Balboa Park Layout

As I was looking at these pictures of my family at Balboa Park, I noticed my oldest son had put his arm around my youngest son's waist in the leftmost photo and caused his shirt to ride up so you could see the big bandage around his middle. At first, I was bummed because it seemed like it ruined my "perfect" picture, but I got to thinking about it and it seemed like a great introduction to telling the story behind the bandage, something I haven't yet done in my scrapbooking. Since I was scrapbooking quite a few pictures, I decided to hide the journaling in a Flip-Flap under the horizontal photo, so it has actually become a metaphor of our lives that summer - pretty on the outside but with complicated stuff hidden underneath. This was the first summer of fostering my two youngest kids, and although everything worked out so we could adopt them, I think it's important to remember who they were when we first met them so we can be thankful for who they are now, even on the hard days of parenting!

And here's the journaling card with the story:

Click on the image if it's too small to read.

Recipe:
Newsprint Alphabet stamp set (SU)
Central Park papers
Clover Meadow, Honey & White Daisy cardstock
Clover Meadow & sunny Yellow ink
Escape the Ordinary Thickers (American Crafts)
Cricut Artbooking cartridge: sun, frame
CTMH Chevron embossing folder
Heart Punch (EK Success)
Challenges: Retro Rubber Challenge Blog #116 tic-tac-toe (I chose the middle column down for green, texture - the embossed chevrons - and nature) and I used a woodie stamp set from 2004 to do the title; Double Trouble #34 (Thing 1 - anything goes, Thing 2 - also played along with Retro Rubber challenges, Thing 3 - gave my impression of sunshine with the die-cut sun plus the sun rays paper).