Smash*Booking with the kids!

Phew!!  What a crazy couple of days!!  Or I should say: What a crazy couple of weeks!
Sadly, my nieces left yesterday.  Yes, I was able to hold back the tears until I got home.  I blamed it on the most recent episode of True Blood  while we were catching up but seriously, I was missing them so much!
We had a BLAST while they were here and I picked up a couple of Smash*Books for them to make of their time here because I read a GREAT review on them here.  In my hunt for the original blog post that sold me on the books, I found two other great examples of Smash*Books here: the Wreck This Girl Blog and this Memory Works post.
Keeping the Smash*Books in mind, we tried to keep EVERYTHING we could think of to put in their books.  Originally, I had wanted them to start on them the day they arrived and add to the books nightly but we ended up not getting to them until it was closer to the day they left - which actually turned out a bit better since we could reminisce about the earlier things we had all done together.  There were some pockets of downtime since Georgia has been having crazy rain all Summer!  :(  Kind of a downer but it made Smash*Book time more fun.

Here's Amaya's book that she made herself - including a few memorable stories.





The cover with the super-awesome pen+glue / The very first page with a hilarious story about macaroni and cheese. The girls LOVE accents and this one was about them hearing a very Southern accent / The day we went to the movies / The day the grandmas took them to Sky Zone (I wish I had gone!!) / Cotton candy at the fresh.iam pop-up shop with my sister / Adventures at North Point Mall / Adventures at Mall of Georgia / A great story about Amaya's intro to Disney Vinylmations.  Tess at the Disney Store at Mall of Georgia is WONDERFUL and she is the one Amaya is talking about in her story / Photobooth fun and bungee jumping / Medieval Times!!  That was so much fun! / The girls at their fort / Pancakes at IHOP plus some cute images from our Captain Underpants-themed birthday party / It wouldn't be Amaya's book without some Skylanders stuff included (she LOVES them) / Oni got Amaya the coolest 3D puzzle of a swan / We took the kids to Bone Garden, the Cartoon Network store (which will be in another post) and we TRIED to get a ride on the newest addition to ATL: the Sky View ferris wheel but the weather rained us out / Pool time (there was A LOT of it) and our fun night at Ru San's for sushi!

So much fun!!  I highly recommend these books if you're looking to document special events - especially with kids.  I mean, the kits are a little pricey but since they come with tabs, mini journals, a pen / glue stick, tape and a bunch of other things, it's DEFINITELY worth the money because they'll have something they'll remember forever and it's all self-contained!  You don't need to buy anything extra - unless you really want to.  I'm thinking about starting my own to document my time with the girls this Summer so I can not only share with the fun but to experiment for the next time we get to make these!