ThisGatheredNest | Part 2

[Anne Bonny]

Yikes, Angie. She has some serious obsessive tendencies and it seems crazy pants that CR is ready to just let her uproot their entire lives (plus her parents) to indulge one that he must know will die down eventually. She has clearly gotten into watching Parisienne Farmgirl and Shaye Elliot recently and that is what sparked this current obsession. The French girl makeup, the French farmhouse decor (complete with the wallpaper like they both are in to), talks of homesteading and potagers. Its funny to me because from what we have seen of her she is nothing like them (in a good way...they are super conservative, vaguely racist, homophobic, not well traveled and all about women being traditionally feminine and antifeminism. I appreciate that Angie is a much more modern woman even though she is a Bible thumper) and this whole thing doesn't seem to fit her and her personality at all.

Said this elsewhere and she is seriously continuing to prove it:

She's already committing to llamas with no experience. When Angie and her sister were walking around and her sister was speaking about some of the gardening things she could do, Angela (who we've never seen garden one moment) is like "yeah, my dream is to have a potager or whatever its called" and clearly has little to no knowledge on gardening. This whole thing seems strange. How do you go straight to homesteading, gardening, llama-raising with NO experience?

I'm definitely starting to believe what others have said about adopting babies filling a hole inside of her and now this doing the same. I DO think she's a good person who has a good heart...I just hope she learns some contentment and figures out what this gap she keeps trying to fill is before she or CR (who also seems lovely) or the kids suffer for it.

When all this has settled down and she has her french farmhouse homestead, she won't suddenly be happy. If she is unhappy, she needs to seek some therapy, medication, and maybe make some fundamental life changes or find contentment so she quits going off on these extreme choices chasing that high.

[Tweedles3]

Yikes, Angie. She has some serious obsessive tendencies and it seems crazy pants that CR is ready to just let her uproot their entire lives (plus her parents) to indulge one that he must know will die down eventually. She has clearly gotten into watching Parisienne Farmgirl and Shaye Elliot recently and that is what sparked this current obsession. The French girl makeup, the French farmhouse decor (complete with the wallpaper like they both are in to), talks of homesteading and potagers. Its funny to me because from what we have seen of her she is nothing like them (in a good way...they are super conservative, vaguely racist, homophobic, not well traveled and all about women being traditionally feminine and antifeminism. I appreciate that Angie is a much more modern woman even though she is a Bible thumper) and this whole thing doesn't seem to fit her and her personality at all.

Said this elsewhere and she is seriously continuing to prove it:

She's already committing to llamas with no experience. When Angie and her sister were walking around and her sister was speaking about some of the gardening things she could do, Angela (who we've never seen garden one moment) is like "yeah, my dream is to have a potager or whatever its called" and clearly has little to no knowledge on gardening. This whole thing seems strange. How do you go straight to homesteading, gardening, llama-raising with NO experience?

I'm definitely starting to believe what others have said about adopting babies filling a hole inside of her and now this doing the same. I DO think she's a good person who has a good heart...I just hope she learns some contentment and figures out what this gap she keeps trying to fill is before she or CR (who also seems lovely) or the kids suffer for it.

When all this has settled down and she has her french farmhouse homestead, she won't suddenly be happy. If she is unhappy, she needs to seek some therapy, medication, and maybe make some fundamental life changes or find contentment so she quits going off on these extreme choices chasing that high.

Perfectly stated, my thoughts exactly.


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[FlowersTar 68]

Well, their house sold in a day and, according her IG, they're moving in two weeks.

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[LisaLulu22]

Well, their house sold in a day and, according her IG, they're moving in two weeks.

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Ya it was pending as of 7/26 which means they should have already moved by this point and should be waiting for it to close. They should already be at their farm

[Anne Bonny]

Poor CR. He looked really stressed in this last blog. Every time he talks about being nervous and it being a lot she talks over him about how there is a lot of potential and its going to be fun. Seeing Benjamim reminded me that not long ago, she was obsessively focused on adopting another child while CR tagged along looking similarly bewildered (but significantly less so). I didn't think you could top impulse adoption but here we are with impulse giant move and homestead/compound building. Hope CR is learning how to garden and raise llamas for when she moves on to the next thing and he has to take over that.

