One thing I regret about our life right now is that we live very far away from our families. Mine live amongst fields of green, and the narrow windy roads of Northern Ireland, with an umbrella in hand. My husband Craig’s family hail from the beautiful yet cold Highlands of bonnie Scotland, with haggis a plenty. This of course means that we don’t get to see our families as often as we would like, which in turn means that we don’t get to share all those precious moments watching the younger family members grow up.
When we go for a visit, I always wonder what our nieces, nephews and cousins will remember about us in years to come, when they look back into their childhood past. So of course I try to make our visits as fun and exciting as possible – which is very exhausting work!
One particularly difficult and emotional period which we went through was in relation to Craig’s little brother Steven. Being autistic meant that when he was young, Steven didn’t really make eye contact, or initiate any interaction with us during our visits. We would ask ourselves, does he know who we are? Of course, it didn’t help that we only got to see him a few times throughout the year. It took years for us to get Steven to say our names, and when he finally did, we would ask ourselves, is he just repeating what we have asked him to say, or is he remembering who we actually are?
The change we have noticed in Steven over the last year or two is immense, and it almost brings a tear to your eye to see the way that Steven will now play, interact, chase, tickle, and laugh with Craig – just the way brothers should. In this layout I wanted to highlight those special moments that siblings can share together, that we often would take for granted, but in this instance was for me a very emotionally charged moment of realization of how we should cherish how lucky we really are.
Like Brothers Should
Once again I have used some of the PDQ Crave papers from Bisous. The hard work was already in place so I just made the design work for me. To add a little bit of quirkiness, I also cut out the barcode from the strip of paper that you usually throw away, as I feel these make a great embellishment that is both environmentally friendly and a great design feature. For the title I made a frame using one of the other papers from the Crave line, which is great for cutting up and using as journalling blocks, frames, and for matting and layering. With a few letter stickers, alpha stamps and Bisous Chipboard pieces, a professional quality finished layout was complete in next to no time. Why don’t you give it a try?
Journaling reads:
It is so wonderful seeing you two interacting, laughing, playing, having fun… just like brothers should!