July?

Where have you gone? Its your last day already? And summer...you are already two-thirds over? Wow. I could say I don't know where the time went, but Ryan pointed out yesterday that it was probably just about the busiest June and July we've ever had. Very true. There's sooooooo much for me to write about, and finding the time is getting harder and harder! But I am still going to try and catch up.....don't know how that's gonna go. I think it will take me half of August to do it! (And I think I'm writing this blog entry to procrastinate!)

When we were talking yesterday about how summer has gone by so quickly, Ryan started panicking a bit about winter coming. Already. I couldn't help but laugh, as winter is nowhere near imminent quite yet, but I can see where he's coming from. The months are flying! I don't much like winter, but take that statement and multiply it by about 10,000 for Ryan. I hear him repeat the sentence "I hate winter" constantly over the course of the cold and snowy months. I can relate to the reasons why he dislikes it so much...he grew up in Wyoming and I grew up in Montana, both places where winters are hard-core freezing and often feel like they last 6 months long. Not fun. Ryan's fondest dream is to move to Hawaii someday. He would move us there tomorrow if he had his way, and if he wasn't worried about a job!

But I'm starting to get excited for probably my favorite times of year...indian summer and fall. I remember indian summers in Montana when I was growing up...so many evenings I would sit out on our trampoline and watch the sun go down, and I would often wonder if I would ever see a sky as beautiful as that one ever again. Thinking about that makes me miss Montana and Billings and my old blue house so much! Curse the people who bought it for painting it mustard yellow...that really bugs me.

And fall. I loooooove fall. I love when it finally starts to cool down and you begin to sense the briskness in the air. I love the colors and the smells and even the fact that school is starting, even though no one in my family is really in school. (But I miss school! I love the beginning of fall semester at BYU.) I love that quote from the movie "You've Got Mail," about how fall "makes me want to go out and buy school supplies!" and make "a bouquet of sharpened pencils." I totally agree! =) And Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, I love it, I can't wait! I'm already wondering what the boys and I will dress up as.

Anywho...wow, this was a bit of a random post. Oh well! On to catching up...

Thank You, Nie Nie

I feel a little guilty about my previous post. I am such a whiner sometimes, I can be so ungrateful. My life is good. Not perfect, but good, and I should remember that. Sometimes I come to realize that what I focus on so much as problems, really aren't problems at all.

Just now I went to read Nie Nie's blog. I always seem to find myself wandering over to her blog when I am feeling down, or overwhelmed, or sorry for myself in any way. Reading what she writes grounds me immediately, humbles me every time. I always cry when I read her blog.

I don't know Nie Nie at all in real life...I only know of her. Many people already know who she is, but if you haven't heard of Nie Nie (pronounced Nee-Nee), she has a sad but amazing story. Her real name is Stephanie Nielsen, and she and her husband, who are a young couple with four children, were in a terrible private plane crash almost one year ago now. They both miraculously survived, but both suffered terrible burns. Stephanie got the worst of it....burns on 80% of her body. Almost one year later she is still in a very long state of recovery. She suffers from chronic pain, has had to undergo many surgeries, lots of therapy, and has to retrain her body to do simple things we all take for granted. And yet she handles this huge trial with amazing courage, humor, grace and faith. Though she definitely doesn't pretend that she doesn't struggle, she lives her life in an amazing way, to the fullest that she possibly can.

Even from the first time I read her blog, I could tell she is one of those kind, beautiful, passionate people that everyone loves and wishes they could be like. She is an amazing wife and mother. In fact, she's so incredibly talented as a wife and mother that when I first read her blog I couldn't help feeling self-conscious and envious, wishing I were more like her. The way she talks about her children and especially her husband is so sweet, sometimes humorous, always reverent. She has a true artistic flair and is always creating beautiful things, or surrounding herself with them. She began blogging long before the plane crash happened, and as I read her blogs from both before and after the crash, and learned about the creative and passionate person she is, I saw that her accident hasn't changed her in that way at all. She has a real, true challenge, something physical and painful that is a struggle every single day, and yet she lives her life with such beauty and grace and courage, and has such a positive (and funny!) outlook despite all her struggles. On top of all her amazing qualities, she has incredible faith. She never loses sight of what's important, of the eternal things. I'm not even close to being where she is. I think that's why I'm drawn to what she writes when I'm having my own struggles...what she writes puts things into perspective for me, and reminds me of what is truly significant. After reading her blog, all the little things I was so worried about don't feel important at all.

