In Which I Am Soooooo Mad At Myself, Part A

I am almost in tears when I realize how long I've been neglecting to document my family's life, both here and in my scrapbook. How will I ever catch up? How will the children know I loved them when they were young if there are no pictures here to prove it? If something happens to me, will the documentation of my youngest child's birth and some of the other children's baptisms be lost forever? It makes my stomach get all tied up in knots. Does anybody else worry about this kind of stuff? Is anyone else as far behind as I am? I want to lie on the floor and groan, and pull out my hair, and kick myself and slap myself about the head.

 But that is not what I will do. That is not me. I will pull myself up and build a blog post that pieces together the last two years the best I can. No matter how hard it is or how long it takes. I know I can. Picture by picture, caption by caption. Who's with me? . . .

Oh yeah, it's just me. Well, here I go! Hmmm, I wonder if I should go forward or backward in time. ?? "There's no time like the present," I hear in my head. OK, let's go backward, starting with now.

JULY 2012

One of the things my kids do around the house.

JUNE - JULY 2012

We had an incredible time on our big trip out west. Here I can only hit a few of the highlights. (You know, since there will have to be TWO YEARS' worth of stuff in this post.)

Here we are at one of our first stops, the Ronald Reagan Boyhood Home.

Sarah in the Badlands.

Danny at Wall Drug.

Andy at Mt. Rushmore.

Elias at Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park.

Zeke at the Golden Nugget pool.

Our whole crew at Grand Canyon.

Our family at Monument Valley.

Stuart Family Reunion in Ardmore, Oklahoma.

Also at the Stuart Reunion.

Our 22nd anniversary.

My dad's cousin Sunny with his daughters Penny and Joy. Great folks!

At Grandma Lancey's grave outside of Pink, OK.

My dad and I at my great great great grandpa and grandma's
(Elijah Alpheus Johnson and Delilah Hunsaker Johnson) grave in Joplin, MO.

Elias celebrates his 4th birthday in a Missouri motel.

Spring 2012

Andy and Sarah (and our dear friend Christy) attend their first Celtic Ball.

Danny seems to delight in the fact that he was maimed by a boomerang.

David turns 49.

Everybody loves getting their Bunny Baskets.

Our family on Resurrection Sunday.

The boys plant my new apple trees.

Kimie and I (and JoJo and Braden Dunsmoor) at our Faith Group Retreat.

JoJo and Zeke on a beautiful spring evening.

Mary loses her first tooth.

Danny tries to eat a tablespoon of cinnamon.

On April 30, JoJo turned celebrated his first birthday!

Andy turned 17 on May 28 and celebrated by taking us all to the zoo.

Sarah - still my little princess.

OK, let's see. After spring comes winter, when you're going backwards. On to winter!

Winter 2011-2012

OK, well, if there are some winter pictures, other than Christmas, I can't find them. See--this is exactly why I am so disappointed with myself. Well, at least we do have Christmas.

OK, this Christmas card here makes me consider taking back everything bad I
said about myself. This is a fabulously nice-looking Christmas card; there's no denying that.

Christmas in Pennsylvania with the Stuarts.

Christmas in Tennessee with the Petersons.

 Perhaps someday I shall discover the missing winter 2011-2012 pictures, and I can edit this post. For now, on (or shall I say "back") to the fall of 2011.

Fall of 2011

Just three photos here. There may be more, but who knows?

Mary turned 6 on October 28.

The kids went on a Generation Joshua campaigning trip to Virginia. These nice folks from Minnesota stayed at our house on their way, and gave some of our crew a ride too!

Zeke turned 9 on November 15.

Summer 2011

So I was thinking, "Summer - Didn't I have Sarah made a guest blog post about her trip during the summer of 2011? That'll be great! But it turns out that it was a trip during the summer of 2010. So once again, I am further behind than I realized. So, I will go digging through my files and see what I can find. These are a bit out of order, but all from the summer.

Mary gets baptized! (on some date which I hope to figure out

in the future and put here through the magic of editing)

When the time comes, her arms will already be strong for her tasks.

We held a Neighborhood Bible Club at our house.

This tree was outside the Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum, which we visited.

Mary is enjoying our new baby JoJo.

Our dear Christmas with her firstborn Sunday and her new twins Saturday and July.

Zeke and Sunday enjoying our rookie attempt at raising meat chickens.

Elias turned 3 on July 8.

Danny turned 11 on September 12.

Choral Camp 2011.

Mary hostessed a tea party at our house.

We all had a great time at our Faith Group's retreat.

I was not able to determine whether I am plum worn out or plumb worn out. In either case, I am tired and losing focus, not because there are so many pictures, but just because of the sheer gravity of it all--the passing of time, the adorableness of the children, the enormity of my task. And because the blog composing page and the preview page on Blogger do not match each other! So I shall stop, and whatever problems there are shall have to remain. Besides, I have never even tried to get any followers on here, and maybe no one will even see this. And someday, very very soon, I shall go on to In Which I Am Soooooo Mad At Myself, Part B.