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Welcome to today’s link-up for Week in My Life 2013! The linky is below- just link to your post! 

Well, well, well. It’s day 3 of WIML and I’m beat! But I’m chugging along and already loving the notes I’ve taken and little moments I’ve captured!

This morning I was PLANNING to get up early and work on my new course, but I just couldn’t do it after three nights of going to bed past midnight. The kids slept until 7:45 this morning though so I was able to proof my Momcomm post at least before they got up.

Morning and work was the usual (though slightly busier). When Ethan and I get home a little past 1 pm, sometimes he refuses to go inside and wants to play outside right away. I usually oblige at least for a few minutes, especially if it’s nice out. Today he wanted to get out the beach shovels and shovel the area around the tree (that USED to have mulch around it). What were we digging for? Gold doubloons he told me.

The afternoon was pretty uneventful so around 3:30 we headed out the door to get Noah from school. I have a carpool tag for each kid’s school and have to make sure I switch them out. Otherwise, I might pick up someone else’s kid. LOL. The carpool line was extra long today.

Ethan fell asleep (which would prove torturous later). Noah got in the car and was SO excited because he got a “blue” on their behavior scale. On the way to Ethan’s game, Noah was a total chatterbox telling me about school. I let him talk away since when *I* do the asking, he usually responds “I don’t remember what we did today.”

Soccer for three year olds involves itty bitty shin guards and cleats and a whole lot of chaos. Sometimes people say “your THREE year old plays.” I explain that it’s all for fun and he gets so tired that he’s out like a light at bedtime. They usually nod their head, suddenly getting visions of their three year old falling asleep like that. HA.

Today, the crankiness continued to the field.  They practice 20 min then play 20 min — he spent the first ten or so minutes crying and pouting. It was a little chilly so he was cold, then when I got him a jacket, he STILL just sat in the grass and whined. I finally left him along and watched his eyes lift up to watch his team practice. He WANTED to be there; he was just being stubborn. I walked back up to him and asked if he wanted to just up and down to get warm. We did that and then we went over to his team. After that, he was back to his normal, soccer-loving self.

He got to play two friends from preschool, which was cute. Afterwards they got trophies, which he was so proud of! I promised them snow-cones this time (actually I tried to bribe Ethan at one point to get back on the field-ha). They were giddy! Daniel took Ethan home and I took Noah home since we were in separate cars, but Ethan dropped his snow-cone is Daniel’s floorboard right as they turned down our street.

Of course, he was crying since he didn’t get to finish it. I asked Noah to share a bite with him and he let him have a few. Sweetness. (Although short-lived since five minutes later, Noah threw a toy of Ethan’s and made him cry. Go figure).
Finally, Noah found a cool tutorial online to make a minion from the Rainbow Loom! I had to help with the eye, but isn’t it cute? And as I took a Box Top off a can of soup tonight, I decided it was about time to turn them in. We buy a lot of brands that don’t do Box Tops so it takes a while to accumulate sometimes. But Noah has 32 to turn in which isn’t too shabby!

Welcome to the first link-up for Week in My Life 2013! The linky is below- just link to your post for Tuesday! Don’t forget to use the daily images (like the one below) to help you along (optional of course).

Mornings in the Culbertson household as of late have included Daniel or I having to wake the kids up in the morning. Okay, well it’s only been the past couple of mornings but I still find it strange that they’re sleeping until 7:30-7:45 (especially remembering past Week In My Life weeks where that was most definitely not the case).

Mornings in our house are still a work-in-progress. The kids are supposed to potty and brush teeth first but sometimes there’s lots of whining, especially from Ethan. Noah typically does well with this, but if he wakes up before we do, he’ll only potty and brush teeth without being asked about 60% of the time.

Our mornings look at lot like this:

• Me squishing my make-up bag onto a free space on the dresser
• Listening to WUNC (our local NPR station) while Daniel and I get ready for work
• Ethan yelling for me to come carry him downstairs, which I oblige because he’s so darn cuddly
• Noah plopping down on our bed, rubbing his eyes and slowly waking up
• The kids brushing their teeth in our bathroom (we have a downstairs master so they do potty and brush teeth in our room)- dang, messy room
• Ethan pushing the kitchen chair to the pantry, then proceeding to pick out things he can’t have for breakfast (cookies, chocolate chips, regular chips, ya know, SNACKS)
• Ethan finally settling on yogurt and a cherry pomegranate toaster pastry (he ended up ditching the yogurt- figures!)