[Ohnonotme]

OMG. My ears are bleeding from the twins screeching for the first five minutes of the vlog. Surely she noticed it when editing. I know that’s what small children do, but come on! A minute would have been more than enough.


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[FlowersTar 68]

OMG. My ears are bleeding from the twins screeching for the first five minutes of the vlog. Surely she noticed it when editing. I know that’s what small children do, but come on! A minute would have been more than enough.


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Oh I know! It was too much! She found peace and quiet in the car when telling us about the make up she's bought, she always finds it when promoting an ad, doing clothing hauls etc. She could have found 5 minutes somewhere quiet to announce the selling of the house.

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[Tweedles3]

OMG. My ears are bleeding from the twins screeching for the first five minutes of the vlog. Surely she noticed it when editing. I know that’s what small children do, but come on! A minute would have been more than enough.


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Oh I know! It was too much! She found peace and quiet in the car when telling us about the make up she's bought, she always finds it when promoting an ad, doing clothing hauls etc. She could have found 5 minutes somewhere quiet to announce the selling of the house.

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I was happy to see the twins, they’ve been mostly off screen for the better part of a year. But that was too much, especially when Angie can get away from her kids so easily in her office shed. I checked her IG for any updates, did she and CR really take a 5-day vacation for their anniversary? And right when they are closing on a home and finalizing their own sale. She didn’t say where they went and if the kids came along, but I’m a little surprised they had any time at all to wedge a vacation into their relentless lifestyle.


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[wasteoftime]

When was the twins birthday and were they premature? They are very much like 2 years old and not 3. Does she know when her kids have developmental difficulties etc and she chooses to not share it? I wonder if she thinks if she doesn't say anything people won't notice.

She also shows very little on how she actually educates the different kids, it's always just a general 'we do group subjects', which seems to mean she reads to them. They don't produce any work, no projects (unless it's a sponsorship) or work was ever seen in the school room. There was one trip to a nature spot to sell a notebook. She has a real opportunity to talk about how adoption and developmental difficulties influence education, to show different ways of meeting individual needs and help others. It's a little off for a homeschool content creator that she tries to sell herself as to be so superficial.

I wonder if part of her jumping from one thing to another is when she realizes she might get criticism for showing the reality, so she jumps on to something else. She never gets too deep as there is nothing to show (the kids parent themselves and one another, homeschool is just mom reading to them 4x a week etc). Initially I was very interested in what she was supposed to be showing but it's not there, she wants to give the impression of a wide variety of content but it's lacking any depth and over time i'm noticing everything is short lived for a sponsorship and nothing is genuine.

[Tweedles3]

I didn’t discover TGN until Angie was in the 3rd trimester with the twins, I had a singleton due the same time and I enjoyed following along with all her pregnancy updates. I think the girls were moderately premature, they were around 37 weeks along IIRC. I missed a lot of her newborn videos because I had my own newborn, but I think she had a lot of feeding issues with the twins. Like Alex from Phil and Alex is going through with their newborn, Angie was hellbent on BF only, no formula, and her girls grew very slowly and slept horribly until Angie finally gave in and supplemented. I don’t know that that would still affect the girls at three years old, but it’s the only thing I can think of that might explain their delays. My son is speech delayed but doing so much better now, I wish she had shared the girls’ speech delays. On a positive note, I haven’t seen the twins with a paci in a long time, so maybe they took care of the offscreen. But it’s all about Benjamin now, he seems on par or ahead of most 11-month olds. I have 11-month old twins that are wildly different, so I haven’t had the same fun in comparing them with Benji. But it’s evident he’s the star of the family (or maybe he just can’t protest yet).

