All the tastes and smells of a nostalgic Christmas are in this cup of hot spiced punch!

My childhood memories of Christmas have a very specific smell and taste to them – my Mom’s hot punch.

I remember the old green 30-cup percolator on the counter, filled with this wonderfully delicious beverage.  I remember filling my cup again and again over the course of our Christmas Eve celebrations.  It was literally Christmas in a cup!

For many years as an adult, I did not own a 30 cup percolator, so in order to relive my childhood memories, and pass those same memories onto my children, I would make the recipe in a large stainless steel pot using reusable tea bags or cheesecloth.

Then, one year after my mom read my blog post about not owning a percolator like hers, she bought me one! Hallelujah! So much easier! Just fill the inside with the juices, water, and sugar and add the cloves and cinnamon to the basket on top and plug it it! Next thing you know, Christmas is permeating your house, and you are drinking deep, beautiful holiday memories!

The first time I make this hot punch during the Christmas season is the day after Thanksgiving when we host our annual Decorating Day with all the kids and their families. The menu changes, but there will always fudge and hot punch to ring in the Advent season!

I also often take this punch to Christmas brunches or other get-togethers during the month of December. And of course, I have to have it on Christmas Eve just like I had when I was little! It pairs perfectly with our Family Christmas Eve Service (free download here on the blog!).

Won’t you enjoy a cup with us?

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Festive Hot Punch

A delicious spiced holiday punch with cranberry, pineapple, and cinnamon.

Servings 20

Author Amy | Raising Arrows

Ingredients

• 8 cups pineapple juice
• 8 cups cranberry juice
• 4 cups water
• ¾ cup brown sugar
• 4 tsp whole cloves
• 4 sticks cinnamon, broken
• 1 pinch salt

Instructions

• Add all ingredients except spices to a 30 cup percolator. Place spices in the basket, and perk until done.

  You can also place the spices in cheesecloth and make this in a stock pot on the stovetop.

Festive Christmas Hot Punch
Amy

A sweet 16th birthday, a little Autumn School, and what my kids are doing for Independent School right now.

Read all the Large Family Homeschool Posts!

This past weekend, all of us (minus our oldest two sons and their families) met at the Fair for a day of fun! Ty and I have been doing this all our lives and have passed this tradition on to our children.

Whenever we do something like this as a family, we always do it all together. No matter how old our kids get, we go through the buildings together, we gather all the free samples together, we ride the train and the scary boat ride together, we take pictures, we eat Fair food, and we walk until our legs are aching…together!

This is how we do nearly everything. We don’t show up to events and then go our separate ways. The kids don’t come home to visit and end up in their own little corners. We tend to stick together because we’ve always done life together. (This fact, has actually made seating in our living room a bit tricky now that there are adult children, spouses, and grandbabies!)

Another example of this is the kids’ Minecraft server. They play it…you guessed it!…TOGETHER! Even the 28 year old, the 25 year old, the 22 year old and her husband! They are all on there together with the little kids, building, chatting, creating games and surprises for each other – not because anyone forced them to (well, I did tell them that their Saturday game time had to include 1 hour of playing video games TOGETHER, but beyond that, I only encouraged them to do things together – never forced them to). They have grown up enjoying each other’s company, and while they are still kids and they still have arguments here and there because they have unique personalities, they always find common ground at the end of the day.

This week, we celebrated a Sweet 16 Birthday! (Can you call it that when it’s your son?!) This guy entered the world 10 days late screaming his head off for the first 4 months of his life, and then mellowed into one of the most even-tempered of my children.

But, he is always pushing himself physically. He lives a full-speed kind of life! He recently began doing Mixed Martial Arts, he referees for the local soccer league, and he plans to join the military via ROTC in college. He’s a man with a plan!

He’s the kid who asked for a smoker for his 14th birthday, and became the resident grillmaster – even teaching his oldest brother a thing or two! This summer, he learned how to cook wood-fired pizzas (if only I had $1000 to drop on a pizza oven!). He smokes pork, cheese, dips, and frozen pizzas! He even smokes our Thanksgiving turkey!

He reminds me a lot of his oldest brother, and they are actually quite close despite the 12 year age difference. I honestly can’t believe it’s been 16 years since I gave birth to him. Where has the time gone?

