Maxwell 12: Eleven years of blogging, still got nothing to say

[SPHASH]

21 minutes ago, Corntree said:

 

http://articles.titus2.com/a-man-and-his-dawg/

From the article above:  I don’t know about you, but I struggle greatly with selfishness.              Yes Coward Steve you do.

[kpmom]

1 hour ago, johnhugh said:

 

Unless the clutter was actually set dressing for Sarah’s pictures? It implies that they lead such busy lives they dont have time to open the mail or tidy up gym equipment.

 

 

 

 

What's funny is most time management tips I've read mention dealing with mail right away so it doesn't pile up.  And here are the king and queen of rigid scheduling with mail littering their kitchen work space.

I'm surprised they at least don't have some sort of inbox for mail.

[nomoxian]

12 hours ago, kpmom said:

I'm surprised they at least don't have some sort of inbox for mail.

For a home with so many people, they could use a shoe holder thing that hangs on the door, and have slots for each person. Or they could use a portion of a side table by the door and put a basket to plop the mail in for people to check every day or so, or a binder with seperate inner folders if they want to sort the mail by person.

I am totally not a Holly Homemaker, but it's not hard to think of simple ways to make your home less of a hovel.

[anjulibai]

On 9/23/2017 at 0:29 AM, mango_fandango said:

Is Tina seriously wearing a bib at 5??? The fuck?? It's definitely not a dress over the top, it's not there in later photos. 

Yeah, that's just weird. My older son is 5, he hasn't worn bibs in years. Of course, not long ago we saw a pic with Joshua, also 5, in a bib. 

I suspect that bibs are an oft-debated issue in the extended Maxhell families. Sometimes Tina is wearing one when she eats, sometimes she's not. Joshua, though, always wears one. It's such a small thing, but I think it's definitely a point of contention. Otherwise, Tina would either always be wearing one when eating or never wearing one. 

 

As to the clutter, most of it doesn't bother me. I tend to be messy, though I do prefer tidy (and my DH and I have come to the conclusion that we need someone to come in regularly to help with that, so we have a cleaning service). 

What does bother me is the cleaning solution next to the processing of the apples. That's....that's just WTF. It would take 2 seconds to put that under the counter or away from the food. Yeesh. 

[mango_fandango]

I am slowly attempting to upload my Maxwell summary. I've just about got the hang of putting things in spoilers so bear with me!  So hopefully it'll soon look alright. 

[mango_fandango]

I have finally uploaded the summary! (Paging @Palimpsest who was interested). Feel free to mention bits I may have missed out

 

[Palimpsest]

Yay!  I was looking forward to it.

 

[onekidanddone]

If the Maxwells had their own realty show it would be called 'Dusting Ceiling Fans. and Watching Day with The Maxwells" 

[anniebgood]

I often wonder if the girls get mail to them, if it's opened by Steve and determined to be the "right kind of mail". I'd love to send Sarah one of the grammar books I use for my English students, who didn't pay attention all through high school and are now faced with a teacher who is determined to teach them how to write properly. 

[mango_fandango]

Sarah has posted examples of letters sent to her by Moody readers. Whether it's pre-vetted by Steve I don't know, although I sure as hell wouldn't put it past him.

Maxwell summary has been cleaned up a little/slightly edited. 

[Corntree]

That Random Life post is really driving me nuts. These people don't make sense.  Like, here's a typical post about cleaning where Sarah found it important to feature a photo of every damn Maxwell polishing a cabinet:

https://blog.titus2.com/2014/01/03/cabinet-polishing-cleaning-and-other-projects/

And now Sarah makes a Random Life post with ONE picture from Melanies's birthday, ONE picture from processing apples. If they can document cleaning so well, why can't they give us more info on other things? I'd rather read about apples and Melanie's birthday than cleaning. Especially since they don't talk about Melanie and the other wives that much. (Thank goodness there was only one picture of cleaning the slide.) It's just funny, like Sarah's all, "Oh I don't have much time to share what's been happening lately; we only have a few photos." But they have five bazillion photos of people cleaning.