Nie Nie, you are a strong, beautiful woman who inspires me to be better. I want to be like you. Thank you.

If you haven't read her blog yet, go there.
http://nieniedialogues.blogspot.com

*Sigh*

This photo reminds me a lot of my life right now. Though my "line of work" (stay-at-home-mommy-hood) is very much not in an office, I feel like task after task and project after project is just starting to pile up in the inbox in my head. Along with the demands of my "everyday" job, which revolves around laundry and dishes and diapers and feedings, I have a thousand things I want to accomplish on the enormous, never-ending to-do list in my mind ! Potty-train my toddler, finally get around to hanging all the pictures in our house (not a single one hung in the year we've been here), finish decorating the boys' rooms, finally get all my paperwork filed and organized, organize my photos and make digital scrapbook albums for the boys (not a single page done), get on a regular exercise regimen, go through all the stuff in the basement and organize everything into our new storage room, get our food storage going, finally get ready for the yard sale I keep talking about having...it never ends. My fondest dream is to have it all done, to be completely caught up and have my home to a point where all that is necessary is a little everyday maintenance. With every big project done. To reach a point, someday, once, where I can truly say...I have nothing. to. do. Ha! Like that will ever happen!

And then, along with all of this, is what has also become a chore, in its own way: Blogging. I like blogging. Truly, I do! But its become another thing on my infinite to-do list! I am constantly thinking about things I want to write about and scrambling, trying to figure out when I can find time to get to the computer for more than a few minutes. Its nearly impossible these days! But even when it starts to feel bothersome, I desperately, desperately want to be good at writing about my life (commonplace as it may be). I regret so much that I didn't keep any form of journal, except for maybe a few measly entries, through some of the most eventful times of my life: when I was a teenager, when I was a college student, when I was dating Ryan and then engaged to Ryan, when I was first married. Its sad that I can never go back and read what the past me was feeling and thinking, especially during some of the most memorable or funny or challenging times. So I want to try and be at least somewhat diligent about journaling this period in my life. When I was young, I used to love opening up my mom and dad's old journals and reading through them, about when me and my brothers were born or when we were young. I want my kids to be able to do that. Even though I've failed to write much about myself growing up, I don't want to miss out writing about my kids. Because not only will they want to read about times they don't remember...I will want to read about the times I know I will probably forget. I already enjoy reading my own blogs from a year ago! So when blogging/journaling starts to stress me out, I remind myself that someday it will be wonderful and worth it and entertaining to read all about my life as a young mom, and that I won't care one bit then whether the kitchen was clean or the laundry done the day that I wrote.

I've also begun to realize that this period of time...summer...stresses me out pretty much every year. That sounds sad!...Summer should be the relaxing time, but I almost always start to feel a little overwhelmed! The moment this season arrives it seems Ryan and I are slammed with so many events and celebrations and trips coming up that we start to feel like we practically have the whole summer planned from the beginning! The past few weeks have been particularly busy for us. On top of the fact that the busy-ness of the past month has made it very hard to get around to blogging, the busy-ness has created SO many things I want and need to write about! These are all of our events from just about one month ago to now: Ryan's birthday, Father's Day, Family Reunion in Montana, Ryan's trip to Mexico, Fourth of July, my birthday, Thomas' birthday, Jacob's blessing. AAAAAH! I am starting to think about my blog like I think about my laundry...if I can just get all caught up and then do one load(/blog) a day, maybe I can always keep up with it! That shouldn't be so hard right???

And it would probably help if I learned to finish what I started...I often start blog entries and then never manage to finish and publish them. And this is not helped by the fact that I am generally long-winded! I finally decided to post a couple of entries I started writing at the end of June that in my mind weren't finished, because I hadn't written all the details or they didn't have photos with them or whatever, but I finally just decided to post anyway. I am determined to catch up eventually, but it is overwhelming...along with this last month, there are other things from even further back that I've been meaning to write about. Like Hawaii, from clear back in January!!! How pathetic am I!!?!?!?!

*Sigh*.