More LOAD layouts

I know that it's been more than a month now since I finished Layout a Day (LOAD), but I haven't had a chance to get all the LOAD layouts up yet.  June was super busy around here and involved a surgery, a road trip, a hospitalization, and a family-wide influenza outbreak.  Let me tell you, it's not fun to have two people in the house sick to their stomachs who can't tell when they're about to throw up.  I'll just say that our washing machine has been in overdrive, though, as ever, I find it impossible to keep ahead of all the folding.  Why is it so hard to get the laundry put away?  I don't know, but I suspect it has something to do with the two flights of stairs between the laundry room and the dressers.  Our next house is so going to have laundry on the same floor as the bedrooms.  I know it's a bit of a risk having your washer and dryer upstairs, but the convenience has to be worth the risk.  I have much respect for all of the people out there who can be stay at home parents and be on top of all of the chores.  I don't know how you do it.  I know I haven't been at 100% lately, but the state of the house is a little ridiculous. It seems like as soon as I finish one task, three more pop up to take its place.

That being said, I know I'm behind on sharing the crafts that I've been doing.  I'm pretty excited to share all the things I've been getting done while I'm sick (As an aside, did you know that sitting up with craft supplies at the dining room table is a great way to keep a sick toddler from curling up on your nauseated stomach?), but I'm determined that I'm sharing these things in chronological order, lest I skip over some of the them out of  sheer laziness.  So back to LOAD513.

The best thing about finally completing a LOAD was that the prompts brought to mind all sorts of things that I hadn't thought to record before.  I always make sure to put journaling on the layouts that I make, but so many of the prompts during the month brought up stories that didn't need pictures at all.  I wrote and wrote and wrote all month long.  These are those picture-less layouts.

I set out at the beginning of the month to reflect on my time in school,  so that was heavy in my mind.  I journaled about all the things that had gone according to plan and those plans that had gone by the wayside.  I've often talked about how important it was to me that my girls know the real me, but this was one story I hadn't thought to write down for them. It was also fun to use some of the feather cut files I've collected.

 One of the things that came out of LOAD was a new project that I'm going to start working on.  My thought right now is that these pages will be interspersed throughout my other albums.  They'll be the stories from my life that I find myself telling over and over again when I find myself in serious conversations with people and it becomes important to explain the experiences in my life that lead me to an uncommon point of view.  They'll all have the same title "How did you become who you are?" I don't know if I'll ever pull them out to be their own album, but somehow I doubt it because a lot of those stories are difficult memories, and I can't imagine wanting to read an album that was page after page of those stories without anything lighter to break it up.  This isn't the most important of those stories, but it was the one that the prompt brought up.

This was a silly little story about being jealous of celebrities.  Not a terribly important story, but I think it gives a glimpse into how my mind works.

This layout was a little story about my grandfather.  I hadn't thought about it in years, but, again Lain brought it to mind.

 Another story about what I learned in graduate school that had nothing to do with genetics.

 When the prompt was "what" (as in who, WHAT, when, where, and why). I was reminded about this story about how much I hate being asked what's for dinner.  I know it has a picture, but there's also a ton of journaling, and I love how it gives a little glimpse into our relationship, and that no matter how irritated I may look sometimes nothing can undercut how much I love this guy.