{Week in the Life - Monday}

Hi folks,

This week is the Week in the Life project I've been talking about! If you're a friend of mine on Facebook, you've seen most of the pictures I'm posting already. Uploading them to an album in Facebook has done a couple of things for me: 1) it's keeping me on top of getting the photos off my camera (in this case, my iPhone), and 2) it's helping me see the big picture. I love looking at the album as I upload and seeing all the pieces of my day come together like that. I've been writing little notes along with the photos, but not really telling the whole story. I'll probably use my blog for that, and journal as I go along.

So, here we go :)

This was my view on the way to work on Monday. Normally, I'm asleep in the passenger seat on the way to work (because we carpool), but the husband has been working a lot of overtime lately and we've been driving separately.

My first stop when I get into the building at work. Must have my morning caffeine. And apparently, I'm too lazy to put soda in the fridge at home and just take one from there.

First things first in the office...Dr. Pepper and my name tag. I have 3 name tags, and I rarely remember to wear them, but the State of Nebraska is in our building this week, so I'm being extra careful about following the rules.

My heap of a desk when I walked in this morning. This is exactly how it was left on Friday afternoon, and is pretty typical of Monday mornings. I can't wait to leave on Fridays, especially when I work late (like I did last Friday).

I saw this quote on the Big Picture Classes website and thought it was so perfect that it would be the quote on the day I started this project. So, of course, I took a picture of it!

I decided I would try to find a different way to show the date on each day of this project (just for something challenging). This is my date stamp for received invoices, set to yesterday's date.

The WITL message board on the Big Picture Classes website. If you're doing WITL and haven't checked this out, I highly recommend it! I spent quite a bit of time on the message board yesterday looking for ideas and inspiration and connecting with others doing this project.

Here's a screenshot from my flight confirmation for a trip in August. We've only been taking about one flight a year since we got married (which is less for me and more for Mike), so I'm excited to be making reservations! I also thought it was funny that it tells me how much I saved at the bottom since I'm into saving money lately.

Mondays usually = headaches for me. I also have issues with photographing paperwork, but I managed to when I dumped my Aleve out on the desk. I spent most of my work day yesterday figuring out logistics for an upcoming event.

This is huge news in our family since we love football, and because an upcoming vacation will involve an NFL game. Another funny thing...when we were younger, my cousin and I used to laugh so hard at our grandma for taking pictures of things happening on TV. And here I am, taking pictures of a computer screen. I guess I've come full circle.

I asked Mike to take at least 2 pictures a day of his version of our life. I would have loved to see photos from my dad's point of view or Grandpa's growing up. Memory keeping seems to be a one-sided thing a lot of the time. But, Mike jumped on board and sent me this picture of him in his headset at work.

I have almost no words for walking into Hobby Lobby and seeing Christmas decorations.

The more I think about it though...this is how my world works, looking forward about 6 months. At work, I'm planning events for the fall already. With my craft projects, I'm planning for this in October and November, and brainstorming projects for Christmas gifts. I guess it's not that outrageous.

Traffic as I was running errands through Omaha after work. This isn't something I'm used to seeing, even on the way home from work normally.

Home. After such a long drive home, I breathe a sigh of relief when I see this sign because I know I'm almost there. I also laugh a little to myself, because it's such a small town...my high school class was bigger than our population.

One of my favorite parts of the day is checking the mail. If Mike is with me, we try to anticipate what we'll have (anything but bills, hopefully), and I usually ask, "What do you think I got for free today?" because I've ordered coupons and samples that I don't even remember.

A blurry picture of Miss Molly, begging for attention (as usual). I love seeing her at the end of my day...so full of wiggles.

And the Abby, before I let her out of her "box." Poor poochie whines the second I walk in the door until I let her out. It's kind of cute.

Politely waiting to go outside and play. She wants out the second I get home. Molly is content to cuddle with me for awhile (especially since we started keeping her on a leash to keep her from visiting the neighbors. A mile away.)

Here's another one of Mike's pictures, from doing chores with the cows. I don't know what the dogs were doing when they were "helping" him, but they came back in the house smelling like cattle too. Gross.

That's that for Monday. One of the things I want to remember being thankful for is the technology that's part of my life. I think about how much harder this project would be if I didn't have access to an iPhone that uploaded the photos I take automatically, and well...I don't ever want to go back to that :) So many of the pictures I take stay on my camera and then get uploaded to my computer and forgotten about. It seems like such a waste to not really enjoy them.

You'll notice the difference in the looks of the pictures...I'm shooting mostly with the Instagram app for iPhone...they have a ton of great filter options that I love using. I'll probably stick with it going forward for the week, because it makes the process fun, which keeps me going.

One last note: seeing all these pictures together, here on my blog, or in my Facebook album makes me realize that I lead a very busy and full life. Sometimes it's easy to get discouraged in the scrapbooking world because we don't have kids yet - so many projects, albums, and layouts center around children and family (and that's great!) But, it makes me wonder from time to time why I would even really want to focus on memory keeping until we have them. And then I think about how I'd like to know what my parents' life was like before my brother and I invaded it. Or what my grandparents' lives were like before they had kids. It would be so interesting to read about that since most of the stories I've heard are about life after kids. I hope someday that my children and grandchildren will want to look and photos and read stories about Mike & me and our lives.

I hope you're enjoying this project if you're doing it. If you aren't doing it, it's not too late to start, or to pick a week in the future to do this project!