Speaking of time…and seasons…

The weather has finally cooled and feels more like Fall than sultry Summer. As I type this, I have the whole house fan running, and I’m looking forward to walking in the morning with Ty.

This week in school, we’ve been studying the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, including the Louisiana Purchase and the death of Alexander Hamilton via a duel with vice president Aaron Burr (can you imagine something like that happening today?!).

We read in Story of the World and The New Nation by Joy Hakim.

We added Ohio to our map and used Notebooking Pages to document facts about Ohio. We also used Music in Our Homeschool‘s 50 States Songs to supplement our lessons. Also from MIOH, we are doing the Romantic Era of music and this week I was able to share that I have sung many of these songs in my years of voice lessons and college. The kids were impressed!

For Bible, we are going through the Bible Project’s One Story That Leads to Jesus Bible Reading Plan. You can find it on the YouVersion Bible app and you can also see all of the videos that go along with the reading plan HERE. I read the devotional aloud, and then assign the reading to the kids. Yes, they are all old enough to read on their own; although, some of them opt to listen to the Bible chapters via an app.

Speaking of reading on their own…now that Mercy is finished with her Phonics lessons, we bought her her very own ESV Bible. This is the one she chose:

She was so excited!

We’ve been ending our Morning Time with the Wingfeather Saga. We are on Book 3 now and still enjoying it immensely!

Perhaps you are wondering what my kids’ Independent School Work looks like (that’s what we call anything that isn’t Morning Time). First of all, you can learn HOW we put together their independent schooling, but below you’ll find EXACTLY what each of them do outside of Morning Time (at least for the time being).

17 year old son:

• Personal Bible Time
• Consumer Math from Not Consumed
• American Sign Language (via Sign It!)
• Literature Assignments from History – Sense and Sensibility, Streams to the River, River to the Sea (this one is a little young for him, but I assigned it anyway)
• Literature Assignments from Bible/Worldview – Church History in Plain Language and Understanding the Times.

15 year old son:

• Personal Bible Time
• Biology from Guest Hollow
• Conversational Spanish using these videos
• Typing from Typesy
• Literature Assignment from History – Johnny Tremain
• Literature Assignment from Bible/Worldview – A House for My Name
• He is taking a short break from Math because he was quite far ahead.

13 year old son:

• Personal Bible Time
• General Science from Apologia
• Literature Assignment from History – The Great Little Madison (he does not like this one!)
• Literature Assignment from Bible – YWAM Willam Carey Biography
• Piano
• He is also taking a short break from Math because he is also quite far ahead.

11 year old daughter:

• Personal Bible Time
• Math 6 from Teaching Textbooks
• Zoology 2 from Apologia
• Literature Assignment from History – Lewis & Clark book
• Cursive lessons from A Reason for Handwriting
• Piano

9 year old daughter:

• Personal Bible Time
• Finishing Math 3 from Teaching Textbooks
• Wonders of the Ocean Realm for Science
• Literature Assignment from History – William Blake’s Inn
• Handwriting T from A Reason for Handwriting
• Piano

You may notice that some of the literature assignments are “beneath” grade level. That doesn’t concern me because I assign so much reading that varies greatly in level of difficulty. Also, because we go through history chronologically, they may have missed a really great book when they were the “right” age that can still be enjoyed just as much when they are older.

Something I’ve been wanting to do these next couple of months is Autumn School on Thursdays, but I have really been struggling with fitting it in. Every month on a Thursday we help with the church food pantry, and then I just forget to plan for the other Thursdays or we have been away and I feel like I need to do regular Morning Time on Thursday instead of Autumn School. But, this week, I finally managed to do it!

We did have Food Pantry at our church during the morning hours, but after we had lunch and the older boys went to work at the bee farm, I gathered the “little” girls and we did some fun Autumn Schooling!

While the girls worked on a felt leaf garland, I read to them about Hot Air Balloons and skimmed through a book about Phineas Gage and how his medical case furthered the study of the brain. (My almost 10 year old was FASCINATED by this!)

