Let's Get Sketchy October Week 4

Happy Monday! What a fun-filled weekend we had. Our city had a Halloween Festival on Saturday evening and then on Sunday our church had it's annual Harvest Festival. I'm pretty sure Santiago & Paolina got their fix for bounce houses & carnival games. I do wish I could say that the entire weekend was perfect, but unfortunately we also had an incident on Saturday morning that had me absolutely livid. You'll have to read on, as I ended up journaling about it on the below layout for this week's reveal at Let's Get Sketchy. Here's the sketch (by yours truly)...

And this is what I did with it...

Literally 10 minutes after photographing this page, we had several unpleasant occurrences around our house, I was so furious with Santiago that I told Noé that he needed to get him out of the house in order for me to cool off. So as any good husband would do they went to Wal-Mart to pick up my list of cleaning supplies to attempt to fix the damage done, and to give me some time to collect myself. In the mean time, I needed to get the photo of this layout uploaded to the Let's Get Sketchy blog, and as I looked at Santiago's sweet bedtime face on the page, I immediately knew that I needed to journal about that morning's events and to hide them behind the photo. Here is what I wrote:

"As I am doing the journaling for this layout, I am utterly furious with Santiago. Today he drew on our Room & Board sofa, and then I discovered that he had left a crayon in the pocket of his pants that I had washed and dried. For the second time this year. So a total of two loads of laundry destroyed. But even though I have been so angry with him today, I still love him. No matter what he does...what either of my kids do...I will always love them with all of my heart. This doesn't mean they will not suffer consequences for their behavior, but not one single thing that they ever do can change my love for them. This photo reminds me of that. We may have a really bad day that's filled with disobedience, punishments, tantrums and tears. But each time we lay this little man down to sleep, and he wraps his still small arms around my neck with a sweet little kiss and a whisper of 'I love you, Mami', I am reminded of my unconditional, neverending love for my sweet boy."

For those people who just don't understand why so many of us are passionate about scrapbooking, they must not see that not only does it preserve so many of our memories in a beautiful way but it can also serve as a catharsis. I felt so at peace after writing those words and slipping them behind the photo, that I was not angry when the boys came home. Not to say that Santiago was not punished...he helped Noé clean the crayon out of the dryer drum, but journaling that morning's events was such a sweet reminder of the unconditional, neverending love that our Heavenly Father has for us, his utterly imperfect children, and it really helped me to move past the damage done to some mere material things.

Thanks for taking the time to look and read. Now please head over to the Let's Get Sketchy blog for a bunch more inspiration!!

Product List:

Fancy Pants Nautical patterned paper and cardstock stickers

Dream Street Papers patterned paper

Bazzill cardstock

Jillibean Soup Wood Sprinkles

American Crafts Thickers

Pink Paislee Hey Kid Ephemera

Scenic Route diecut arrow

My Mind's Eye enamel dots

The Crafters Workshop templates

Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist