First, huge hugs to you! We have watched my husband's mother go through what you are now with his grandparents, and I will be saying many, many prayers for you.
Also, I'll apologize in advance for writing a novella- organization is one of my favorite things to talk about!
For me, scrapping a project like your vacation album and scrapping pages usually have different processes.
With a project, I'll speed things up by batch-tasking. Like
@Tiff said, go through and put all of your photos in templates first, then come back and add journaling to all of your pages. Then you can go through and add paper/pocket cards in a pass and elements (if you want them) in another pass. This actually helps me in a couple of ways. First, since my mind is on one task (such as journaling) all the way through the album and not cycling through photos-journaling-paper-embellishment for each page in the album, I find I'm much more efficient at getting that one task done. Second, inevitably with a project I'll start out full steam with lots of papers and embellishments on the first few pages and then hardly any at the end as I run out of creative energy. By doing each step in a batch, you can keep the album feeling more uniform throughout.
For individual layouts, I'll generally start several at once (5-7) and create what I call a "starting point" for each. I have a PSD file in my page size (8.5x11) ready with a neutral kraft background, a journaling spot with a line or two of placeholder text in my favorite typewriter font with the spacing set to my preferences, a date spot, and then some hidden layers with some of my favorite types of elements to have on a page- black ink splatters, handcut looking photo spots like Valorie Wibbens A Bit Worn series, etc. These items may get switched out with similar elements from whatever kit I'm working with at the time, but I find it helpful to at least have something there to start with. I'll make a copy of the "starting point" for each layout I'm prepping and add in my photos (I use just a few photo sizes most of the time- 2.5x3.5, 2.5x2.5, and 3.5x3.5, so it's easy to crop at this stage), and then save. While I batch task getting individual layouts ready, I generally don't batch scrap them. They all use different kits and have a different feel- some very simple and some more ornate- so I'll scrap each one from start to finish unless I get stuck on one and hop over to another for a bit.
Since you're doing a project style album and have chosen pocket page style templates, you've already really simplified things for yourself! If I were scrapping the project, my next step would be to choose one journaling font and then one kit or collaboration (I'm a big fan of using a BYOC together as one big kit- it's actually how I organize them on my computer!) to use for papers, pocket cards, and embellishments in the whole album. From there, I'd cycle through in batches until it was finished.
Everyone's work and organization style is different, and some have found me to be too...intense
...about mine in the past. The important thing is to learn what works for you!