You might be wondering what these have to do with Autumn School – well, the truth is, I’ve been hanging on to these for weeks planning to use them for Thursday School, and rather than just abandon them, I decided to go ahead and read them! Now I can send them back to the library with a sense of accomplishment! *snicker*

If you’ve ever read my post Do Homeschooled Kids Need Cell Phones?, you know that we do not give our children cell phones until they actually need them.

Well, it was time for our 17 year old, who does a lot of driving and errand running, to have his own phone. He’s been borrowing my mom’s phone (she lives with us) when he and his brother go to work, but that’s not a great option long-term. So, we got him a new phone via our provider and he worked Friday afternoon setting it up the way he wants it. I also managed to get our wireless/internet bill lowered via AT&T’s Retention office. We give them a call every few years when we see the bill creep up. It usually means a deal we had has expired, but there’s always new deals to be had.

Before I sign off, here’s what we ate this week because I know many of you like to see our weekly menu in these posts!

Monday
Pepperoni Pasta Casserole – we have A LOT of pepperonis from last month’s food pantry, so we are trying to find creative ways to use them up besides pizza and pepperoni chips (microwaved between 2 paper towels for 30-60 seconds).

Tuesday
Ty and I went out for Taco Tuesday with another couple, and the kids had their own Taco Tuesday with shredded chicken we cooked in the instant pot. I actually prefer to cook it in the slow cooker, but I forgot to put it in, so we had to do it in the instant pot.

Wednesday
Birthday Meal – Horseshoes
Our air fryer gave out while making the french fries for this recipe, but thankfully, I had a new one on hand because I was suspecting it was nearing the end of its life. This is my favorite air fryer because it is HUGE and can dehydrate my herbs too!

Thursday
We pan-seared some grouper and scallops we’ve had in the freezer. We also had cucumbers, mashed potatoes, and macaroni salad – all made from items we got from the food pantry that morning.

Friday
Jalepeno Popper Chicken Salad

And that was our week!

Large Family Homeschool Life – Week 39 of 2026
Amy

There’s not much I can say no to, but I can adjust how I say yes so it’s more like a no and becomes more manageable in the process.

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TRANSCRIPT

Hello, friends. I’m pushing 50, and in many ways, my life has gotten easier with older children and less responsibilities that way. But in many ways, my life has gotten exponentially harder. And in this episode of the Raising Arrows podcast, I’m going to walk through my own life and how I have tried and failed many times over to stop the overwhelm and figure out how to say no to things. And a realization that I’ve come to that it really is less about saying no and more about adjusting my yeses.

Hello, friends. Welcome to the Raising Arrows podcast. I’m Amy Roberts from raisingarrows.net and this is episode number 192, Finding Ways to Say No.

Now, I mentioned that I’m pushing 50. I’m getting closer and closer every day to 50, and while I feel fantastic and I feel like I’m in my 20s, I don’t have a lot of health problems. I have a very blessed life at this point. I feel very good and I get plenty of sleep, and I’m navigating this whole perimenopause thing pretty well, if I do say so myself. Yet I am overwhelmed a lot of the time. I feel like sometimes the externals are attacking me. My internals are great. It’s the externals that are coming at me with expectations and things I need to do. And there’s this long list of things that I have to take care of in a day. And then other people add onto that list, or there’s expectations that are put on me or that I put on myself that cause me to feel very anxious and overwhelmed because I have to meet those expectations.

I have learned about myself in the past few years that it is really other people’s expectations or what I perceive to be their expectations that cause me the most angst. So I can be going along, doing everything and managing life just fine. And somebody throws in an extra to do. You know, I’ve got everything organized, everything sorted in my brain. I have the whole checklist going, you know, “Yay, me.” And then somebody says, “I need this,” and you can hear it in their voice, or they kind of insinuate they need it really soon. It’s like an emergency and I come undone because it’s one more thing added onto my list when I had my list all neat and tidy. I don’t want to have to do that, but the expectation is there that I need to do it, and I don’t know how to say no to that. A lot of times it is something that needs to be taken care of. But it feels like to me that every person’s request is an emergency. Every person’s crisis is my emergency. And my husband used to say, “Your crisis is not my emergency.” But I feel like I don’t know how to tame the feeling that it is my emergency and that I have to fix it right away. I have to get it off my plate. And I think that is my own personality. I’ve always been one of those people who, when I have a to do list, I want to get everything off my plate as soon as possible. So the to do list is just check, check, check, check, check, so that I can take a break. And so when somebody adds something to the to do list, it’s one more thing I want to get off my plate so I can take a break, so I can rest, so there’s nothing in my brain vying for my time and energy. I can just relax. And like I said, that’s my personality. I’m a finisher. I like things to be done and over with. And so I work really hard throughout the day to get those things off my list. And what that causes is constant fires that I feel the need to put out.

