Wow, talk about an exciting two days. My accountant and good friend, Phill, received a phone call when in my office working on some quarterly reports. “There’s a rattlesnake in the garage!” his wife, Nancy, said. This only two days after Wendy killed her rattlesnake!

Phill got into my car (we carpooled down to my office) to speed home and shoot the vermin. On the way, he got a call from Nancy. Their 12-year-old son took a hoe and killed it with one fatal chomp. Phill returned to my office with a big proud-dad look on his face telling me that all was well back home.

Their son Matthew is pictured here holding his trophy. He, too, is homeschooled, so this immediately became a science project. Matthew spent some time on the phone with Wendy asking how to skin the serpant and treat it to save it. Click here to see a closeup of the rattler.

With all the rain we’ve been experiencing lately, we have had an increase in rattle snakes in the area. Sunday night I saw a rattle snake just off my back deck in my back yard. Yikes!

I had 3 of my dear sweet children run right by it before I could stop them. Tabitha (6) was running in from the trampoline and jumped right over it. Noah (7) didn’t have time to stop and said, “That’s a rattle snake!” and ran behind it. Then, before I could stop him, Josiah ran behind me and ran to the trampoline!!! UGH! I told Josiah to stay there–he is 2 so I didn’t know if he would listen or not, but he did.

I was holding Havilah (9mo) and so I told Cynthia (14) to take the baby and then I walked the loong way around and grabbed Josiah, handed him to one of the older kids and then I got the dog in (dogs can get bit by snakes too). Then I stood about 4 feet away and told Isaiah (10) to get me a shovel, I then took the shovel and walked 5 feet from it and pinned its neck down as hard as I could. I was trying to chop it off, but wasn’t strong enough. I wasn’t about to lift the shovel and let it go, so I told Isaiah to fetch the pick axe. He whacked it good right behind where I had it pinned down.

Because we are home schoolers (call us morbid, but I like to think of it as opportunistic) we cut off the tail and skinned it. When we cut it open two hours later, the heart was still beating. We pinned the skin to a board and poured salt over it to take out all the moisture. It was 3 feet long.

We really enjoyed “playing” with the dead rattle snake. But oh my, I am counting my blessings! This very well could have turned out to be a tragic story, but thank you God for protecting my children from the rattler!

Wendy =) <><

TIME magazine has made a significant splash with an article about sibling influence. While I chuckle at the title, “The New Science of Siblings” (as if this is something “new”), the article validates much about what Wendy and I have believed for a long time. We have been guilty as parents of thinking that our influence on our children is the most significant influence in a child’s life. However, a host of studies are showing that a more influential dynamic in a child’s life is his or her siblings. The article is subtitled, “Your parents raised you; your spouse lives with you; but it’s your brothers and sisters who really shaped you.”

From the time they are born, our brothers and sisters are our collaborators and co-conspiriators, our role models and cautionary tales. They are our scolds, protectors, goads, tormentors, playmates, counselors, sources of envy, objects of pride. They teach us how to resolve conflicts and how not to; how to conduct friendships and when to walk away from them. Sisters teach brothers about the mysteries of girls; brothers teach sisters about the puzzle of boys. Our spouses arrive compartively late in our lives; our parents eventually leave us. Our siblings may be the only people we’ll ever know who truly qualify as partners for life. “Siblings,” says family sociologist Katherine Conger of the University of California, Davis, “are with us for the whole journey.

Parents have “planned” their family size based on how many kids they can handle. This isn’t necessarily faulty determiner, but how many parents fail to consider the healthy dynamics of siblings? TIME confesses that “the first thing that strikes contemporary researchers when they study siblings is the sheer quantity of time the kids spend in one another’s presence and the power that has to teach them social skills.” Parents who have strong–or weak–sibling connections can testify to the “power” of sibling relationships. There is a very natural wonder that happens between brothers and sisters. Research centers are…

“…looking at ways brothers and sisters steer one another into–or away from–risky behavior; how they form a protective buffer against family upheaval; how they educate one another about the opposite sex; how all siblings compete for family recognition and come to terms–or blows–over such impossibly charged issues as parental favoritism.”

Wendy and I can testify to this in our own lives. I grew up with three sisters, and they are the closest of friends now. My relationship with them is nothing like their relationship with each other (hey, they’re sisters, and I’m the only boy), but I can’t brush off the intense influence my sisters had on my life. Becky, Katy and Heidi have had likely more to do with the shaping of me than my friends and perhaps even my parents.

Wendy comes from an alcoholic family whose mother (praise God) has found sobriety in the past two years. Wendy was raised with five siblings, a large family by today’s standards. Reflecting on her childhood, she agrees that it was the strong sibling bonds of the six kids that kept them resilient to the pressures of their difficult life. We just recently took a trip to Wisconsin and Minnesota to visit family, and the most memorable of visits was visits with Wendy’s sisters Heather, Paula and Debbi, and our visit to Wendy’s brother, Tod, who is caretaking their mother.

The Jeub siblings are incredible. We miss our oldest daughters, Alicia and Alissa, as they are adults on their own. The 11 who are presently at home–wow, they do sometimes drive mom and dad crazy. The article touches on this, “As much as all the fighting can set parents’ hair on end, there’s a lot of learning going on too, specifically about how conflicts, once begun, can be settled.” The article concludes, “Siblings, by any measure, are one of nature’s better brainstorms, and all the new studies on how they make us who we are is one of science’s.”

I’d say there is more than just “learning” going on. I’d also say that there is more than just “nature” involved in the blessing of siblings. God labels children as “blessings,” and I hope this website influences its parent readers to accept this as true. However, the TIME article opens another angle to our understanding–and backs it up with scientific proof–of the “blessings.” Not only are they blessings to the parents, but to each other.

Read this article.

Grandma enjoying a meal with the Jeub kids in Burlington, Wis.

For as long as I can remember, my family has attended a parade every July 4th. Complete with candy, advertisements, clowns, firetrucks, etc. It is one of my favorite times of year.

Here in the town of Monument, CO the parade covers several blocks. The kiddie parade comes before the big parade, where children are allowed to ride bicycles, scooters, roller skates, and even some unicycles and stilts through the parade route. The larger parade lasts a couple of hours.

For the past 6 years, my family and I have participated in the kiddie parade and later watch the big parade. This year was different. Dad, Isaiah, Micah, Noah, and I participated in the big parade by campaigning for the republican state senator, Dave Shultheis. We even got to meet him, as he was in the parade, too. We walked all through the parade, throwing candy to the kids and handing literature out to the adults. We did manage to get back to the rest of the family before the parade was over, and you can see some clips of the ELEPHANTS and the KIDDIE PARADE. Enjoy them and Happy Independence day to you!!