Overwhelmed

When I was a younger mother and my children were much smaller, I had several people regularly tell me they thought I had too many activities going on with each of my children.  I felt like I had everything under control, but apparently I looked like I didn't.  I felt like I was able to get everything in; my church calling, my homemaking responsibilities, volunteer activities, "me" time, plus get my kids to their piano lessons, sports practices and other extracurricular events.  I never once felt like I had taken on too much.  But, I felt like I was constantly having to stand up for myself and prove that I was doing it all and I was doing it just fine.  Never once did I feel overworked or stressed out to the point that I couldn't handle my hectic schedule.  (OK, let's be honest, I had my days, but they were relatively few and far between.)

Until this summer happened.

I have never felt so overworked and exhausted as I have the last two months.  It actually made me rethink some of the activities we had going on.  Fortunately, I knew it would only last about 6-8 weeks and then it would be over and life would get back to "normal."  There were days when I wondered when the last time I had gone to the grocery store was and couldn't remember the last time I actually made a home cooked meal.  It was crazy insane.  3 kids on swim team with practice M-Th and meets on Saturday morning.  Drew had football practice 5:30-7:30am then basketball from 10:30-12:30.  Throw in more than several basketball and football tournaments, Marly's work schedule and cheer practices, me working at Sunsplash, our family trip to Utah, Ben's job, his coaching and let's not forget his calling in the bishopric.  Add to that my primary class and my stake calling, two articles for the Beehive newspaper and then getting ready to be the camp cooks at girl's camp just about did me in.  I had more than several days where I was ready to throw in the towel, but then that would have created more laundry, wouldn't it?  I didn't even mention the fact that we made it to free lunch almost every day and my sweet brother and sister took my kids swimming almost every afternoon.  As for cleaning house and doing laundry?  If you come to my house, you will see just how busy we have been, let's leave it at that.

What is my point you ask?  I have no point.  Just more excuses for why the blog was ignored for most of the summer.  I am not good at structure-less time and this summer was a prime example of not having a schedule and it wearing me thin.  Thank heavens school starts soon and we can get back to a schedule or at least some kind of normalcy.  I think we'll start practicing being on a schedule this week and next prior to school starting, just to get used to it...sounds good to me.