Now, I happened to be on Instagram a few days ago, and I noticed something from somebody about my age who was talking about this season of life and how there are so many things to do, and we do have a little more trouble sorting things as we get older, and we are torn in many different directions. And that’s what I’m finding as well. I’ve told you before, I have small children. I have adult children. I have a mother who’s living in our home. I have a husband who is very busy. And I have a lot of moving parts and pieces, way more than I ever used to have. Many people needing me in lots of different ways. It used to be they pretty much only needed me in one way, and now it’s lots of different ways, and I have trouble pivoting. I have trouble changing gears as quickly as I once did.

And so, she was suggesting that you learn to say no to certain things and you figure out what those nos are. The problem is that many of us, I believe, in this age bracket, when we go to look at our lives and try to figure out what to say no to, we can’t find a single thing. There’s nothing that I can say no to.

Now, certainly, I can say no to going paddleboarding with my friends. I can do that. And I do do that from time to time. But at the same time that’s a good exercise. It’s a good chance to be with friends. It’s a good thing to do. So I try not to say no all the time, but I have found that I’m pretty overwhelmed this year in particular. And so I tend to say no more often than not with that. But I don’t want to say no forever to paddleboarding. It’s something I enjoy. It’s a way to release some stress and to get some exercise. So I don’t want to say no to that.

And I actually did say no to blogging and podcasting for quite while a quite a season there. And I didn’t find that it changed anything for me. I was still overwhelmed even though I was not sending out any emails, I wasn’t recording any podcasts or videos, I wasn’t writing any blog posts, I wasn’t doing anything. And yet that didn’t change anything really.

I can’t really say no to taking care of my mom. I can’t say no to homeschooling the children. I mean, I could, but I don’t want to. And I don’t think that’s what’s best for our family right now. And again, I don’t want to. That’s something that brings me great joy is homeschooling them. And so I don’t want to do that. There’s just a number of things when I look at my life and I think, yeah, I could say no to that, I guess, but I don’t want to. A lot of us feel like is not even just a want. It’s the everyday, basic day to day living that we have to do that does not allow for there to be a no. I have to continue to feed my family somehow. I have to continue to educate my family somehow.

And then somewhere in there I’d like to have some small joys and peace and some reading time and some Bible study time. And so I don’t want to say no. And I’m not sure what I would say no to. And again, I tried to say no to some things and it didn’t change anything. So I feel like simply saying just say no to some things is really not the answer.

The answer, at least from my vantage point and what I’m learning here in the last few months, is that I have to adjust my yeses so that they look more like no’s.

So let me flesh this out a little bit for you. In the realm of podcasting, I sat down and had a chat with my 17 year old son who does the editing here, and he’s been doing the video editing and he’s been doing the audio editing for a while. And I talked to him about the fact that I needed to change some things. I would like to still continue podcasting, but it was becoming very tedious for both him and I. He really didn’t seem to have the time, I didn’t have the time. It just seemed like too much. And when it came right down to it, what felt like too much was the video aspect of the podcasting.

Now everybody is talking about, you know, video podcasting and putting it on YouTube and how you need to have the video component with the audio component. And I was just trying to keep up with everything there and I realized my life is not one that can do that and I’ve never really been able to do that. I’ve tried it here and there and I’ve just never made a go of the YouTube channel, frankly. So I told him I was going to stop doing video, at least for a season. I was just going to stop doing the video.

