More about the Duggers

Tonight (Monday) I watched two more episodes of Seventeen and Counting (refer to this post if you have no idea what I'm talking about). In tonight's episode the Bates family came to visit with their 15 or 16 children and 1 more on the way. The two families met at a home school convention...probably the same one the oldest boy met his fiance' at. The Bates family is very similar to the Duggers when it comes to beliefs and family values. Momma Bates said that one day they just felt like they should wear dresses to be modest...so they do (the females anyway).

The Bates came to visit for two weeks and during that time the Bate family stayed in the boys' room while the Dugger boys staying in the bus...sounds lame huh. Nope, the bus is something like a rock star would have. It was huge and included 15 bunks! Since the Bates were around it was time to go to Silver Dollar City. When I heard that I actually squealed and jumped a little :) I was totally there and saw the Duggers and the film crew! The families color coordinated so they wouldn't get lost. The Bates family females had dresses that one of the girls made...they were matched in teams. It was funny when they showed a picture of some of the Bates girls and a picture of some SDC employees and turned them both B&W...the two photos looked very similar! Each of the older kids were assigned a couple of younger kids and that was a "team". So each set of three or four kids had a clothing color. One girls team was wearing blue dresses with green trim while another were wearing pink dresses with orange trim. The Duggers took a simpler approach and put the older girls in pink, older boys in red, younger boys in brown, etc.

In the second episode the Bates and Duggers went paint balling and then those age 18+ went sky diving!

One thing I noticed about the show is that Jim Bob's niece, Amy, and on of the grandpas are often interviewed for a different point of view. The niece either lives with them or is there most of the time...maybe as a nanny or something. She goes with them on every outing. Amy does not dress and look like the other Duggers and she listens to rock, something that the Dugger children are not allowed to listen to.

I'm totally hooked on this show. I saw an advertisement for more of the episodes being shown on the Discovery Health channel...but I don't get that channel :(

I should really be working on a paper right now... I actually managed to include the Duggers in my paper last Monday night :) It wasn't too hard since it was a journal response paper for contemporary issues in mass communication. I wrote about how it's interesting that the Duggers don't really watch TV, but they are so impacted by it. Because the camera crews, sound men, editors, etc are around so often that the older children have gained an interest in working sound, cameras, and playing around with editing. Many of them have said that they want to go into the field of media...I guess you can be affected by television even without watching it.

I just looked are there are entire websites dedicated to the Duggers, like this one. They also have a website. Anyway, that's about all the Dugger fun I can have for tonight...I love this family :)

i just found the best blog post ever about tonight's episodes... "And for the 2 of you still with me after this novel, I’ll leave you with the image of both families (33 children, 4 parents, one unclean cousin and 2 fetuses) sitting in the living room singing Amazing Grace while TLC inserts slow-motion clips of skydiving, Silver Dollar City and Paintball wars. Life is good."

Ok, I'll really shut up now about the Duggers...but seriously, they fascinate me! ...and they have a book coming out soon...joy!



BTW- so post offices are closed on Columbus Day?!? News to me...needless to say I was not able to mail my lovely packages. And there was nothing good at the thrift store :(