Emma Eidsvoog poses for a family photo with her siblings at Ryley’s wedding in 2016. Eidsvoog has five older siblings and six younger. “It’d be weird to do life without them (at college),” Eidsvoog said. | Submitted photo

Milaca sibling finds peace in the chaos

Emma Eidsvoog, 22, reflects on a chaotic upbringing with eleven siblings.

By Rachel Blood | News Reporter

Emma Eidsvoog helps her family of 14 pack a charcoal grey 2010 GMC Yukon XL with three coolers and a few tents to be pitched at Lake Geneva’s family camp in Alexandria. The SUV’s back seat frequently houses cups of hardened oatmeal from rushed before-school breakfasts and baskets of hairbands for last-minute fixes. Eidsvoog’s parents drive the family up to the lake every summer to spend a week in a place that allows for the bantering, shouting and all around craziness of their family.

Jeff and Jody Eidsvoog call Milaca — a one gas station town of 3,000 on the highway to Brainerd and lake country — home with their five daughters and seven sons. Biological siblings Hannah, Leah, Tyler, Tanner and Ryley precede Eidsvoog herself, followed by Gretta. Her five youngest siblings — Steven, Carl, Kenny, Izzy and Sawyer — were adopted from Minnesota after living with the family for several years in foster care.

“I kind of like the chaos. I think the noise and the energy is always, like, it’s just fun, even if it’s frustrating and a lot sometimes.” — Emma Eidsvoog, Bethel senior

Instead of following her older siblings to school in Duluth or St. Cloud, Eidsvoog chose to study journalism at Bethel University. Returning home from Bethel when the COVID-19 pandemic struck brought chaos and distractions to Eidsvoog’s studies. Younger siblings could be heard through her closed bedroom door running down the halls and playing, but she managed.

Emma Eidsvoog strolls across the patio of Bethel University Tuesday alone. Eidsvoog, a senior journalism major, lives away from her eleven siblings while at Bethel. “There’s always someone to talk to,” Eidsvoog said of her siblings. “Always someone to hang out with.” | Photo by Rachel Blood

“I kind of like the chaos,” Eidsvoog said. “I think the noise and the energy is always, like, it’s just fun, even if it’s frustrating and a lot sometimes.”

At Lake Geneva, Eidsvoog spends the week alongside her cousins and attends daily church services, watching her siblings whiz by cabins on bicycles and jumping on the inflatable “blob” in the center of the lake.

“In the midst of the craziness, it is still a family full of love and acceptance, ” said Eidsvoog’s cousin, Abby Anderson.

Whether it’s a morning packed with oatmeal and checking the clock, desperately trying to get to school on time, or Eidsvoog’s extended family of fifty standing screaming on furniture all throughout a home decorated for Christmas, trying to avoid a few small shrews running across the floor, the Eidsvoog family does not know quiet.