Where has the time gone?

I realized the other day that it's been forever since I last blogged.  About two and a half years ago, I felt overwhelmed with house work, mothering, and life in general.  Well, baby girl is now the same age L was, and guess what!  I'm overwhelmed with, well, the exact same thing!  My house feels out.of.control!  We have way too much stuff and every time I start to go through it, I feel like we need to keep all of it. I feel guilty getting rid of things that were given to my kids, or things they picked out and bought (like Awana store stuff, or cheap stuff they spent "their" money one.  It's mostly pure junk).  If it's something big, like their basketball hoop, I feel like we spent too much money to just get rid of it!  We haven't gotten our money's worth from it.  But, they don't play with it so we probably never will.  And papers.  Those are the worst.  Stuff. Everywhere.  No where to put it!  Plus, we've decided that we want to pay off our car.  Besides our mortgage, it's our only debt.  BUT, God has convicted us that we need to pay that off.  We shouldn't be in debt to anyone, and while it's unrealistic to try to pay off our house right now, we need to put more effort toward paying off the minivan.  That thought is overwhelming, too.  Especially because I have a hard time passing up a shopping trip!  Those two issues kind of go together for me.  I have all of these grand ideas (thanks, pinterest) for how to organize my life, but those things cost money.  That's why it's overwhelming.  I feel trapped in a cluttered home, a cluttered life, with no way to escape.  God has also been working on my contentedness.  I cannot tell you how many times I have complained about one thing or another over the past couple of months.  The big one is that I feel like we have outgrown our house.  Like I said, we have too much stuff and nowhere to put it all.  I also feel like we NEED a yard.  A big one, with lots of room for two little boys to run and play.  And a driveway to ride bikes, scooters, and play with sidewalk chalk.  And we "need" a garage to store their bikes and scooters.  See, I have a long list of things we "need" and I have allowed myself to dwell on that way too much.  Thankfully, I have an amazing husband who knows when to (gently) call me out on these things and remind me that we have more than many people and we need to be thankful for what we do have instead of focusing on what we don't.  Sure, a yard would be amazing.  But we have parks nearby, a pool that we're members of, and a lake with beaches to swim and play in.  My boys have bikes and fun things, I just need to be creative about where to store them.  They won't feel like they are missing out on anything by not riding them in our driveway, because they're not.  They can ride their bikes other places.  Anyway, enough with my rambling.  I'm hoping that by getting back to this blog, I might become more disciplined and force myself to get my act together.  It worked two and a half years ago, so it should work again, right?  ;-)  But since it's been so long since my last post, I think I'll end this one with a recent picture of my sweet family: