major slacker, reporting for duty.

okay, serious lack of posts lately.

I am currently uploading a MONTH’s worth of pictures. a whole month!!! I NEVER do that. the process of going through them all and editing, selecting, etc. is a bit daunting. HOWEVER, I have empty pages in my 2013 project life album that will NOT remain empty, so something must be done.

at any rate, the lack of posts is not due to lack of anything going on in our family. quite the contrary. far too much is going on. the ability to sit down at the computer and upload, type, THINK through my fingers is a rare opportunity now.

quite honestly, I hate it.

I love it, but I hate it.

of course, it’s all my own doing.

I never wanted to be one of these families. to be excessively busy. to sit down at the table for dinner, join hands, and realize we have NO IDEA who’s turn it is to pick the prayer because we don’t even remember the last time we all sat down together!

but I don’t know how to fix it.

strike that, I do. I just don’t like the solution, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be pretty unpopular, should I suggest it.

we collectively decided that waivering in to northshore schools was what we wanted to do. socially, academically, etc. the kids wanted to be there, I didn’t want them going to high school next door to the prison. so we do a lot of driving. it’s not bad. 15-20 minutes each way. not terrible, but it eats up a lot of my time. and gas.

the other thing is sports. my kids are not in a TON of activities. micah and layla play soccer. shane plays football. that’s it. no scouts, no gymnastics, no music lessons. (well, shane is in band, but mostly that is confined to school hours at this point). but 1 day a week for micah, 3 for layla, and 4 for shane adds up to a LOT of days of the week where our evenings are messed up. not to mention, dave is coaching both soccer teams, so he has to leave work early on those days, which leads to almost guaranteed longer hours on the other days.

I hate that. I hate squeezing dinner and homework and chores and stories and bedtime into a miniscule amount of time. I hate that they get to bed late EVERY night. I hate always feeling rushed. I hate that we never have time to just hang out together. I hate that by the time the kids are all in bed, WE should be going to bed, which leads to no time to hang out together, or if we do, it’s falling asleep downstairs while watching ‘friends’ reruns. don’t get me wrong, watching ‘friends’ reruns is one of our favorite things to do (I do realize how sad that sounds, but hey, it’s one of our things. don’t judge.), but it would be nice to not feel like we’re on the hamster wheel.

so what do I do? do I just say, no sports? that’s kind of mean. there will be a lot of upset kids (and dad) if I do that.

sigh.

I’m pretty sure this is the time of year that moving to the mountains and becoming amish starts to sound like a good idea.