I can't take it anymore!!!!

It is official.  I am starting a blog.  I can't take the pressure I am giving myself anymore.  I read my friends' and family's blogs and think, "they are so fun."  They have shared events big and small, written letters to children, voiced opinions, shared insights, etc.  But most of all they are DOCUMENTING their lives and their families.  I need to do this.  I forget details so quickly and with my children changing all the time, I need to take some time and write the cute stories.

So, the story to start will be the story behind the title of the blog.  Why are we going backwards?  Don't we feel like that ALL THE TIME?  We try so hard to keep up and prepare and get stuff done and go and go and really, are we going backward or forward?  For me in my life right now it seems backwards is more often the case.  

I think this hit me the hardest on our family vacation this last summer (2008).  We left Sunday afternoon to drive to San Diego.  We had it all planned out, let the kids sleep and do the long trip in one day.  When we hit the Nevada/California border - no joke - we passed the sign that said California and ten feet after we were stopped in traffic.  We learned that everyone in California goes to Las Vegas for the weekend and goes home on Sunday evening.  It was a two lane road, we were going up an incline and you could see the cars for miles.  We moved inches.  Minutes just kept passing and the cars just kept crawling.  The kids kept asking, why are we going so slow?  When will we get to go again? We did see signs of an accident which only caused more stress in the little van that was also becoming smaller.  Now an hour had passed and we had moved maybe 7 miles.  Again, we were stopped, but the other lane was slowly slowly moving and our 3 year old daughter looks up as a semi is barely moving forward next to us.  She then yells from the back of the van, "why are we going backwards?"  That was the stress breaker we needed.  Dan and I laughed for a good five minutes, tears, side aches and stiff cheeks.  The other kids didn't understand why we were laughing so much and we had to try and explain through the laughter how it really did seem as if we were going backwards!!