They get dressed downstairs and are supposed to take their clothes up to their rooms, but usually only Noah does. They typically get in one show on Netflix before we’re out the door.

On Tuesdays and Thursday, I work from the office. I get there around 9:45 after dropping off both kids and driving 22 miles, then leave around 3:10 to pick Noah up from school. Ethan goes home with a preschool teacher (who happens to be the mom of his best friend) on these days. She brings him to my house at 4:30 pm.

Lately, I’ve been listening to podcasts on the way to work since it’s about a 30 minute drive. Look how nerdy I am! It’s a podcast about backlinks. NERD ALERT NERD ALERT! My fave podcast right now is Pat Flynn‘s if you ever want to check it out (Pat is featured in my Blog Design for Dummies book and is a genuine nice guy to boot!).

The Burt’s Bees office is located in Durham in an old renovated tobacco mill. The view from the parking garage is the Durham bus station and as you can see, there’s a lot of old, brick buildings full of character. Our building is part of this area, called the American Tobacco Campus.

After work and carpool, Noah and I have a little time together to work through his homework (after his after-school snack, which is a requirement for kids it appears!). Then he typically makes some bracelets with the obsession-inducing Rainbow Loom!

Every Tuesday night, I head to the nearest YMCA for Zumba class. I tell you what, I taught group fitness for 10 years (up until 2011) and still miss it. One of these days I’ll get my certification renewed for primary group fitness, then certify for Zumba. You know, when I have more time and stuff. At the gym, the kids love pressing the handicap door button and then Noah likes to tell the lady at the kids club desk what my 4-digit number is for them to write on their bracelets. They then go into separate rooms (18 mo – 5 yrs room and the 5+ room). When we leave the gym, they like to walk along the blocks around the landscaping then jump off. Just like boys. Forgive my randomness in these last pics but I had to include them. Noah kept making faces when I tried to take a picture during his homework so this is what I ended up with! He was counting crayons for his homework so that’s reason for the mess (he had to do more than just count them but no need to bore you with first grade homework). Also? He wanted to sleep with a soccer ball tonight, along with his three sleeping companions (more on those companions later this week). I love his smile.

As for Ethan, earlier that day they watched the show Wild Kratts and they were talking about elephants. The showed elephants drinking from their trunks and at the end, one of the Kratt brothers got picked up by an elephant by her trunk. The pictures below are Ethan drinking from his cup like an elephant (dipping his hand in and slurping the water) and then me picking him up by my “trunk.” Oh these kids. I do love them so.

Welcome to the first link-up for Week in My Life 2013! The linky is below- just link to your post for Monday and you’re golden! Don’t forget to use the journaling handouts, everyday kid/parent handouts and daily images (like the one below) to help you along (optional of course).

WHEW!

I say that not just because it’s a lot of work to document a day in your life, but because today did NOT go as planned (but then again, does anyone really plan to get locked out of the house)?

Okay, let’s start from the beginning, then I’ll get to that little adventure!

I got up at 6:19 am this morning- a little later than I wanted to get up but I went to bed past midnight so I needed SOME sleep. I’m trying to get up around 6 am on MWF to work on two things: prepping content to share each morning and working on my next Momcomm course.

I worked about an hour then showered and Daniel got the kids up. Noah was a cranky pants, complaining about the Cherry Pomegranate toaster pastry. Ethan happily gobbled his up. I got them off to school, then had laundry staring me down (which I only got to folding 5 things today).

Around 9:20, I sat down to work (and heated up my coffee). If you don’t know, I work part-time at Burt’s Bees as their Community Manager. MWF are at home and TTH are in the office.

I pretty much work until I pick up Ethan. After I pick up Ethan, we have about 2.5 hours before we have to leave and get Noah. He doesn’t nap anymore so we usually do some TV and play some too. I also use this time to empty the dishwasher and other household chores.

On my MWF days, I shoot for 4 hours of work a day. I rarely get that done before I pick Ethan up so I have to do the last little bit (usually an hour or less) with him home. Today he insisted on wearing his Spider-Man costume (for this year’s Halloween). We ate mandarin oranges and he watched Dinosaur Train while I worked. When we have regular oranges, we have this orange peeler that he loves (the blue thing below). Ethan was intrigued these could be opened by hand (I impressed him by pulling almost the entire peel off- haha).
We had the strangest conversations…
Ethan: Can we borrow a cat? Um, actually can we buy a cat?
Me: Um, no I don’t think so.
Later…
Ethan (out of the blue): You are OLD. You are just old.
Me: Why?
Ethan: Because I’m talking to you and that means you’re old.

