We’re going through a bit of a sad time at our house because Wyatt’s best friend is moving away next week. “L” lived just around the corner from us before we moved and now that we’re in our new house he lives just a block away. The boys play together on a near daily basis and they have been friends since they were two! When you consider that they’re only six, that’s a heck of a lot of their lives.
L’s new house is about an hour away from ours, so while we will be able to see his family occasionally, the boys aren’t going to be able to get together very often. I’m so sad for the both of them. They are very close and I think they’re going to miss each other a lot. To help ease the transition, I made two identical albums for each of the kids.
I knew I wanted to keep this album simple for a couple of reasons. First off, I wanted to actually finish it before L moved away! I also know that six-year-olds aren’t particularly gentle with their belongings and I wanted it to be sturdy. In my experience, the foofier the scrapbook, the more delicate it is so I made these babies sleek and lean.
I started off with a 4×6 album from Target with 52 pockets to slip photos into. My first task was to use rub-ons to add the boys’ initials to the covers.
Next, I made a title page with a digital scrapbook kit and slipped that into the first pocket of each book.
I put photos of the boys together into the majority of the pockets. Since they have been friends so long and they play together frequently, I had a lot to choose from. I also purposely did a photo shoot with them shortly after I found out L was moving so I could get some good photos of them together. I printed many more photos than I needed for the books and let Wyatt go through them and pick his favorites out. After he had set a pile aside, I filled in the gaps with photos of them at all different ages. There were a lot of pictures left over, so I will used some of those prints on scrapbook pages for our family album.
I also came up with a list of questions for the boys with this album in mind. L’s mom and I sat down with our kids, asked them the questions and then typed their answers up verbatim. The answers they gave were hilarious and sweet. These were the questions:
- What do you like best about your friend?
- What things do you like to do with your friend?
- What is something you have learned from your friend?
- Will you miss your friend when you move away?
- Is there anything else you’d like to say about your friend?
I used the same digital kit to format the questions and their answers and printed those out as 4×6 cards as well. I interspersed the cards with the photos.
These guys have had some good times together. We’ll really miss L and his family!
