LOAD 211 has begun!

3 days into February's LOAD (LayOut A Day) and I have already completed SIX layouts! I will be ecstatic if I can manage two layouts a day, but I only HAVE to get one a day completed to meet the LOAD requirements.

My first layout documents my fitness progress for the month of January in a photoless page. Journaling reads:
Its time to get serious about my health. I’m not getting any younger, after all. Lots of my friends are talking about things like cholesterol and heart disease, blood pressure, blood sugar, and those ever-present extra ‘few’ pounds.
The last time I checked, my blood sugar was fine. My blood pressure is back down to a good level without medication. My cholesterol would be in good shape if I could manage to walk 30 minutes a day. And then there are those ever-present extra ‘few’ pounds. Like about 90 of them.

I started out a couple of years ago with a goal of bettering my health, but got waylaid by serious foot pain that lasted well over a year. I tried to keep up the exercise in non foot-injuring ways, but it didn’t really work.

This year, however, I am on a roll. I have a great exercise plan. I joined Leslie Sansone’s Walk Club and am clicking off my miles every day. I have set some goals for weight loss and miles walked. I also have a goal of being able to walk up a flight of stairs at the dental school without getting totally winded. I want to reduce flab and build muscle. I want to be full of energy.

 So, I walk, fast, every day. I do knee lifts and kicks, hamstring curls and lots of lateral motion. I do standing ab work. I walk using weights, and stretchy bands, and a walk    be    belt. I burn lots of calories. I sweat. A lot.
 In January I started out walking 1 to 2 miles every morning. By mid January it was 2 to 3 miles every morning and sometimes again in the afternoon. On Saturdays I would do a fast 5 miles. When asked by a friend what my goal was, I set what seemed to me an almost impossible goal of 90 miles for the month. It was something to shoot for. By the end of January I had logged 112.5 miles. 22 1/2 miles more than my goal!

I am psyched! I am pumped! I am energized! I am walking my way to better health.
                                                        I am walking for ME!

Then I used a photo I had scanned of Lizzie when she was a year and a half old (oh so many moons ago) and made this happy little layout:

So much for Day 1, on to Day 2. I had this layout in mind for a couple of weeks. We seem to be on a bit of a fitness kick at our house (really weird) and Matthew is working on upper body strength. Theodore bought him a lovely rope for climbing and after a few tries he can scale that baby like a squirrel. I journaled this 2 page layout after the fashion of 'This is the house that Jack built' and then found out later that my dear sweet hubby had never heard of either Jack or his house. Poor deprived fellow!

Journaling reads:
This is the ridiculously expensive piece of rope that Theodore bought.
This is the boy who really wants the ridiculously expensive piece of rope that Theodore bought.
This is the tree picked out by the boy who really wants the ridiculously expensive piece of rope that Theodore bought.
This is the monster tied to the tree picked out by the boy who really wants the ridiculously expensive piece of rope that Theodore bought.
This is the first attempt to climb that monster tied to the tree picked out by the boy who really wants the ridiculously expensive piece of rope that Theodore bought.
This is the proud young man who climbed to the top on another endeavor to scale the rope after a change of tree following the first attempt to climb that monster tied to the tree picked out by the boy who really wants the ridiculously expensive piece of rope that Theodore bought.

Later that evening I made this layout of some pictures I shot of Jimmy reading Frog and Toad this summer. I love the colors in this one. I tried to embellish it but ended up just leaving it clean and simple, letting the photos shine.

And finally, today's prompt was to use a song title for your page title. I have done several of these recently and so was a little stuck for inspiration. So I browsed through my photos until I came to a series of pictures taken during a recent ice event (too small to be called an ice storm.) I made a simple grid for the photos and added a little journaling around the edges and a title. Then I gave it a matted effect and called it done.

That's all for now, folks.