Happy Birthday Mini Album for Jillian

 A little over a month ago, my niece, Jillian, celebrated her 6th birthday.  I made her this mini-album as a gift.  It took a while to do, and I was only able to give it to her a week later.  I had planned on making an envelope mini-album and it was nearly done when I showed it to my sister (Jillian's mom) and she suggested that it might get damaged from the kids handling it.  That actually made sense, because I'm the eldest of five, and all four younger siblings are married with a total of 8 kids among them (I have 3 nephews and 5 nieces).  So there are a lot of little and grownup hands that will leaf through the pages.  So I took the pages and tags apart and reconstructed everything to fit into 6"x6" page protectors and bound them all in a sturdy (I hope!) album.  So on that particular Sunday lunch with the whole family, including my parents and grandmother (we are one big family), the album was passed around and we did a bit of reminiscing and a lot of laughing.  It took a lot of work, but it was certainly worth it.