Though even when they act like they're telling you so much about their family, they're really only saying the vaguest things. I think their blog has gotten worse about that over the years. Steve and Teri's really old articles from the late 90's/early 2000's give more actual details about their lives IMO. Or Teri's article about breaking free from the bondage of Pepsi describes how she became addicted over time. And I'd like to say that it totally comes across like Steve enabled her addiction, haha. He bought her Pepsis and in the second article below she mentions he built a special shelf on top of their homeschooling cart for her Pepsi. What kind of a headship are you, Steve?

http://articles.titus2.com/nothing-between/

https://blog.titus2.com/2013/05/06/getting-your-homeschool-organized-a-microwave-cart-organizer/

[YoshiCat]

On 9/19/2017 at 8:02 AM, Eternalbluepearl said:

I think we all know what God has in store for the Maxwells. Family time, Bible time, exercise, coffee, and projects they work on together while smiling and stopping to take blog photos. 

I usually don't pay much attention to then, but just took a cruise through their blog and it kind of gave me claustrophobia. Don't they every get tired of themselves? It's all "we hd family time, then I did some stuff with my sisters, then we had some family Bible time, then the whole family ate a meal, then we did some family stuff and then it was family time and after that, guess what, we spent time with the family. And then it was a holiday so it was extra fun to do stuff with the family." 

Ugh. I don't care how great your family is, spending all day every day with the same people and only those people would send me screaming into the night. 

On 9/20/2017 at 6:32 AM, Dark Matters said:

The fire safety plan, part 2, is up.  I know I was waiting with bated breath for it.  So God had a "rescue plan".  He saved the guinea pigs but not the bearded dragon or the hermit crab.  God plays favorites.  God is a bit of a jerk. 

It seems to me that if God really loved them, he wouldn't have set their house on fire. 

[Palimpsest]

5 hours ago, Corntree said:

I think their blog has gotten worse about that over the years. Steve and Teri's really old articles from the late 90's/early 2000's give more actual details about their lives IMO.

They are really mailing it in these days.  Sarah, but Steve and Teri especially.  Steve's older posts are really detailed and gave away too much, methinks.  Also, some of them are really embarrassing, like Teri's account of Nathan's wedding.  It would be interesting to try to pinpoint when Steve's "Seriously" articles started getting so brief.

Steve is down to a paragraph or two, but look at look at the one about the dog @Corntree posted up-thread.  It is about getting Honey, but he manages to get a lot more preaching and patting himself on the back into it.  His concern for the burden on Teri, how he was virtuous enough to ask advice from her dad, finally asking Teri for her opinion, how you can't love dogs because they aren't people, how he was so patient with the dog he didn't like, etc.  He finally gets to the point that he should be more demonstrative about showing love because people are watching his testimony about loving his wife.  Or something.

Not to flatter ourselves too much, but I suspect they put out less personal information these days because we are watching.  Steve is getting more paranoid too.  I expect he thinks he is a hero for not telling us where John's "mission" was so we can't criticize it.  Well, Steve, if it is a legitimate mission we wouldn't criticize, and by keeping it super-secret you are preventing your humpers from supporting it.

Does anyone else remember the Maxwell mole ages ago who knew the Maxwells personally, and would post both on Titus2 and here?  She was "Duchess" or "Countess" something here but finally made a careless post that gave away her identity to Steve, and got temporarily kicked off Titus2.  She stopped posting here after that.

 

[Corntree]

Yeah, @Palimpsest, the Dad's Corners are so short now and generic. What happened? I can't conceive of Steve having less free time now than he did when the kids were younger. Has he run out of ideas or he is just refusing to share any more personal info?

