Building a Family Life We Don't Want to Rush Through.
Parenthood, marriage, homeschool, traditions, and the everyday systems helping us raise six kids with more intention, connection, and room to actually enjoy these years.
The Years We Get To Keep
Six kids have taught us a lot.
Mostly, they've taught us just how quickly childhood moves.
We don't want to spend these years rushing from one thing to the next, managing an impossible calendar, or waiting for life to settle down before we enjoy it.
We want to be here for it.
That doesn't mean our home is always peaceful, our schedules are always simple, or we've figured out some perfect formula for raising a family. We most definitely have not!
But we have become deeply intentional about the kind of family life we're creating.
We've chosen slower childhoods. We've built traditions our kids look forward to. We've created systems that make a family of eight function. We homeschool. We protect time together. We prioritize our marriage. And we're continually asking ourselves what we want our children to remember about growing up here.
This space is where we'll share what we're learning along the way.
Not a blueprint for how every family should live.
Just an invitation to be intentional about yours.
"We're not trying to create a perfect childhood. We're trying to create one they'll love remembering."
Tara
PARENTHOOD
Raising humans we genuinely enjoy knowing.
Our thoughts on childhood, parenting six very different kids, slowing things down, creating connection, and navigating the beautiful, messy work of raising a family.
Explore Family Life
MARRIAGE
Building the relationship underneath the family.
What we're learning about staying connected through babies, businesses, big dreams, hard seasons, and the beautiful chaos of raising six kids together.
HOMESCHOOL
Learning designed around our children, not the other way around.
Why we homeschool, what our days actually look like, curriculum and resources we love, and what we've learned about creating an education that fits our family.
FAMILY TRADITIONS
Because ordinary moments become childhood memories.
Seasonal traditions, birthdays, holidays, family rituals, celebrations, and the little things we repeat simply because they make life feel like ours.
FAMILY SYSTEMS
The practical side of raising a family of eight.
Schedules, routines, meal planning, chores, calendars, family meetings, organization, and the systems that help us spend less time managing life and more time living it.
Around Here, We Believe...
Childhood doesn't need to be rushed.
There is value in boredom, imagination, dirt, books, ordinary afternoons, and plenty of room to just be a kid.
Strong families are built in ordinary moments.
The dinner table matters. The car conversations matter. The bedtime rituals matter.
Marriage deserves protecting.
Before we were managing a household and raising six children, there were two people choosing to build a life together.
Systems should create freedom.
We organize family life so we can think about it less, not obsess over it more.
There isn't one right way to build a family life.
The goal isn't to copy ours. It's to become intentional about yours.
Resources for Intentional Family Life
The practical tools, ideas, and resources we've created or collected to make family life simpler, more connected, and a little easier to manage.
Your family doesn’t need you to remember more. It needs a place for everything.
The Family CEO Planner is an undated, printable monthly planning system built on one idea: harmony over balance. Instead of giving every area of life equal attention, you decide what deserves your best energy this month and give yourself permission to let the rest wait.
Inside: The Season Check, where you choose what you’ll lead, tend, and rest each month. One Family Dashboard calendar, so every date lives in one place. Family Team, for sharing the load and planning family meetings. The Weekly CEO Reset and Tier Guide, for choosing three priorities and protecting them first. Pages for marriage, celebrations, school and learning, meals, wellness, finances, business, social media, home rhythms, home projects, and travel. A Brain Dump to open each month and a Monthly Reflection to close it.
28 pages, US Letter, including a Start Here printing guide. Print what you need, month after month, year after year.
The Family Table
Conversations we're having about raising kids, marriage, childhood, faith, education, money, technology, traditions, and the kind of adults we're hoping to raise.
Why Our Kids Aren't Over-scheduled
A packed childhood isn't necessarily a rich childhood, and boredom isn't something we need to rescue our kids from. We don't believe a full calendar automatically means a full childhood. With six kids, we could easily spend every afternoon and weekend racing from one activity to another, but we've become protective of white space. We want our kids to know what it feels like to be bored long enough to become creative, to wander outside, read for hours, build something for no reason, spend time with their siblings, and have nowhere they need to be. Activities can be wonderful, and our kids absolutely have interests we encourage, but we don't want their childhoods to become a résumé they're building before they're old enough to understand why. Sometimes the most formative parts of childhood happen in the hours we didn't schedule.
Why We Don't Believe Children Need Social Media
We don't believe children need an audience while they're still figuring out who they are. We're raising our kids in a world that will give them access to almost everything eventually, so we don't feel pressure to give them access to everything early. Social media asks children to navigate comparison, validation, algorithms, strangers, advertising, permanence, and an enormous amount of information before they're developmentally prepared for much of it. Our goal isn't to make technology the enemy or pretend our kids will never participate in the digital world. It's to protect childhood long enough for them to develop a strong sense of who they are before inviting thousands of other voices to weigh in. We're comfortable letting some things wait.
The Money Conversations We're Having With Our Kids
Keeping kids in the dark about money doesn't protect them; it sends them into adulthood financially unprepared. We want our children to understand that money isn't something mysterious adults whisper about, nor is having more of it the ultimate definition of success. We talk openly and age-appropriately about earning, saving, spending, giving, investing, ownership, debt, generosity, entrepreneurship and the difference between looking wealthy and actually building wealth. Most importantly, we're teaching them that money is an emotionally-neutral tool. Used wisely, it can create choices, allow you to help other people, fund dreams, buy back time, and change the trajectory of a family. We don't just want to leave our children money someday. We want to leave them knowing what to do with it with a strong sense of financial literacy.
Why We Chose Homeschool
We don't believe children need to spend the majority of their childhood inside a traditional classroom simply because that's how it's always been done. We didn't choose homeschool because we believe there's only one right way to educate a child. We chose it because we wanted the freedom to build education around our children instead of continually building our lives around an institution's schedule and their belief system. Homeschool has given us room to move at different speeds, follow curiosity further, travel, spend more time together, protect childhood, reduce performance anxiety, and recognize that six children can learn six very different ways. Some seasons are beautiful and some are chaotic, but we've come to value the flexibility almost as much as the education itself. For us, homeschool isn't about recreating school at home. It's about designing an education around the life and children we've actually been given.
What Six Kids Have Taught Me About Motherhood
Being a good mother doesn't require sacrificing every part of the woman you were before you became one. Six children have dismantled almost every illusion I once had about becoming the perfect mother. They've taught me that children can grow up under the same roof and need completely different things from me. They've taught me that seasons pass much faster than they feel when you're standing in the middle of them, that presence matters more than performance, and that some of the moments I once considered interruptions were actually the life I was so busy trying to build. I'm still learning every day, but motherhood has made one thing incredibly clear: my job isn't to create a perfect childhood for my children. It's to know them, love them well, guide them, and be awake enough within myself to experience it with them.