This post was sponsored by AT-A-GLANCE as part of an Influencer Activation for Influence Central and all opinions expressed in my post are my own.

It’s 4:20 and we have arrived 10 minutes early! We have arrived to the parking lot. Now find parking, scurry across the parking lot, and enter the front office to sign in. Whew! We have arrived to the stables. Both of us are giddy! My daughter happily watches the horses prance by as they head towards trail rides. She knows that soon she will go on her pony trail ride and is beside herself in excitement. I carefully fill out the forms, weight and height all correct. As my daughter pets the stable cat dozing in the window, I hear “We can’t find your reservation.” I calmly repeat our last name. They repeat that they can not find our reservation. My daughter is now turning to me with big concerning eyes. I am now pleading with the staff with big concerning eyes to please find our reservation. Long story short, there is no reservation for that date. Mommy fail.  Big mommy fail. I tapped the wrong date, scrolled the wrong date, somehow technically input the wrong date. Wrong Date!? Follow up post on how to explain mommy fails to preschoolers soon. For now let’s focus on prevention.

I tried. I did. I honestly tried to use my big fancy smart phone to organize my life, my family’s life. I failed. The pony ride was the most public fail and most heart breaking fail to my daughter, but not the only fail. We have missed deliveries, arrived to birthday parties late, missed gymnastics, forgotten about parent educational events, and arrived late to parent-teacher conferences. I need a paper calendar. I need my trustworthy AT-A-GLANCE paper calendar. I need to be able to see the whole month for an overview. I need to see the weekly view for our hourly schedule each day. Seriously, I need this! The hourly options allow me to overlap appointments and practices, so I can visually see and thus arrange pick-up an drop-offs. I need to see if I am over booking or double booking. I just need to see my calendar on something bigger than a small screen. Ok, selfishly it is all about my sanity! If mom is not sane, the family is just one chaotic mess!

AT-A-GLANCE Planner Helps Organize and Document Our Everyday Life via Misty Nelson mom blogger @frostedevents

I realized that I can not function and can not organize our family with technology. It has to be written. t has to be accessible. It has to be organized. It has to be AT-A-GLANCE. I was loyal to AT-A-GLANCE for years, decades.  I strayed.  In my recovery I realized that in addition to missing the paper lay-out and ease of viewing our schedule, I missed the historical biography my paper calendar provided at the end of each year.  Looking back, all of my AT-A-GLANCE calendars gifted me with an autobiography of our life. Within the scribbled dates of birthdays, practices, and meetings was our life.  I had scribbled a note to call Aunt Sadie because she was sick. I had scribbled a note to order a book about bugs, my son’s latest interest. I had scribbled a line about something funny my daughter had said. In the margins I had penciled a cursory packing list for vacation. Floaties.  Floaties were listed. My son knows how to swim now; we no longer need to pack floaties. There in August he needed them. Now as I prepare my 2017 AT-A-GLANCE, he does not need floaties. The pages are not just filled with appointments, but with excerpts from our life. Moments are documented. Growth and change in our family is found amongst my writing. My calendar becomes a historical snapshot into our family. Seriously people, save your sanity and document the little things with out knowing it…AT-A-GLANCE!

AT-A-GLANCE Planner Helps Organize and Document Our Everyday Life via Misty Nelson mom blogger @frostedevents

How do you reflect on the past year and plan for the year ahead?

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