Whenever it was they bought their RV (summer 2018?) that was the first time Youtube shut down comments on most family vlogs and it seemed to hit Angie really hard. I feel that might have been the turning point on her content being less focused on the kids/family and turned onto her various projects. I’ve always been skeptical on the homeschooling, I understand they can do it whenever they want, but there’s been times it seems there’s no schedule at all. I’m assuming she’s going to keep that all on her new paid platform with the other homeschool moms.


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[HCB]

I haven’t watched anything from them in a while. I just turned on the video on her channel about their house selling and whoa. She looks so small, her head looks giant, and her shoulders seem much more narrow. It’s like she is disintegrating into nothing. I wonder what her BMI is. I’ve been down in the dangerously underweight category while I was in renal failure so I know how that makes you look...like your head is twice its size and like your body is just eating itself because there’s no fat or muscle left anywhere. My shoulders, arms, and legs were literal twigs and my head looked giant on my body. I looked like an alien. It is alarming seeing her. She is starting to not look good. She has stated plenty of times that she has body image issues and a history of disordered eating. I think she needs to cool it with the intermittent fasting or she at least needs to track her calories and make sure she is legitimately eating maintenance calories during her “feasting window.” She claims she’s been maintaining for months but it looks like she is still losing weight.

[haterade]

When was the twins birthday and were they premature? They are very much like 2 years old and not 3. Does she know when her kids have developmental difficulties etc and she chooses to not share it? I wonder if she thinks if she doesn't say anything people won't notice.

She also shows very little on how she actually educates the different kids, it's always just a general 'we do group subjects', which seems to mean she reads to them. They don't produce any work, no projects (unless it's a sponsorship) or work was ever seen in the school room. There was one trip to a nature spot to sell a notebook. She has a real opportunity to talk about how adoption and developmental difficulties influence education, to show different ways of meeting individual needs and help others. It's a little off for a homeschool content creator that she tries to sell herself as to be so superficial.

I wonder if part of her jumping from one thing to another is when she realizes she might get criticism for showing the reality, so she jumps on to something else. She never gets too deep as there is nothing to show (the kids parent themselves and one another, homeschool is just mom reading to them 4x a week etc). Initially I was very interested in what she was supposed to be showing but it's not there, she wants to give the impression of a wide variety of content but it's lacking any depth and over time i'm noticing everything is short lived for a sponsorship and nothing is genuine.

I didn’t discover TGN until Angie was in the 3rd trimester with the twins, I had a singleton due the same time and I enjoyed following along with all her pregnancy updates. I think the girls were moderately premature, they were around 37 weeks along IIRC. I missed a lot of her newborn videos because I had my own newborn, but I think she had a lot of feeding issues with the twins. Like Alex from Phil and Alex is going through with their newborn, Angie was hellbent on BF only, no formula, and her girls grew very slowly and slept horribly until Angie finally gave in and supplemented. I don’t know that that would still affect the girls at three years old, but it’s the only thing I can think of that might explain their delays. My son is speech delayed but doing so much better now, I wish she had shared the girls’ speech delays. On a positive note, I haven’t seen the twins with a paci in a long time, so maybe they took care of the offscreen. But it’s all about Benjamin now, he seems on par or ahead of most 11-month olds. I have 11-month old twins that are wildly different, so I haven’t had the same fun in comparing them with Benji. But it’s evident he’s the star of the family (or maybe he just can’t protest yet).

Whenever it was they bought their RV (summer 2018?) that was the first time Youtube shut down comments on most family vlogs and it seemed to hit Angie really hard. I feel that might have been the turning point on her content being less focused on the kids/family and turned onto her various projects. I’ve always been skeptical on the homeschooling, I understand they can do it whenever they want, but there’s been times it seems there’s no schedule at all. I’m assuming she’s going to keep that all on her new paid platform with the other homeschool moms.


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I get where you both are coming from because having a child with delays can be very difficult and there is a certain degree of shame associated with it. Personally, however, it makes me uncomfortable when YouTubers make content out of their kids' delays. The kids cannot consent to that information being put out there. Maybe they don't want everyone they meet to know they have a speech delay, learning disability, etc. Angie has actually mentioned something along these lines as to why she doesn't talk about potty training and learning disabilities.

