Don't forget to breathe

Pardon me while I have a meltdown. :)

So we're officially in August, which means another month has gone by and I haven't gone crazy yet, so that's good, right?! Let's see if I can say the same thing at the beginning of next month!

So I'm sitting here looking over all the things I have going on this month and I'm hitting panic mode a little. Sometimes when I have so much to do it overwhelms me and I don't know where to start.

At the moment I'm working on the monthly newsletter and calender that I do for my church job and that's stressing me out a bit. (actually, at the MOMENT I'm blogging in an attempt to ignore the things I'm supposed to be doing...) I have a whole bunch of things that have to be done for my church job at the beginning of each month and this month for some reason it's stressing me out a bit more than usual.

Then it occured to me today that my kids start school again in 11 days. Normally I'm extremely organized about the beginning of the school year. I'm a big bargain shopper so normally I have school clothes shopping done way in advance, I have the school supply shopping underway by now and it's all fine.

This year I'm not even a tiny bit prepared. I haven't bought school supplies, I haven't bought the kids any school clothes and actually at the moment I don't even know which school my kids are even going to! We're in the process of switching them to a new school this year (that story will require it's own post on a later date) and as far as I know right now Matthew is still on the waiting list, but I think that Josh got in, although I'm still not positive about that. I'm hoping that next week I can get someone from the school on the phone to tell me what's going on. There's a possibility that my kids will be attending two different schools for a while if we can't get Matthew into the new school, and that's just really going to complicate my life.

Then Matthew reminded me today that his birthday is in 15 days. I'm embarrassed to say that I haven't thought about a party or done any planning for that yet. It's on my list of things to do. I feel like a bad mom.

I also somehow volunteered my backyard for a church party later this month and at the moment my yard, which I'm normally extremely picky about, is not exactly in party shape. My garden is growing nothing but weeds this year, my roses need pruning and it's not really a pretty sight back there right now. So I'm a little stressed about getting that ready in time.

Plus at the moment I'm just consumed with the adoption. Honestly, my brain is in Korea right now and I think it's going to stay there until we finally go pick Clarissa up and we can FINALLY move on to the next phase in our lives. This adoption is so mentally exhausting right now. There's not a whole lot that physically needs to be done, I'm just constantly stressing over whether the is paperwork getting approved quickly, I'm wondering if they've done the medical test on Clarissa that we requested, I wonder if she's gotten her care package yet, I wonder how she's doing and if she's being loved and if she's happy and if she's developing OK...it's all on my mind 24/7.

I'm also totally stressed about the finances of all of this. Between back to school stuff, Matthews birthday, saving for our trip and all the rest of it, I feel like the money is going out faster than it's coming in at the moment and that always stresses me out.

It will all work out fine, it's not anything that won't resolve itself in time I just feel like I'm juggling more than I can handle at the moment with everything we have going on. I have to remind myself that I do this sometimes. I start making a mental list of every single thing I need to do and even though I don't need to do it all today, I start to panic that I'm not going to be able to get it all done. I WILL. I always do. We've been through crazy times before and it's all worked out and this will too. I know that, sometimes I just give into the meltdown for a bit.

Ok, so now that I've written all that down, it's out of my head for a minute and I can back to working on my projects. One at a time, right?