We’ve been back from our Midwest Adventure for a few days now. We’ve barely had enough time to relax. Horse Camp started first thing Monday morning, and we rolled in from a 15 hour trip from St. Louis at 9:00 pm Sunday night! Yeesh. But, we wouldn’t trade the fun and excitement of our four week trip through the Midwest for anything.

Summers are the busiest time of our year. Though our homeschool is put on hold, business is enormous. Monument Publishing, the publishing company I own and some of the kids are employed through, publishes the bestselling curriculum for the NCFCA and sold nationwide. This is literally my third 16-hour work day since we returned home (Wendy has been holding the fort). I just posted new material on our website at www.speechsupplies.com. Check it out if you’re interested.

Our grand finale from our trip was the NCFCA National Tournament in Birmingham, Alabama (which is in June the hottest place in the universe, did you know that?). Lydia didn’t break to outrounds, but she did do well and had a remarkable challenge–and honor–among the best expositors in the nation. You may have watched Lydia’s speech at an open tournament earlier this year (see here). She has come a long way! Here she is competing at Nationals:

The Jeubs wiggled their way all the way from Canada to nearly the Gulf of Mexico. The weather has been hot and humid, but we’ve all managed to “keep our shirts on.” None of us have had any time to post to the site, and now it is 5:30 a.m. in Birmingham, home of the 2008 NCFCA National Championship. Real quickly, here are some highlights…

We stopped in Janesville, Wisconsin, for an overnight with the Hanus family. I mention the Hanus family in our book, Love in the House, as a family who had a great deal of influence on my life. They, too, have 14 children, though they are a generation ahead of Wendy and me. I was best friends with their 2nd child, Paul, when growing up. Their youngest is 16 years old, and we arrived with very peculiar timing. The day before in the apartment of their home, one of their daughters gave birth to her first child (it was a home delivery). Fran Hanus shared with us how the delivery was beautiful and the help that her daughter received included nine other Hanus moms. “The love was so thick in that room, you could cut it with a knife!” This makes 32 grandchildren for Mike and Fran Hanus.

Our stay was short-lived. After a good night sleep, we headed down to Springfield, Illinois, where we were featured to speak to a group of homeschoolers. The managers of Camp CILCA, Kevin and Tawn, were most gracious to us as we popped up our tent and camped for three nights. Our talk included presentations of Cynthia and Lydia for NCFCA, and Wendy and I presented our Cheaper by the Baker’s Dozen talk on frugal living. It is encouraging to see moms and dads dedicated to making the financial sacrifices to homeschool their children, and it is our honor to give them tools to successfully do so.

The next day was our site-seeing day. We visited the most incredible museum we have ever visited: the Lincoln Presidential Museum. If you ever have the chance to visit, you must! We spent most of the day their reveling in the rich history of Abraham Lincoln. Such a man of faith and courage! The brand new museum had wax statues, kids play rooms, two spectacular historical movies, re-creations of Abe’s cabin life, and rich walk-throughs of the fantastic time of history. If your homeschool family is big enough, everyone can get in for free: 15 kids makes a “school,” and teachers and bus drivers pay no charge. Our dozen kids and our guest’s kids pushed us over the edge. See, it can truly be “cheaper by the dozen”!

We ventured further into the south, all the way to Chattanooga, Tennessee, to visit some friends, Howard and Kristi Tripp. I worked with Howard when at Focus on the Family, and he and his family (they’re expecting their seventh child) live in the beautiful mountains in Chattanooga. We swam Sunday afternoon in a warm lake…quite the contrast from cold Minnesota! Yesterday (Monday), I left Wendy with most of the kids in Chattanooga to stay with Kristi and Howard as Cynthia, Lydia and I zipped down to the NCFCA national tournament in Birmingham, Alabama.

Lydia did quite well her three rounds of Expository speech, but the competition is incredible. I wish I had time to upload a video and some pictures, but I barely have time to post this post. We have a Training Minds Ministry table at nationals and working it will suck up my time. Besides, Lydia will be putting together a vacation video soon. Thanks for your prayers…this trip has been full of blessings. We’ll post more soon!

The Jeub Family — Cheaper by the Baker’s Dozen

Parents to 14 children Chris & Wendy Jeub are convinced that the downturn in the economy should NOT limit the calling God has for families. Their lives are living proof as they claim to “live like kings” while maintaining a frugal budget. The Jeub grocery budget is under $700/month (feeding 12 children at home, mind you!), they homeschool on a single income, and they live in a modest mountain home. Their secrets are available to families of all sizes!

For homeschool families, come to watch Lydia Jeub (age 13) perform her nationally qualified expository speech on amateur movie making. You may or may not know, but the only nationally recognized homeschool extracurricular activity is speech and debate, and the Jeubs are on their way to compete at the National Tournament in Birmingham, Alabama. Chris has written extensively on this most exciting activity and the entire Jeub family have been involved since HSLDA started the league 11 years ago. The Jeubs are open to questions after Lydia delivers her Expos.