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[Tweedles3]

When was the twins birthday and were they premature? They are very much like 2 years old and not 3. Does she know when her kids have developmental difficulties etc and she chooses to not share it? I wonder if she thinks if she doesn't say anything people won't notice.

She also shows very little on how she actually educates the different kids, it's always just a general 'we do group subjects', which seems to mean she reads to them. They don't produce any work, no projects (unless it's a sponsorship) or work was ever seen in the school room. There was one trip to a nature spot to sell a notebook. She has a real opportunity to talk about how adoption and developmental difficulties influence education, to show different ways of meeting individual needs and help others. It's a little off for a homeschool content creator that she tries to sell herself as to be so superficial.

I wonder if part of her jumping from one thing to another is when she realizes she might get criticism for showing the reality, so she jumps on to something else. She never gets too deep as there is nothing to show (the kids parent themselves and one another, homeschool is just mom reading to them 4x a week etc). Initially I was very interested in what she was supposed to be showing but it's not there, she wants to give the impression of a wide variety of content but it's lacking any depth and over time i'm noticing everything is short lived for a sponsorship and nothing is genuine.

I didn’t discover TGN until Angie was in the 3rd trimester with the twins, I had a singleton due the same time and I enjoyed following along with all her pregnancy updates. I think the girls were moderately premature, they were around 37 weeks along IIRC. I missed a lot of her newborn videos because I had my own newborn, but I think she had a lot of feeding issues with the twins. Like Alex from Phil and Alex is going through with their newborn, Angie was hellbent on BF only, no formula, and her girls grew very slowly and slept horribly until Angie finally gave in and supplemented. I don’t know that that would still affect the girls at three years old, but it’s the only thing I can think of that might explain their delays. My son is speech delayed but doing so much better now, I wish she had shared the girls’ speech delays. On a positive note, I haven’t seen the twins with a paci in a long time, so maybe they took care of the offscreen. But it’s all about Benjamin now, he seems on par or ahead of most 11-month olds. I have 11-month old twins that are wildly different, so I haven’t had the same fun in comparing them with Benji. But it’s evident he’s the star of the family (or maybe he just can’t protest yet).

Whenever it was they bought their RV (summer 2018?) that was the first time Youtube shut down comments on most family vlogs and it seemed to hit Angie really hard. I feel that might have been the turning point on her content being less focused on the kids/family and turned onto her various projects. I’ve always been skeptical on the homeschooling, I understand they can do it whenever they want, but there’s been times it seems there’s no schedule at all. I’m assuming she’s going to keep that all on her new paid platform with the other homeschool moms.


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I get where you both are coming from because having a child with delays can be very difficult and there is a certain degree of shame associated with it. Personally, however, it makes me uncomfortable when YouTubers make content out of their kids' delays. The kids cannot consent to that information being put out there. Maybe they don't want everyone they meet to know they have a speech delay, learning disability, etc. Angie has actually mentioned something along these lines as to why she doesn't talk about potty training and learning disabilities.

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That’s a really good point, I definitely would not want them to show their kids in that light. I guess my main drive in watching vlogs at all is relatability, which was why I watched Angie in the first place. But there’s not much of that for me anymore, but I still like the family. Maybe part of me just wants to hear, “We are aware and are working with the twins off camera”, and leave it at that.


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[wasteoftime]

I think it's because we can see delays and then she makes excuses that it's because they're a big family.

With learning difficulties she doesn't have to name which child, talking about techniques and resources would be good. It'd make more sense, be more genuine and relatable and help others. Of course she can make whatever content she likes but omitting obvious things and superficially bouncing from one topic to another gets old once you realise her pattern for what it is. She wants the vlog titles for the money without the substance.

The infertility sponsorship was a reach, she has no need for a profile on embryo adoption 4 years later, other than sponsorship money.

