offensive to hear that my daughter won't be able to get the care she needs, if these kids don't get the care they need the results can be devastating. So many people seem to forget that transgender people are more likely to commit suicide if they aren't accepted, not giving them the basic right of having something so simple covered by insurance isn't accepting them it's just another example of how bad this is. I pray for a day when my daughter will be able to get all of the things she needs covered by insurance and for a day when all transgender people are just treated as people.  

Quality Time

One of the misconceptions of having a large family is that we never spend time with our kids. I'm not sure who started that rumor, but I can tell you for our family it isn't true in the slightest. First of all, each kid receives the individual attention they need AND want, because honestly some kids just don't want it. Hunter for example is perfectly fine playing with Legos by himself, where as most of our other kids want to be center of attention(cough cough BROOKE). When I tell people this they seem not to believe us, so let me just give some examples of how we spend time with them. We have dates with our children, one on one dates where we normally end up running an errand and then go out to eat, we always let them pick where we eat no matter where they pick we end up going. As you can imagine we end up at Chic-Fil-A A LOT! Regardless of what they pick to eat we make it seem like a fancy date and we talk to them about everything we can think of. This is honestly one of my favorite things to do with my kids, they seem to really enjoy it and the normally end up telling their siblings about all the fun things we talked about while we were away. The other thing that seems to be sure popular with our kids to bond with them is driving them to sports. Yup. This simple little act makes a huge difference, it's when most of our deepest conversations happen, well as deep as a five year old can get! Tyson recently said he was scared to start football because it was his first sport without Zayden, Brooke comforted him by telling him that it's fun doing a sport alone because it's all about you! She wasn't lying, even if the other kids are around at a sporting event of a sibling we still try to keep the focus on the child performing to boost their self esteem and let them know they're loved. We're hoping this arrangement continues to work as well as it has been, if it needs to change we'll change it, but for now it's perfect!

Are you having another?!

We've been married for over a week and people have asked us a lot of questions, but one question gets asked a lot more than the others. "When are you having a baby of your own?" First of all, can I just say how offensive that question is? It makes our other kids, our adopted kids, sound like they aren't really ours! All nine are 110% ours despite what people seem to think. With all that being said, Jason and I do plan on having another child, but there are a few things that need to happen before that can take place. First off, we need a larger house! Yea, that's the biggest one! We also want to wait for a year of having Ryker, we agreed when we start having kids we would wait a year in between kids and the same will be done for Ryker. So, long story short we won't even be trying until January and to be totally honest, we're only having one "together" so you all better enjoy this! The amount of people we have shocked with our decision is a little crazy, I mean we are young and finically we can afford another one, cause really what's one more? To be totally honest, I am a little too excited about the thought of having another one. I never raised a baby boy, like from birth, so I'm really hoping for a boy. Jason has also said he wants a boy since it will be our tenth kid and will "even out" the kid count. So, you may see an announcement in February you never know, but to answer the million dollar question-yes we want one more!

Celebrate Life

Today as I scrolled through Instagram I was reminded of how important it is to celebrate life while you have the chance. A few months ago a young Youtuber lost his life, today would have been his 14th birthday. All these posts remind me of losing our little man at six, every birthday and every holiday is super hard but I have to remember to stay positive for our kids. In the process of staying positive I have realized I try harder to make sure they have tons of memories, I annoy my children with picture taking, and drive them nuts by saying I love them. As much as they may hate it now, I hope one day they are able to look back and thank me for it. I wish more than anything I had more than six years with him, I wish he was able to turn seven, but that will never happen. There's so much he was never able to do that I plan on doing in his memory, but it won't be the same, but I know he wouldn't want us to be upset. So this is my personal plea to you, today do something nice for someone. Do something you've never done before or do something to make memories, make the most of the moments you have while you have them. Don't wait till someone in your life is gone to say "I wish we did..." do it now. Celebrate life.

Life is Crazy!