Chris and Wendy were featured on Discovery Channel’s “Kids by the Dozen” series in 2007. The family of 16 live in Monument, Colorado, where Wendy homeschools and Chris runs an academic nonprofit ministry. The Jeubs wrote Love in the House: Filling your home with the greatest commandment in response to the numerous questions about their lifestyle, and Wendy has just recently come out with a cookbook on affordable meals for growing families. Chris and Wendy are traveling through the Midwest on their way to the national homeschool speech tournament in Birmingham and have stopped to share with us.

West Side Christian Church, 2850 Cider Mill Ln, Springfield, IL. (Google map)
Thursday, June 5, 6:30-8:30 p.m.
This event is FREE
West Side Christian Church is conveniently located just off IL Route 4 (S. Veterans Parkway) in Springfield, IL.

It’s easy to find and there’s plenty of parking. The presentation will be in the Centennial Room. (Enter from the south entrance and you’ll find it easily).

So much has been happening in the past week that I have barely been able to post online (and access to the Internet is always an issue, too). It has been a long, awesome week since we posted of our first two items on our itinerary–the Elk River Booksigning and the Larson Family Reunion–both wonderful times with friends and family. At the booksigning, Wendy and I were able to conect with a few homescooling parents. The family reunion was a fantastic time to reconnect with relatives and meet new members of the family.



Our third and fourth big events have just finished. My sister Kate and her husband, Jerry, own a resort in Tenstrike, MN. Birch Haven Resort is a vintage resort with small cottages built along the shore of one of the hottest fishing lakes in Minnesota. We didn’t stay in one of the cabins, but rather popped our outfitters tent and helped out preparing for the summer season. Kate and Jerry have been slowly-but-surely fixing up this resort to its fuller capacity. As my mom and kids cleaned cabins, I would follow and take pictures of the finished cabins. I then used my Internet expertise to build web pages with specific details on each cabin. I also set up a wireless router onsite so that Kate and Jerry can offer free Internet to renters. You can check them out here.

It is hard to believe we would go further north than Tenstrike, but we did…all the way to Warroad, MN. Recall the little knob on top of Minnesota that sticks into Canada: that’s the location of Warroad. We stayed with our wonderful friends, the Heppners, to specifically see Josiah (their 4th child) marry Lisa Rygh on Saturday night. The wedding was beautiful and we danced the night away at the reception afterward. You may remember the Heppners if you are familiar with our TLC program “Kids by the Dozen.” The Heppners were, along with us, one of the three debuting families to be featured. The world of viewers didn’t know that the Heppners were already friends of ours. In fact, when TLC contacted them first and asked if they knew a family who would consider being filmed, they referred us. The show was an experience both families walked through. Of all the Heppner children (there are now 17 of them), Josiah was special to us, as he stayed at our home for a while after high school as he explored is post-graduation options. We are most fond and happy for Josiah who, by the way, is our Josiah’s namesake.

After the wedding day, we spent two much-too-quick days relaxing with the rest of the Heppner family. My sister’s children, Madison and Emma, came with us, so a total of 30 children between the four parents scuttled in and out of the home. Several of the adult Heppners stopped by to visit. Duwayne got upset with us for showing up with food (heh) for they stocked up with some of the best food in northern Minnesota. The kids baked the Heppner’s famous Rhubarb Cake (see recipe) and we ate like kings.

Duwayne and Miriam have been walking very similar spiritual paths as us, and we stayed up till 3:00 a.m. on Sunday night sharing great things with one another. We are Christ followers, personally devoted to Jesus Christ. Our relationship with Him brings great things into our lives that are exciting and adventurous. Though we are 1000 miles separated, our vision for family and faith are so similar that it validates our convictions.

We are so excited at how God is giving us a blessed vision for family, and we are both taking advantage of opportunities to speak and travel on it. Miriam shared with us of a retreat she was featured at in Canada and how God moved greatly among Native American women at the retreat. We, likewise, shared with them about how our booksigning in Elk River and the Cheaper by the Baker’s Dozen message of family economics have encouraged families to follow the will God has in their lives. What rich conversation!

We are now on our way to southern Wisconsin to visit with a family that I mention in our book Love in the House, the Hanus family. Their second-born child, Paul, was my grade-school friend. Mike and Fran Hanus have 14 children. They have only four children at home–most are married and with families of their own. They just added a grandchild last night as one of their newly married twins had her first. Running total: 14 children, 32 grandchildren, and 1 great-grandchild (their 2nd due any time now). They are dear, dear people, and we can’t wait to connect with them and their family.

We’re only staying the night and then we’re off to Springfield, Ill. We’ll be speaking on Thursday night in Springfield (click here), so I hope you can make it. It should be quite a night! This is our final speaking event till Nationals the following week in Birmingham.