After a little while, Ethan asked to play outside with the croquet set (the picture above is our backyard and those sawhorses are keeping our dog from rolling in the dirt so we can actually grow grass there). Ethan wanted play the game a new way, which involved us both trying to get the same ball. Most of the time he kept the croquet low but gave me a scare a few times when he swung it higher!

He decided he wanted to swing so I put him in the old, dirty swing. Look at this precious boy…

He kept asking for me to swing him again but I knew it was getting close to the time we needed to pick up Noah. I didn’t have my phone with me to know the time. He convinced me to do it a couple more times then we HAD to go inside or we’d be running late. Ethan still needed to get shin guards, socks and cleats on.

When I went to turn the handle on the back door… it was LOCKED.

CRAP.

We headed to the front yard, hoping that the garage was still open.

Nope.

Front door?

It’s never unlocked unless we’re expecting company.

So there we were with no phone and no way inside the house. Not to mention we needed to be getting Noah from school soon.

So I started knocking on neighbor’s doors. Luckily a friend at the third house I tried was home. I called Daniel and explained what happened. Then I had to call the school and ask if they’d keep Noah for a few minutes since I’d be late.

As soon as Daniel got there, we thanked the neighbor then bolted across the street, grabbed Ethan’s gear and were out the door!

*wipes sweat off brow*

As I was gathering stuff from the car to walk to the field, Noah was giving Ethan advice about playing his friends on another team. “When I play Connor I just pretend I’m playing someone else.” Good advice, Noah! Ethan did great in soccer. He got hurt once, fell a bunch and probably scored 4-6 goals. The kid is GOOD.

Here’s the tail end of his run down the field to score a goal:

After the game the kids wanted snacks from the red truck that sells snacks and sno-cones but I didn’t want to get them anything since I did last time we were there. Meltdowns ensued and continued all the way home. Noah was SO bent out of shape that he couldn’t have a snack from the pantry since he had chips at the game. His options were veggies or fruit and he wanted neither. Of course, they didn’t love it when I took that picture down there either.

After Noah spent some time in his room for his attitude, he came downstairs and got right to homework. He actually did pretty well considering it was his first day of homework for 3 weeks. Only minor whining.

Keeping Ethan away from him was the challenge. Always is. For some reason, Ethan decided to take of his soccer shirt and shorts.

When I got around to starting dinner, I discovered the buttermilk chicken was supposed to be marinated overnight. Oops. I can’t even catch a break making dinner!

Pizza was the back-up, with a pre-made crust we had.

At bed time, the kids were stoked that they had matching pajamas (I had just washed them after pulling them out from last season). Daniel read Ethan books and I read to Noah. When the kids were going to bed, then gave all their lovies hugs and kisses. Ethan doesn’t really have a lovey (though he’s digging the hedgehog), while Noah has THREE of them, the main one being his pink bear Burt.

That’s it for today! Can’t wait to read about your day. Just link up below!

It’s time! It’s time! Are you ready?

The Week in My Life challenge begins today. Photograph, video and write down bits and pieces of your everyday life to remember for years to come. I have an entire explanation in my Week in My Life intro post if you want to catch up. And check out that post too if you’d like handouts for documenting your days as well as handouts for getting a snapshot in time of each family members’ faves and more. If you want to see what WIML has looked like in years’ past, just take a gander at the entire category.

I’ll post my Monday at midnight tonight with a linky for you to link up your day. We’ll do the same thing every day for the entire week!

I also have weekly images for each day for YOU to use on your blog (if you’d like). They simply list the day and date in the same style as above. Just grab this ZIP file of all the graphics for each day of the week!

And find me on Instagram too where I’ll be sharing some photos that may (or may not) make it into the daily posts. Tag your photos #WIML!

If you have any questions I didn’t answer on the intro post, then ask them here!

Yes, I know I don’t post on here often. But if there’s one thing you can count on me for, it’s the annual Week In My Life! We’re going on year FOUR of this life-capturing event.

Week In My Life starts next Monday, October 21 so get ready!

