I just took another Myers-Briggs assessment. Every time I do it, I feel fear that my letters will change, but no… They haven’t changed since college. 🙂 The numbers strongly confirmed: by this measure, I’m still an ENTP. E= Extroverted (“extraverted” to the MBTI purist) N= Intuition T= Thinking P= Perceiving Here’s one description: Prophet: You are agile, […]

Q: When I look into the future and imagine our vision for our family, I still feel at peace having as many children as God wills until we prayerfully feel that season of childbearing is over. But in the midst of it, this task seems too hard. I find myself searching for biblical motivations, but […]

Well, we’re all but there. The end of the year. Again. How does this keep happening? I’ve published over 150 articles on jessconnell.com in 2015. According to the stats, these are the top 10 most-read posts on jessconnell.com from this past year: #1- JOSH DUGGAR & THE PROBLEM WE ALL HAVE Though the news did not surprise me, […]

Doing hard things is admired in many circles. Decide to run a marathon, get your MBA, do a DIY remodel of an old house, or move into an RV and traverse America in a year, and people will fawn over it. Sometimes you can even get a reality TV show doing stuff like that. People are, […]

Q&A: My 2 practical questions are: I have a 2.5 yr old and 11 mo old twins….all boys….all active. The twins swarm my 2.5 yr old and it makes him angry, so he shoves / etc. We discipline him for this, but I have a hard time blaming his reaction when they are coming at […]

Like many Americans in the 80s and 90s, (maybe like you?) I grew up with one sibling. So I didn’t really know what to expect as a mom of many children (we have 9 now). Some things we can anticipate: (laundry, food, and stacks of clothes bins!), but what I wanted to talk about in… […]

{NOTE: For those readers who don’t know our family, we’re the Connells. Doug’s my husband and I’m Jess. At the time of this trip, we had 7 kids (Ethan-14, Baxter-12, MeiMei-10, Silas-8, Moses-6, Theo-3.5, Luke-18 months), and I was 6 months pregnant with our 8th child. Over the next 3 weeks, I’m publishing journal entries, pictures, […]

Discount grocery stores— this is currently my top budget-slicing method. At Costco, one basket costs us about $300-400. At my discount grocery stores last week, I got 3 basketfuls of groceries for just over $150. It takes creativity, and a little more time (we went to 2 stores, 45 minutes away, rather than just 1 store […]

Over the weekend, I was thrilled to attend a homeschooling conference with two days of teaching from Dr. Voddie Baucham and Dr. Tedd Tripp. Whoo! The main focus was how to make sure that we are clearly announcing the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus in our parenting and in our homes. Talk about a power-packed weekend; it was phenomenal! I want […]

Readers, I want to invite you to come check out my YouTube channel. Right now, I’m releasing 4 episodes a week. Here’s today’s video, ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF A LARGE FAMILY MOM (from start to finish): And last week, a vlog about a decision our oldest son is making: These videos chronicle life […]

Note: these are not current pics. For this post, I scoured my hard drive for all the pregnant-me pictures I could find. Almost every pregnant woman gets to a certain point where she JUST. FEELS. DONE. We feel massive, bloated, tired of waking up all hours to go potty, irritable (rather than sentimental) when the […]

Here it is– off the cuff and unrehearsed 🙂 — this is the good, the bad, the ugly of what life is like for me as a (home educating) mom of seven boisterous kids. (They’re, currently, 13 & under.) FULL OF NOISE, CONVERSATION, AND LAUGHTER This morning during homeschooling, the 2 year old and the… […]

WHAT IS CHRISTIAN FASTING? Simply put, fasting is choosing (for a set period of time) not to eat food in order to devote yourself more single-mindedly to the pursuit of God through Scripture and prayer. Christian fasting differs from the ritual/scheduled fasting found in other religions, and is not done in order to earn favor. […]

Two springs ago, we were in Georgia on a road trip, and our van needed attention. Doug and Mae went into town with the van, and I spent the day with 7 of our sons on the approach trail to the Appalachian Trail. We had hiked a steep two miles uphill to see Amicalola Falls… […]