[luci417]

I don't know if I'm alone in this or not, but I've always been put off by families who assume a monolithic identity. I get the desire to have a strong support system and a sense of being on the same "team", but how bonded are you going to be if someone--child or adult--doesn't meet expectations, go along with how things are done, or just otherwise doesn't "fit in"? Even if it's just something like that a family is rowdy and boisterous, and then have one solitary child who's a bit more on the sensitive side and is quick to cry. Do they get excluded? Dog-piled on? Re-homed Stauffer-style? (Because that's a thing that happened, pretty much for these reasons...)

Anyway, that's the vibe I get from the Braniff family. I don't think Angela's a bad person by any means--and I think she censors a lot of any "negative" or overly-private matters, as she should--but I get the impression that she just someone who likes everything (and everyone) to be on board with her vision, despite her efforts to be more flexible. I don't mind the homeschooling (especially in these times), but trying to establish a "family compound" rubs me the wrong way. I also don't want to over-generalize sharing property or living super-close to all your relatives because that works for some people, but I just hope Angie and CR aren't the type of people to get offended if most of the kids don't want to build a house there or something. I'm also on board with the theory that Angela and Ashley aren't as close as they want everyone to think, and Angie just posted a story that she and Ashley were practicing "sipping sweet tea on the porch" at the new house like that was a thing that HAD to happen; again, that's part of Angela's "vision".

For another example of this (to a lesser extent) is how Ashley--who I actually like, for the most part--and Peter purposefully chose a house where they'd have to have their seven children in just two bedrooms because they wanted to "simplify" and teach their kids how to value being together, or something. I'm not saying that couldn't work, but that sort of arrangement relies on everything going perfectly, in which it pretty much has; the kids are healthy and seem to be well-behaved, they're afloat financially (barely), and Ashley gets to spend all day parenting, gardening, and making content. What if one of the kids is the sort who needs a lot of solitude, and can't get it because their siblings keep bothering them or making noise (or, worse yet, terrorizing them)? Would that be chalked up as something to "get over" or "build character" to fix? As someone who fits that description, I would grow to resent it. (Obviously, we don't know how that would be addressed until it happens.)

i've always thought that both sisters were pretty old fashioned parents in the sense that their kids' needs are met but their wants and desires definitely come second to theirs as adults. like ashleigh has mentioned money being tight and then talked about the high end make up she recently bought or angie choosing to homeschool the older 2 girls in a room with toddlers and 2 newborns. plus them both having so many children - i don't get the impression they often think 'how will this affect my kids?'.

[gibberish]

For another example of this (to a lesser extent) is how Ashley--who I actually like, for the most part--and Peter purposefully chose a house where they'd have to have their seven children in just two bedrooms because they wanted to "simplify" and teach their kids how to value being together, or something. I'm not saying that couldn't work, but that sort of arrangement relies on everything going perfectly, in which it pretty much has; the kids are healthy and seem to be well-behaved, they're afloat financially (barely), and Ashley gets to spend all day parenting, gardening, and making content. What if one of the kids is the sort who needs a lot of solitude, and can't get it because their siblings keep bothering them or making noise (or, worse yet, terrorizing them)? Would that be chalked up as something to "get over" or "build character" to fix? As someone who fits that description, I would grow to resent it. (Obviously, we don't know how that would be addressed until it happens.)

Doesn't the new house have a complete walkout basement downstairs that they aren't using for bedrooms...but could later if they have issues?

[Tweedles3]

I’m really curious which house they decided on, and if it was featured in TGNs “House Hunting Begins” vlog. Would anyone have connected the dots and know if we saw part of the house in a vlog? I usually tune into vlogs when I’m working, so I miss things. The two points that stood out the most from that vlog are one of the homes was on a massive property and had a duck pond (I’m thinking this house is it) and that one the homes had a horrible addition (might be the same as duck pond house, lol).