And we’re going to try something different with the video. It will still be on YouTube. It’s just going to be in a little different format because one of the parts of doing a podcast with video is that you have to look decent. And I’ll tell you right now, I am sitting here in a tank top and cut off shorts with my hair piled on top of my head and my sunglasses on top of my head because as soon as I record this, I’m gonna go out and walk in the blistering hot heat because I need to walk for the day. So I’m living a life where I can’t get all gussied up for a YouTube video, nor do I want to. Sometimes I’m recording these podcasts late at night. I’m in my pajamas, I just look like a hot mess. I don’t want to be on camera. And plus, it’s more editing when you do video. There is exponentially more editing that has to be done when there’s video involved and I can’t do that. And so that’s where I adjust a yes to make it a no. I’m saying no to a piece of the yes. That will make things easier for me.

Another example of this is that my mom had a lot of appointments or things that she wanted to do. She has a long haired cat that needs to be groomed and she likes to go get her hair cut every four to six weeks. And so she would just show up upstairs and say, “I need to get my hair cut in the next couple of days and I need to take Molly to the groomer.” And so this was one of those expectations that was being thrown into my to do list where it didn’t really fit. And I knew, yes, she needs to get her hair cut and yes, the cat needs to be groomed, but can it be done in a different way? Can my yes look different so that it becomes a no to the way that it’s happening right now? The way that she is presenting it to me needs to be a no. I need it to be a different kind of yes.

So what we came up with was she’s going to take her cat to the groomer every four weeks and that same day, while the cat’s at the groomer, I take her to get her hair done and then we go pick up the cat. That puts it on my schedule in a routine that happens every single month. We do the same thing. I know when it’s going to happen. It’s on the calendar. It’s not just a random thrown at me thing to put on my to do list in the next couple of days. It actually has a place in my schedule that makes a yes more like a no because it fits better and it allows me more breathing room and I’m able to see it in my calendar. It’s not one more thing that’s been thrown at me. Another example would be the little girls going to Awana. I marked on the Awana intake form that it wouldn’t just be me bringing them to Awana, it might be their dad, it might be their sister and it might be their brother. Their brother, who’s 17 can drive them to Awana, he can drop them off and he can go back and pick them up being because he doesn’t have as much to do at this point in his life, he has the freedom to do that because his day is not filled with a bunch of to do’s the way that mine is. That is a yes to a wanna but a, no to me being in charge of taking them every single week. So are you seeing how this kind of works? This is not taking something completely off of your plate plate. This is adjusting how you manage it on the plate so that it’s not such an overwhelming piece of the pie.

Another thing that I am learning about this is when my husband says, hey, can you do xyz? I may come back with I can do xyz, but it’s Going to have to be tomorrow. I tell my mom that a lot. I can’t do it today. It will have to be tomorrow. Or if my husband says, you know, can you do xyz? I can say, you know, I’ll do X and Y, but I can’t do Z. You’re gonna have to take care of that. And that has helped as well. Used to be, I just bent over backwards and tried to figure it out. But now that I am seeing that, my life is a lot more complicated, even though I have older children who take care of themselves for the most part, my homeschool schooling has changed a lot. So that it’s not nearly as difficult or as intensive as teacher intensive as it once was. There’s still a lot that has to be done in a day to keep this ship moving. And so I used to just add that onto my day. But that was before I had so many moving parts and pieces outside of the house. Because if you think about it, when your kids are younger, they’re all moving in the direction you tell them to move in. They’re not taking off to go do their own thing across town. They’re not asking you to take them to something in another city. They’re not needing things that require much outside of what you can offer within the confines of your four walls of your home. When they get older, that all changes. You are now running here and there, and you’re trying to control that as best you can. But then you also have things going on at home. It is really difficult to run a home when you’re never there and you have, different routines and schedules and things that you’ve had to adjust over the years and then throw into that extra people that you’re looking after, extra responsibilities.

