I'm still here, I swear

So I trust that all of you out there in the blogosphere had a happy Thanksgiving. Ours was spent with my immediate family enjoying a short, but intimate dinner. We managed to get ourselves well enough to break some bread between episodes of the Modern Family marathon and whatever football game was being played. Fred made some deliciously good chili, and fruit salad. I tried to make some homemade rolls, but we had issues with our yeast and I ended up buying them last minute at the store. Mason and Sophie got a peak of how I spent a lot of my childhood by playing some really old board games like; Fun City, Clue, and Rack-O with Grandma and Aunt Jenni. My dad and I talked (I love just talking with my dad) about t.v. shows, health, and what we've been up to lately. It was all very last minute and though it wasn't the big family dinner of turkey, stuffing, ham, etc. that we have become accustom to, thanks to Grandma Veda, I am thankful we got to see family at all.


Ok, so you are probably sitting there all, "Woah Rachel! You've been silent for the last eight months and just suddenly pop up with, this is how our Thanksgiving was, and that's it?" LOL. Well, no. I do owe an explanation as to my absence since much has happened since April and here it is.

I have spent the last few, ok has it really been eight months, noting stories and events from our lives in my many notebooks strewn throughout the house and I have about 7-8 drafts in my post section that I just never got around to finishing. I have the best intentions, but lack the followthrough. I always figured once the kids got older I would have more time to do the things I want, despite the warnings this was most likely not to be the case. Still, all summer, I anxiously awaited the beginning of the school year. Why? you ask. Well, 2013 marked the beginning of ALL DAY SCHOOL, for at least one child.

Yes, Mason is now in first grade. FIRST GRADE! Gulp. Sophie is in her last year of preschool, sniff sniff, and I have 5 mornings a week with no kids. NO KIDS! (Insert happy dance, fists pumping in the air.) I will have three whole hours to myself to get some scrapbooking done and to actually sit down and write a blog post, I told myself. In my ideal world, I would spend those three hours being able to read, check email, write on my blog, make some cards, finish a few scrapbooks, and still have time to clean the house, do a load of laundry, run errands, get groceries, and take a shower. How productive I would be with my newly established kid free time. Snap back to reality, and three hours is really not as long as you would expect. I maybe have enough time to get a few things done before that alarm on my phone goes off, indicating it's time to leave and pick up Sophie. Most days this means I only get the grocery shopping done, and maybe a few minutes to send out an email or two; or I have just enough time to get in a run and take a shower; and on Wednesdays its spent volunteering in the classroom or shelving books in the school library. All that free time I had open for endless possibilities, I managed to fill with new opportunities and obligations. Leaving my clearly over-achievable goals of productivity to plummet, along with my hopes of finishing all the things I've been putting off creatively.

In essence, this was a very lingual way of saying, I've been busy and my blog failed to earn a space on the top of my priority list. I really have no excuses. I should make the time to write down the stories of our lives, especially for those family and friends who actually read this blog and live so far away. I know I've said it before, but I am really going to make a conscious effort to re-prioritize my time and make sure that telling our life stories is, once again, high on that list.

Not sure how well this will go, I do tend to have a little bit of an attention deficit problem when it comes to being on my computer. I mean all those alluring craft projects, recipes, and home decor ideas waiting to be "liked," or "repined" over on Pinterest; not to mention the status updates of my friends, (oh they are so distracting), because honestly who doesn't want to be all up in everyone else's lives. Seriously, it's only because our own is so overly mundane.  Or maybe that's just me. Either way, if you are still reading, or if you are new (Yay! and Welcome.) stay tuned for some catch up posts on what we have been up to lately. Also, it's December already. Aye! IT'S DECEMBER ALREADY!!!! So that means the return of December Daily, a sneak into our lives during the holiday season. I just love this project. You know why? Because as I was decorating yesterday, I pulled out my album from 2009 and started to look through it and really loved seeing how we spent the holiday, how the house was decorated, how young the kids were, and what we did on a daily basis. So much fun.