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[Amsouthernbell]

She did say they are moving out of state. I believe they will move to SC. The availability of plantation style homes is pretty “high” there all things considered. I don’t know if her parents chipped in or not but I think that she will be overwhelmed with the work that comes with a big property. They didn’t even maintain their own yard in their old house themselves. I think Angie just wants to sit on her porch and have her own crew of workers do all the jobs.she wants to live a very privileged life. Ashley is going the opposite way she wants to show everyone how “humble” she is. I am assuming that their partners are pretty well off and Angie wants to show that she built something “big” for herself and is worthy of their “love+money” and Ashley is trying to show “look I won’t be wasteful with what you give me”


This is just me speculating

[brytbratbar]

I don't know if I'm alone in this or not, but I've always been put off by families who assume a monolithic identity. I get the desire to have a strong support system and a sense of being on the same "team", but how bonded are you going to be if someone--child or adult--doesn't meet expectations, go along with how things are done, or just otherwise doesn't "fit in"? Even if it's just something like that a family is rowdy and boisterous, and then have one solitary child who's a bit more on the sensitive side and is quick to cry. Do they get excluded? Dog-piled on? Re-homed Stauffer-style? (Because that's a thing that happened, pretty much for these reasons...)

Anyway, that's the vibe I get from the Braniff family. I don't think Angela's a bad person by any means--and I think she censors a lot of any "negative" or overly-private matters, as she should--but I get the impression that she just someone who likes everything (and everyone) to be on board with her vision, despite her efforts to be more flexible. I don't mind the homeschooling (especially in these times), but trying to establish a "family compound" rubs me the wrong way. I also don't want to over-generalize sharing property or living super-close to all your relatives because that works for some people, but I just hope Angie and CR aren't the type of people to get offended if most of the kids don't want to build a house there or something. I'm also on board with the theory that Angela and Ashley aren't as close as they want everyone to think, and Angie just posted a story that she and Ashley were practicing "sipping sweet tea on the porch" at the new house like that was a thing that HAD to happen; again, that's part of Angela's "vision".

For another example of this (to a lesser extent) is how Ashley--who I actually like, for the most part--and Peter purposefully chose a house where they'd have to have their seven children in just two bedrooms because they wanted to "simplify" and teach their kids how to value being together, or something. I'm not saying that couldn't work, but that sort of arrangement relies on everything going perfectly, in which it pretty much has; the kids are healthy and seem to be well-behaved, they're afloat financially (barely), and Ashley gets to spend all day parenting, gardening, and making content. What if one of the kids is the sort who needs a lot of solitude, and can't get it because their siblings keep bothering them or making noise (or, worse yet, terrorizing them)? Would that be chalked up as something to "get over" or "build character" to fix? As someone who fits that description, I would grow to resent it. (Obviously, we don't know how that would be addressed until it happens.)

i've always thought that both sisters were pretty old fashioned parents in the sense that their kids' needs are met but their wants and desires definitely come second to theirs as adults. like ashleigh has mentioned money being tight and then talked about the high end make up she recently bought or angie choosing to homeschool the older 2 girls in a room with toddlers and 2 newborns. plus them both having so many children - i don't get the impression they often think 'how will this affect my kids?'.

Ashleigh bothers me so much with this. In one video she mentioned that she had to buy a mattress topper
to make do with because mattresses are too expensive. Yet two seconds later showed a hat that she impulse bought and then before that she had revamped her YouTube space. The hat was very inexpensive but it didn’t even fit her head. A good mattress for her kid to sleep on especially since sleep is so crucial for kids should be a priority.

[luci417]

Ashleigh bothers me so much with this. In one video she mentioned that she had to buy a mattress topper
to make do with because mattresses are too expensive. Yet two seconds later showed a hat that she impulse bought and then before that she had revamped her YouTube space. The hat was very inexpensive but it didn’t even fit her head. A good mattress for her kid to sleep on especially since sleep is so crucial for kids should be a priority.

Yeah it always bothered me but i never thought it crossed into being a bad parent until she said they would have as many kids 'as the lord has for us' when they are just getting by financially. i knew she was batshit crazy in a 'someone call cps' kind of way when she chose to have peter deliver ruby at home with no medical professionals because it was 'more natural'.