And guys, God doesn't make bad things happen, he uses bad situations for his glory. (Or something like that. It depends on who you talk to.) He let that house catch on fire so the family would see the miraculous way he saved them and know that God was really freaking awesome. If that family's house had never caught fire would they have known how powerful God is? No way. Also, God let the four-year-old go back into the house during the chaos just as the dad was running to the front door so the dad would know it was a miracle from God. Bullshitting aside, what's funny is that those posts were meant to show how important it is to have a fire safety plan, but the dude's conclusion is really that God saved them. The guy happened to be awake and noticed the fire before the smoke alarms even went off (all the grace of God, of course). And even with all the fire drills, the four-year-old got confused and wandered back to the house (she was saved by the grace of God, of course). So why was the plan so helpful?

[formergothardite]

I dreamed I was at a some sort of a conference and I ended up sitting right next to the Maxwells. Steven leaned over to ask me if I knew where I was going when I died. 

[mango_fandango]

The Seriously Dads barely make any sense. Sometimes I can tell that Steve's vaguely trying to get at something, but ultimately he just leaves things hanging. I guess he's probably trying to not spell things out for these people/get them to think about these things for themselves a little bit, but when the post/email doesn't really make any sense, then you're just gonna confuse people. It was like that long Content In Christ debt-free series that was just a list of anecdotes/random bits of scripture without any actual tips on how to become debt free.

[kpmom]

3 hours ago, Corntree said:

Yeah, @Palimpsest, the Dad's Corners are so short now and generic. What happened? I can't conceive of Steve having less free time now than he did when the kids were younger. Has he run out of ideas or he is just refusing to share any more personal info?

 

He decided somewhere along the way that men were not reading the longer, monthly articles he and Teri sent out and changed his articles to a very brief paragraph or two every week or so.

It's too bad though, 'cause we here at FJ found the longer articles very informative, although not in the way he probably intended.

[Granwych]

5 hours ago, Palimpsest said:

It would be interesting to try to pinpoint when Steve's "Seriously" articles started getting so brief.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if the "seriously" articles actually had some useful and interesting content for everyone rather than the hellfire and damnation rewards of "where you go when you die?"   He's seriously turning into a severely pompous and self-righteous old git.

4 hours ago, formergothardite said:

I dreamed I was at a some sort of a conference and I ended up sitting right next to the Maxwells. Steven leaned over to ask me if I knew where I was going when I died. 

And did he pass out when you told him that you'd arranged for a "Welcome Home" party at a Buddhist shrine?

[Palimpsest]

3 minutes ago, Granwych said:

He's seriously turning into a severely pompous and self-righteous old git.

I think he's probably been a pompous and self-righteous git since he was 11.

4 minutes ago, Granwych said:

a "Welcome Home" party at a Buddhist shrine?

Now that is really good.  I'd previously thought the only answer to that question was, "Yes, do you?"

 I

[Eternalbluepearl]

1 hour ago, mango_fandango said:

 It was like that long Content In Christ debt-free series that was just a list of anecdotes/random bits of scripture without any actual tips on how to become debt free.

Exactly. The tips seemed to be to have your family, friends, and neighbors give you things and donate their labor for free. Also, don't have expensive hobbies like flying planes. Not the most realistic or helpful advice.

[IReallyAmHopewell]

Well, Sarah has even managed to suck the life out of the Psalms.....................

[nomoxian]

36 minutes ago, IReallyAmHopewell said:

Well, Sarah has even managed to suck the life out of the Psalms.....................

I guess when you have read the same thing more times than you can count, it ends up being a bunch of boring letters with spaces between it. I only had to go to church once a week but even then it sounded like the adults in Peanuts.

Wonder if Stevey Boy is going to have her post something about how the Bible gets better and more meaningful every time she reads it. HI STEVE.

[Palimpsest]

Oy, Sarah!  Try this version:

 

[IReallyAmHopewell]

[courtlylove]

'There’s something so beautiful as sitting outside' ... There are so many better ways of writing this, Sarah. Ways that make sense.