Our first post!

Congratulations! If you've read down this far, you've reached the initial post of the JeffSarahElijah blog -- a publication I've been planning to launch for months but which repeatedly has dropped to the bottom of my daily, weekly and monthly priority lists.

In fact, for many months I neglected to mention to Jeff that we were going to do this. This is a bad habit of mine and extends to things as small as our rare "date nights" (which I often have completely planned out before Jeff is even aware that one is coming) to things as large as vacations (I did tell him about the cruise we were going to take, long after I'd already done the research). This little project is no different: My daily schedule, which starts about 8 a.m. and often doesn't end until I return home from work about 1 a.m. the next day, tends to become a bit overwhelming, and the "inform Jeff of plans for family blog" item, which first appeared on my list late last year, inevitably ended up being moved forward to the next day, and the next, and the next. So, here it is: We're doing a family blog, honey!

My hopes are that this will serve not just to keep family and friends informed about how we're doing, but also as sort of a sounding board for me. I'm one of those people who spends way too much time talking to myself (a trait I consider rather charming but one that, when it manifests in Elijah, contributes to his autism spectrum diagnosis -- thank goodness I'm not a little boy!), and this blog is really just one more way for me to do that.

So if at times I seem to be a bit rambling, or pedantic, or just plain dull, please remember -- no one makes you take time out of your day to check these postings. In fact, you probably have far better things to be doing right this very minute. I'm sure Jeff will do his best to add some, uh, lively commentary to this blog, but at its core, it's really just about our family, and we are almost breathtakingly average (we're middle-aged and live in Kansas, for heaven's sake!). So before you add us to your Web brower's "favorites" list, keep that in mind!

And thanks for joining us.