Living in community.

We are currently being blessed by The Most High with an opportunity to live in a Torah based community.  Some close friends of ours are visiting from the South with their 7 children.  We get to have them here for only a couple for months but we are all looking at is as a chance to see what it would truly be like to live in a Torah Community full time, all together there are 17 of us in our home!

Of course it helps that I just love Star, she is the other Mama in the house now, and we seem to be on the same page most of the time.  She is a true Mommy and has a deep love for all children and is an inspiration to me, as I can be a bit on the cranky side and sometimes have a hard time relating to little children. 

We home school our children and have split them into two groups the 'littles' and the 'big kids', as I said Star is super good with kids so she teaches the littles  and I teach the big ones.  I am more of a drill sergeant and littles kids don't respond well to that sort of environment.  The big kids however seem to be handling it just fine. ;)

We get together as mama's twice a week for a planning session.  This is where we plan the menu for the next 3 days and go over any school issues that need to be addressed.  We alternate shopping she goes and then I go the next trip, which is nice because it takes a ton of stress of of each of us.  We also have weekly Family Meetings where all 17 of us get together to go over issues and make changes that need to be made.... Family Meeting is a must to make sure we are all on the same page.  There have been a couple parents meetings as well, when we need to address issues without the kids.

In a community I imagine it would be impossible to have "theirs" and "ours" when it comes to food, so we all share everyhting and that cuts down on a lot of drama.  We also share just about everything else, the laundry detergent, school supplies we even share cloth diapers as we are both using them for our babies.

So far at almost a month in I would suggest this experiment to anyone who strives to live in a Torah based community, as my husband and I lived in a situation like this years ago before we were believers and let me tell you, it was horrible!  We didn't share and there were always problems!  This is MUCH better.  More updates to come, stay tuned.......

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