This is my third year saying this so at the risk of sounding repetitive, here it goes:

I know you want to remember these big and little moments too… before they are just fuzzy memories with no pictures or words to spring them back to life. So let’s do this thing!

Why You Should Capture Your Life, Too (Even If It’s Just for a Day)

I really REALLY want you to do this. Not for me but for YOU! It’s a lot of work but the reward is that you’ll have a slice of your daily life that you can show to your children as they get older (and can look back on yourself when you’re feeling sentimental).

A few things you should know:

• Don’t feel like you have to document a full week if it sounds like too much. Even a day will capture a slice of your everyday life.
• This is for you so don’t feel like you have to post every single thing you did that day. Publish as much or as little as you’d like for public consumption and then keep the rest for your own memory keeping.
• Let go of the idea that each shot should be free of clutter (like clothes hampers, toys, etc). THAT’S life, right? Embrace the perfect and not-so-perfect surroundings of your life.
• If you already have reviews, giveaways, guest posts or other things planned next week, no worries! Just participicate the days you can (you can even combine multiple days into a post if you want).
• What if you don’t typically blog about yourself or your family? Turn this into a series around a topic you DO write about: ex. food- series on what your family eats each day, ex. green living- how you live green in daily life and challenges you come across, ex. budget living- how you still to a budget for a week, etc. etc.

If that doesn’t convince you, here are some moments that I captured last year:

Last year, I was just getting my contract for Blog Design for Dummies. Can you believe it?

and I caught a typical, messy weekday morning…

The year before I snapped Ethan stealing a bite of Daddy’s breakfast.

And the very first Week In My Life when Ethan wasn’t even a year old.

… and Noah was really into trains.
So many little and big moments I might have forgotten without this special (yet exhausting week).

How It Works

Week in My Life will run from Monday, October 21 to Sunday, October 27. Each day, I want you to record your life through pictures, words and maybe even some video. The morning after, publish your post highlighting the day before. So on Tuesday, you publish Monday’s day and so on. If you tweet, we’ll be using the hashtag #weekinmylife.

Each day there will be a linky so you can link up your posts.

You don’t need many supplies but here’s what I’ll be using:

• Camera
• Tripod
• Remote control for my camera (I’ll use my self-timer too)
• Notebook and Pen
• iPhone to record videos, take notes, take pics when my camera isn’t within easy reach
• A checklist of things I want to be sure to document
• Printables!

These first printables are snazzy journaling sheets for those of you who want a little something to take notes on. I created two PDFs. The one on the left side includes full sheets for every day of the week. You can print off as many copies as you think you’ll need for taking notes. The one of the right side has a shorter “notes about the day” section but also includes two extra sections. “Best and worst of today” is pretty self-explanatory. For “things i noticed,” this could be anything… your child is starting to ____,  you feel unorganized, coffee really DOES help. See? Anything!

The printables are something you only need to fill out once per parent and child. These are simple questions about you and your family right here and now. The movies you like, the things you’re into, the funny things you say, ANYTHING you want to remember about you and your family.

Click on each image to open the PDF then save to your computer. That’s it! Psst…. I have the daily Week in My Life graphics available for download on Monday if you want ot use them!

Week in My Life Q & A

Do I need to commit to the entire week?

Absolutely not! You may already have a giveaway or guest post planned… or you may just not want document your life for a FULL week. No problem! You can document the full week, one weekday combined with the weekend, a day or even just a routine within a day! It’s up to you and whatever you’re up for.

What if my routine is the same every day?
I think very few of us have a COMPLETELY different day seven days in a row so they’ll be some of the same things going on each day. You don’t need to document your day from morning to night if you don’t want. If your morning routine is about the same each weekend, just document it on one day. Maybe the next day you capture the evening routine and so on.

In addition, you may go crazy if you time lapse a full day (i.e. at 8:00 we did this, 8:12 we did this) so pick a different part of the day to do.

I’m not sure what my family will think.
Have you ever been to a wedding where you hardly notice the photographer because he/she is so discreet? Be like that. Be non-chalant. Capture your family AS THEY ARE. They’ll probably like it better because you aren’t asking them to pose and say cheese all the time! 🙂

How much do I have to blog about?
Girl, as much or as little as you want! For me, I’ll probably only post a few highlights and save the rest just for myself. Feel free to post all of it. Just a little. Or even just share a moment that really captures this time in your life. Up to you.

So tell me… are ya in?