First, let me say I am so sorry that the blog is over 12 hours late! Life just got super hectic this weekend and it carried on to today. We originally had planned to take the kids to an amusement park, but I guess Brooke didn't like that idea because Saturday she face planted and damaged two teeth and lost one. We end up in urgent care who transferred us to the emergency room. We were then told she need surgery to remove the two teeth, fine whatever that's okay with us. We called the oral surgeon and were given two options, surgery today or surgery next month! Her mouth is so swollen and she can't eat so we decided today was the best! We had to wait till his already scheduled appointments were done because he was pretty much just throwing her in there so we had tons of time to kill and let me just say, it wasn't easy finding something to do! Thankfully we passed our time and Brooke got two teeth removed, five dollars from the tooth fairy, two packs of Shopkins, and ten dollars from Jason's dad! I have to say she made out pretty well and I think she should be buying dinner for me tonight! I am remembering today what I always tell my kids "Happiness is a choice" today was crazy and just not a good day, but tomorrow will be better!

Cop Lives Matter

As a cop I feel that right now I need to speak out about everything going on in the world. I'm tired of my wife living in fear and my kids picking up on that fear. I'm tired of the cops always being the bad guys, we have all these news stories about how bad police officers are and I just don't understand the big issue. Yes, I will admit there are bad cops-there are also bad people out there it's a two way street in this situation. I recently met someone, who didn't know I was a cop, who said he laughs when cops are killed and he would personally kill every single one if he could. How is that okay? How can people seriously think like that? How is it okay to say you want someone to die, you want a brother, a father, a husband, an uncle, to die? I could never justify the death of someone and I don't understand how others can. Yes, black lives matter, but cop lives matter as well. Yes, black people deserve rights, everyone does. Everyone deserves the right to walk around and feel safe. Every single person deserves to be respected and to have their basic needs met. It's bad enough that everyday I get a text message saying to be safe and she waits until I text back to breath, she waits until I send the text saying "I'm home" or she hears the velcro and she can finally relax. I knew going into this that I would be putting my life on the line, but I'm not going to lie I wasn't expecting to be shot at everyday of my life and I definitely wasn't expecting people to have this much of a disrespect towards myself and my fellow police officers. I want to live in a world where cops are heroes again, Jess always tells me stories of how little kids would go up to her grandfather and ask for his autograph what happened? Now when we go near kids nine times out of ten they get scared and pretty much run in the opposite direction because that's what they're being taught. I'm not saying you have to worship the ground we walk on, but remember that we have a family that wants us to come home. Please, just remember that.

Officially The Butler Bunch

For over a year now Jason and I have been in a relationship, it's obviously had it's ups and downs as does every relationship, but we've over come them. Our relationship is definitely interesting, too many people were giving us crap about blending a family at such a young age so we told people we broke up-those who are close to us and were supportive knew the truth however. As it got closer and closer to the date we were planning on getting married we got more and more stressed and didn't want to even think about marriage. The pressure of having a Pinterest perfect wedding was too much for us and we knew no matter what someone was going to be offended, it was already happening what I picked my maid of honor. After talking it over and praying about we decided to be a little spontaneous and just go to a courthouse and get married! Yup. Sorry family and friends, we needed to this now for a few reasons though so we didn't have time for romance and informing people. If you've read our blog for awhile you know we technically only have custody of Ryker, he's not adopted yet. We want to make it official, in order for it to be official we have to be legally married, same with adopting Hunter, Callie, and Skyler. We need this to be a permanent thing in order to make the "Butler Bunch" be "The Butler Bunch". As I type this I realize that you may think that we got married for all the wrong reasons, but we were planning on doing it anyway we just decided to do it earlier. Eloping isn't something I ever saw myself doing, but once we decided on it I knew it was right for us. We are however still planning on having a reception on the day we originally had planned on getting married for many reasons, one being we already booked things that are nonrefundable. The other reason being, it's a party celebrating our family. We need that! I don't even care what anyone thinks of our untraditional way of going about this, it's what we needed. I am hoping and praying that you are all understanding and supportive with what we have chosen.

We'll miss you Doc!

