A Book For The Future

I've never scrap-booked.  Going to the craft store and finding the row upon row of scrapbooking materials can be rather overwhelming.  I had no idea there was that much stuff out there for the purpose of archiving your life on paper.

We decided to put together an album for the child we will one day adopt with family, pets, and home so they can have something to keep with them to help them get to know their potential future family through photos.  I took advantage of the plethora of scrapbooking materials available, and put together a cute album.  I hope it does not overwhelm our adoptive child when we give it to him/her.  I used a family theme for the whole album, since that is really what everything is all about.

I can't imagine meeting my potential mom and dad for the first time, but having a physical leave behind will hopefully be a good thing.

The album cover---baby blue will work for either a girl or a boy:

This photo of Joel and I with Nugget is one of our favorites.  We took it ourselves using the timer on the camera, and it came out great:

A single photo of Joel on the "Dad" page:

A single photo of me on the "Mom" page:

My brother saw the scrapbook, and made a comment about the dogs coming before the rest of the people in the family.  We decided to put the pages in order of everyone who lives in our house and then the rest of the family.  We put the dogs in order oldest to youngest, so Lady gets the first Retriever page:

Molly's Page...she is a very girly girl dog, so pink polka dots seemed fitting:

Sebastian--I'm not totally thrilled with this page, but we have so many cute photos of the little bug, and couldn't choose which ones to leave off.  It was hard to limit it to just these 6:

This page is all photos of the house, barn and arena so they can see where they will live:

I think this will be a favorite page.  I'm pretty sure almost all children love horses, and this shows the horses out on the pasture that will be right in her/his backyard:

This page is my mom, and says "Grandma" at the top and "Always There For Each Other" at the bottom:

This photo is me and my Grandfather, and says "Great-Grandpa".  On all the pages that had lines for writing we left blank so our adoptive child could journal whatever he/she wanted there.  This is their album, after all:

This page says Uncle & Aunt and showcases Benjamin and Allison:

Continuing the Aunt and Uncle theme, here is a Aunt Josie:

We don't have any photos of Joel's half-brother Rex and his wife Theresa, so I wasn't able to include them.  Instead we went into the cousins.  We put them in oldest to youngest which also inadvertently sorted them by family.  These are the cousins on Joel's side, from oldest to youngest, Kayla, R.J. and Katie:

Here's Josie's boys, Ammon and Dallin:

Last but not least, Benjamin and Alie's boys, Douglas and David.  We must like Halloween, since we chose lots of photos with Halloween costumes.

The last page I put in just has some candid family photos.  Some are just simple reading a book together, or being out and about.  I was hoping to show her that we do have fun together even if it is just with simple things.