Anyone who has been reading this blog for long should know what a TV junkie I am. I am the only person I know who has not one, but TWO Tivo units and I give those babies a run for their money! In addition to all the other garbage I watch, I have several family oriented shows that I like to watch. They're all on the same channel - I think it's the Lifetime channel, but that's the beauty of Tivo, I don't even need to know that to record them!

Little People, Big World - This show is a lot of fun and the kids really enjoy watching their kids and how much fun they have on the farm. I love to watch Matt and Amy because they're so much like Tony and I. He's always trying to fix stuff and make things better for their family and she's always in the background sniping at him about it and nagging him to finish the projects they've started. Plus, she's a terrible housekeeper and it's funny to see the kids all rooting around in the piles of laundry trying to find their clothes and things.

Jon & Kate Plus Eight - This show is fascinating in a completely different way. It's kind of fascinating to see them try to cope with all these kids without completely flying apart. One of the older twins (Maddie?) is a complete brat and some of the little ones are kind of a pain too. I think the big attraction is the interaction between the Mom and Dad. She's kind of snarky and a complete control freak and he's just kind of beaten down and hopeless. It's interesting to see the pictures of him from before the babies were born. He just looks kind of happy and normal and now he looks like he's got the weight of the world on his shoulders and I guess he really does. I keep wondering what on earth would happen if they got a divorce with all those kids to raise. Now that would be an interesting show!

Seventeen Kids and Counting - This one is definitely my favorite! In case you haven't seen it, the Duggar family has 17 natural born children, actually 18 now because they just had another baby. They get a lot of flak for having so many children and I agree that it's definitely not for everyone, or even most people, but when you have 18 of the nicest, happiest, cleanest, and most polite children I've ever seen, I think you're definitely onto something! Seriously, it's like Zen Parenting or something. I've been watching the show for a while and I've never seen one of the parents yell at any of the kids, I've never seen a kid throw any kind of a tantrum, never seen them talk back to their parents or really misbehave in any way. It's really kind of fascinating. Any sane woman would be going berserk trying to raise this many kids AND homeschool them all, but Michelle is just always smiling, always pleasant, and always appreciative of her husband. Maybe that's the secret, but I'd sure love to see the outtakes reel sometimes. You want to see the Mom lose her cool, just once, or see a typical day with kids smearing peanut butter and jelly on the walls or barfing in her purse or something. Never seems to happen though.