It's been a sad passed few days for our bunch. You might find the reason stupid but just stay with me here, Doc McStuffins wasn't renewed. It's really tragic for our family this is our show! It's one of those shows all nine kids enjoy, but it also has helped us through a lot. When Brooke got stitches for breaking her head up we put Doc McStuffins on and she was stitching up a toy! Brooke felt so much better and laid still for the doctor while he did and told him she was brave "cause Doc told me to be!". Doc McStuffins was Brooke's first favorite show and I think we own 90% of the merchandise to be honest, you're welcome Disney! This show has inspired children to do whatever they want, it's the perfect show that has a different theme than any other Disney show out there. Doc's dad isn't the bread winner and is often shown taking care of the kids, he isn't jealous that his wife is a kick butt doctor and earns the money for the family. Their family also just adopted a little girl, something our family has a connection to. The episodes of that show were perfectly done and I can't thank Disney enough for doing them, I am however upset we will never know how the story unfolds. Doc and her gang of toys were part of our morning routine and they will be missed for sure. I truly think Disney is making a mistake for not renewing the show, so many people including myself are upset about this. I know first hand that Doc McStuffins has made doctors appointments easier, it has inspired my girls to be doctors, and has allowed my sons to know that it's okay if they want to stay home with the kids. In a world filled with hate I want my kids to be surrounded by TV shows like this, I'm hoping that once they take Doc off the air they'll replace it with something just as amazing-maybe a show about a blended family?! Regardless, the run of the show was perfect and it still had a lot of story lines left that could have been done we are very sad to see it go, but we also don't have cable so my kids will be tricked by DVDs for awhile. I'm still open to helping with a show about a blended family-hit me up Disney.

School Shopping!

It's the most wonderful time of the yearrrr! Unless you have nine kids and eight are attending school and your man is in a different state and you have to take all nine school shopping alone. Why did my parents enjoy back to school season? I don't understand the joy of buying school supplies and other pointless things that your kid claims they need, in Brooke's case it's a Shawn Mendes backpack and a shirt to match and to be honest I don't think they make backpacks with him on them. Regardless, I have to put my hatred for school shopping aside and make the best of it for these kiddos. I am the annoying mom who has been calling stores since June to see if school supplies are out and had a store tell me I was paranoid. I'm not paranoid, I just had a plan to make school shopping extra special for each kid and take them one at a time but that would mean I need eight weeks to do since I only have one day per week to shop. It seemed like an awesome way to spend extra time with each kid and I figured they'd get exactly what they wanted if they were the only one with me. Honestly I was surprised to hear that the first week of July is here and only one store I called has school supplies out, when I worked retail I was always told they were a season early for everything and that's what I needed! I was counting on them to be fighting each other to get stuff out now! I mean really, we all know the day school starts Christmas stuff will be out because apparently Halloween and Thanksgiving(My personal favorite holidays) aren't considered super important anymore. Sigh. Hopefully the store that says they have school supplies wasn't counting their "office supply" section because that's what someone did with Walmart recently! It was a highly disappointing moment. Wish me luck as I go forth and attempt to school shop for eight kids! I can already feel my head throbbing, but that may also be my concussion.

Where is Jason?!

It's been awhile since I've blogged so I apologize if I suck. Jess has a concussion and isn't allowed to do anything besides sleep and stare at the ceiling she's really living it up right now. It seems like a lot of people think that I've abandoned her to raise all nine kids by herself, that's not the case. I moved three hours away for a job with the intent of having our family move as well. It unfortunately hasn't worked out that way, our oldest Zayden has been fighting cancer since October and we didn't want to leave his doctors who have been working so well with him. Then the kids got registered in school here instead of where we were moving because of the cancer and us not moving right away so now we need to wait for school to either be on a break or be over then we can move. For now however we are doing the best we can with this situation and I visit whenever I get a chance. I do want to clear the air some more here, people have suggested getting a job closer to home and I find it funny they think I didn't try that. One of the places I applied found out I had a transgender child and told me it wouldn't be safe for me to work there, another just simply didn't hire me. I tried and tried to get a job closer to home, but after nothing worked out I decided to go out of state and got a job that paid what I needed and promised to keep not just myself, but my family safe as well. My family is my priority and I will go to the ends of the earth to protect them and be with them and I wish more than anything that I had a job that allowed me to be home all the time maybe one day I will, but for now I know Jess has everything under control.