Howdy strangers! Wow, has it really been 2.5 years? Let me re-introduce myself. My name is Jessica; I am a wife and mother of 3… I know I’m a loser of a mom not to have written about my precious darlings over the past couple of years. We’ve just been so busy living life in the real world, and haven’t stopped to document it in the virtual world. Well, for the record, I’m officially back in blogging action.
I feel the need to explain this sabbatical. Primarily, we’ve been a little busy. To put it into perspective, let me offer the following list of events that have occurred since I last wrote:
- Subsequent children birthed: 2
- Possibility of terminal diagnoses for said children: 2
- Doctor and therapist appointments: my guess is over 100
- Nannies interviewed: 8
- Nannies employed: 3
- Homes bid upon: 8
- Homes bought: 2
- Homes refinanced: 2
- Homes rented out: 2
- Home renovation/repair projects: 15? 20?
- Multi-day power outages: 2
- Hail storms that required new roofing and skylights: 1
- Dogs lost: 1
- Dogs gained: 1
- Dogs housebroken: 1
- Children “housebroken”: 2
- Wild animals found in yard/garage/pool: ~150 hummingbirds, 2 ducks, 1 jaguarundi, 3 red tail hawk nests, 5 kite nests, 2 wren nests, numerous squirrel nests, 4 bunny nests, 2 possum nests, 1 fox, 1 turtle, 1 frog
- Trips taken: NYC, Saint Louis, Austin, California (Brad’s work), next week: Seattle (Brad’s work), next month: Yellowstone
- Social events hosted: my guess is 3-4 dozen
- Churches visited: 5-6
- Siblings married: 1
- Nieces born: 1
- Close friends and family having major life events: couple dozen
- Reorganizations/layoffs/job changes for Jessica: countless (all with Bank of America though)
- Home businesses started: 1
- Law school graduations and career changes for Brad: 1 each
- People thoroughly exhausted: 2 (plus more if you count our parents & other sitters)
Furthermore, I’ve been in a state I like to call “analysis paralysis.” Many previous posts that I’ve written but not published have been waylaid due to technical difficulties, such as hacking of our website, computer problems, spam attacks, video/photo issues, mysteriously vanishing posts, etc. So then my conundrum was whether to wait until I could sequentially revive and post the rapidly aging drafts, or whether just to pick up from now and move forward. Well, I decided to hybridize my approach. I can’t resist the urge to write what’s on my mind, so I’m going to write current stuff as time allows.
So to both of you faithful readers, thanks for holding out hope! I’ve been a bit overwhelmed on all fronts. However I hope to ameliorate the growing backlog and catch up with posting them over time. I’ll have to toy with when/where/how to post updates, so bear with me. But it feels good to be back on the map, and I hope you’ll stay tuned!
