*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*.