Perhaps you feel like you’ve got more margin and you add things into your life and suddenly realize that was one too many things and you don’t know how to get out of it now, or you have an obligation to fulfill that now for a couple of years. Years. And you’ve got to figure out how to do that. All those kinds of things add up. And so where I used to just say, sure, I can do xyz, when my husband asks, I have realized that back then, XYZ was just tacked on to all the things that were already going on inside our home. Now I have to take into account that there’s so much going on outside of our home that XYZ is. Can’t all land on me. Some of it has to be taken care of by him. And he has a situation right now as well where he is driving three hours every single day to get to and from work. So he has a very difficult situation as well. He’s gone for hours and hours on end. He doesn’t have a lot of time to take care of XYZ when he gets home. And sometimes it’s, you know, not business hours anymore. And so I need to take care of it. But if I can tell him I can do these two things and take that off your plate, it is perfectly alright for me to ask him to take one piece of that and put it onto his plate and take care of it. And sometimes I have found that when he asks me to do something, he’s actually simply asking me to explain something to him. Like say it has to do with an app. And I’ve used the app over and over and over and he hasn’t. So really what he’s asking me to do is could you show me how to use the app so that I can do xyz? Sure. That’s a totally different thing than you do all of it. And sometimes we have to clarify that because both of us are trying to get our to do lists done and sometimes we aren’t super clear about what those to do lists mean. And so we have to communicate a little bit better than maybe we used to. When I just took care of everything and didn’t think much about it because now I can’t. And so that’s where I am learning to adjust those yeses and try to figure out how can I make this yes more of a no? How can I make this yes easier to handle and manage while it’s on my plate? What can I do? What can I defer? What can I delegate to someone else? There are a lot of things you can do to adjust the yeses so that they feel more like no’s and they give you a little more margin in your life. So all that said, this is not going to have a regular video with it. it’s going to be on YouTube, but my son is going to do something a little different with some photos and some graphics and such. Instead of a video of me talking, it will be more of that. Something that you can just turn on and listen to if you want to on YouTube. Of course it’s still going to be on places like Spotify and Amazon. But I needed to change things up and I don’t know that this will be permanent. I don’t know how things will change. And evolve here on Raising Arrows. I think you’ve probably noticed, if you’ve been much of a reader or listener for a while, you’ve probably noticed that I’m a little here and there and everywhere. And I have been struggling a bit over the last few years to get my footing now that things are changing a bit. And I don’t know exactly what all of this looks like. I know lots and lots of bloggers from yesteryear who gave it up long ago. I know lots who have pivoted and changed how they do things. I know a lot who have gone straight to YouTube and are pretty much completely focused on YouTube. What I have found is that I can’t be that person. I have to be who I am, and I have to honor the gifts that the Lord has given me. And those things are more along the lines of writing and they’re a little quieter, I guess I’m kind of a quiet person, and I like to just keep things lo fi, I guess you could say. I like my music lo fi and acoustic. I like things calming. And, my son said when we were talking about what kind of graphics to put into the video, and I was showing him some of the things I liked, he’s, like, so cozy, cozy and warm. And I was like, yes, cozy and warm. That is perfect. Probably the best way to describe my aesthetic. I like things cozy and warm. I like a cup of coffee with my hands wrapped around it and a blanket. I like a cool breeze blowing. I like quiet. And, granted, I live in a household with a ton of children and a ton of people. And at any given moment, there could be 20 people in my house. And that’s just my family. And I, love the chaos that that brings. It is a beautiful noise. It is a joyful noise. But at the same time, my aesthetic is very much a, ah, very quiet, breezy, calm kind of aesthetic. And so that is more what you’re going to find from me. And probably what you have found here is just a quieter voice, a calmer voice in the midst of the chaos. And so for now, I think I need to just honor that. I need to respect the fact that I’m not a big video person. And while I love watching other people’s videos, it’s not really that place in my life at this time. I intend to keep writing on the blog as I find time. I love having the email where I can just speak right to the 23,000 people who are on my email list. It feels very cozy there, even though there’s 23,000 people. It feels cozy. And it’s just a more intimate space setting, I guess, to be able to speak to people via, the email newsletter. And so that’s kind of what I’m looking at now, is just a little quieter space, a little quieter place for me and my thoughts, a way to reach all of you that is not so bustling and busy, because none of us need more bustling and busy in our lives. So I hope that that is what you find when you come to Raising Arrows, to the podcast, to the blog, wherever it is that you find me. I hope you find a space of calm and friendship and just a quietness and peace in your soul. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of the Raising Arrows podcast. We’ll see you next time.

Podcast #192 – Finding Ways to Say No
Amy