Just Another Manic Monday

I do like Mondays! I always seem recharged and ready to get a lot accomplished on this day. I get more done on Monday than I do on the other weekdays combined. Laundry, bill paying, picking up the whirlwind of clutter, cleaning my scrap desk, rearranging the kids' room, finishing some journaling/words for my "week in the life project", starting make Halloween costumes, working on birthday plans and decorations, making shopping lists, and . . . the problem is I keep adding to the list so it just keeps growing even though I am accomplishing a lot of stuff. Still down to one vehicle, which is one way just to stay home and get things done.

Aaron said I was like the paparazzi with the photos last week, maybe that should be mamarazzi, Huh? I totaled my photos from the week 914 -- not too bad -- a little more than I take in a normal month. There's a lot of duplicates and blurries and pictures of ceilings and floors when trying to use the self timer but overall I'm pleased with a lot of the "stuff" I captured. What a fun thing but now will come the actual creating something from all the words, photos and stuff I collected. We'll see how that goes.

A Week in The Life Project

I have to say that I am loving doing this week in the life project right now. At first I wasn't so sure when I was photographing this, that, and the other thing. But now I'm really into the swing of it all and it's fun and I'm loving my photos even though they aren't perfect or even good. They're showing our life -- I'm not worrying that you can see the messiness, dirt, or junk everywhere, after all, that is our life now. I'm thinking of it as reality photography! Here's some of my shots from yesterday.












Aaron is now getting into it too -- I carry our point and shoot camera in my purse and when we were loading the kids into the car tonight he took some photos of me with the kids without me telling him to -- this NEVER happens. I really don't know how I am going to create all these photos into an album because I have about 1 million photos from this week but I hope I do create something.

My day so far . . .

It's 9:02 am here's what has happened this morning:

• It's raining I got up at 6 am and normally the kids are up before or right around then but at 7:30 I had to do a lot of coaxing to get them all up.
• 7:30 is too late to get up and make it to school on time so we were rushing around to get ready.
• Nobody, even Reese, wanted to eat.
• Addison spent most of the morning crying because she was supposed to go to a doctor's appointment to get her ear rechecked so she was going to miss a little bit of school this morning, she loves school.
• While she's crying some more and getting her hair combed Caden throws up.
• I tell him he's not going to school because he's sick so he's crying saying he's not sick and Addison is now ecstatic because I have to cancel her appointment and she gets to go to school.
• While I am on hold with the doctor to reschedule the ear appointment I send the kids out to the van to get in. I walk out the door just in time to see Ethan jump in a huge puddle, soaking his socks and shoes.
• My wonderful BIL (Thanks, John) just spent 2 hours yesterday in a RAK cleaning our van inside and out (no small job) so I didn't want Ethan in the van muddy. I tell him to wait by the side door while I go in to get new socks and shoes and Addison decides she is in charge and yells at him, he gets upset and sits down in the mud.
• I got two of them to school after a lot of yelling in my front yard -- I'm sure the neighbors are loving me today -- and now I have 2 down for naps and resting!

Just another day in my life!

A Week in The Life Project

I am so excited that Ali Edwards is doing her infamous creative project that documents a week in her life. If you don't know who Ali Edwards is you can check out her blog. She is a scrapbooking celebrity but more than that she calls herself a life artist. I would also add designer, wife, mom, autism crusader, author, and just an all around cool person to her list.

She emphasizes documenting your life through photos and words --- that's it. And that's exactly what A Week in the Life Project that begins Monday is. It's taking photos of your everyday life and adding some words to tell about it. It can be a BIG project, a small project, or anywhere in between. I already can hear people saying this: my life is boring, I'm not creative, or I don't know how to scrapbook. But this project is taking your life as it is, in the here and now, and documenting it for later. Think of all the things that happen in your life right now that will be changing in the next few months or years that you won't remember or that your kids or grandkids will find interesting to know -- things that would normally be forgotten but will be sweet memories later on to you and to others.

Even if you don't scrapbook this is a neat project. This is the basis of all scrapbooking just taking some photos which we all do and adding words so we remember it all later. I'm doing it! I've wanted to do a project like this for a while but never get around to it, Ali will be doing hers online so you can follow along with it. A fellow scrapbooker, Kim, who also work s at Scrapaganza taught "A Week in the Life" class last year that now I wish I would have taken. Here's Kim's album that she made.

You can read more about Ali's project here and here. Join me, Ali, and a bunch of other people for this fun project.