ex girlfriends and vacations....ugh!!!

I don't revise history in my documentation. If you had scrapped the pictures right after the vacation you would have included them.
She was a part of the experience. I would include those one of a kind pictures even with her in them. I would include journaling with her name and her status as DS' girlfriend. No different than if they were still together. It's a snapshot of a moment in time as it happened.
If you were always current in your scrapbooking, would you go back and remove all the people who are no longer in your life? It's not a true representation of the time, which, isn't that the point of this hobby?

I agree.

I completely agree. And both of my sons know this from the get go. Regardless of how you feel about someone now - at some point they were a big part of your life and should be included. 

Now, if there were issues of abuse or something, I would not include them. But I probably wouldnt even make the album to be honest. 

This is how I handle it too.

I don't know what I would do, but you should do whatever makes you happy. I would probably just scrap the pics without thm, especially if it was a bad breakup. In the future, I would concentrate on getting pics of scenery and looking for opportunities to get pics of people when they are alone.

My guess is that the end of that relationship still stings a little (and that's ok). I'm not a big fan of having pictures of exes lying around and I tend to be careful with not letting my identity and life experiences be taken over by my relationship/my status as half of a couple when I document my life. However, I also believe that the circumstances your relationship ended in will dictate in part how you feel about your ex and her featuring in your albums...

If you and your ex ended things in not too horrible a manner, you should be alright with her being depicted as a participant in certain pictures after setting aside the more romantic shots. If you're struggling with this, then you may want to take some time to find closure within yourself before scrapping those pictures and taking a trip down memory lane. Even if you find a manner to Photoshop her out of every single shot, your head and heart will still be troubled by the memories of this vacation together and it's more important to focus on healing first.

If you broke up for particularly difficult reasons and her role in how and why your relationship ended was really bad, then you can go several ways:
1. Scrap with those pictures and try to find some form of healing and acceptance of what happened in the process of putting the pages together.
2. Scrap without any pictures she's in and find a way to stop blaming her for not including those photos. I do believe you're in your rights to not include her if you're so uncomfortable with the idea. However, you are in control of your life now and it's a good thing to put on those big girl pants and make some decisions without feeling the need to refer to another party to blame. Don't include any pics with her at all? Fine. But take responsbility for it and don't wander down the oh-if-only-she-was-not-in-that-group-photo-ugh-whyyyy path.
3. Scrap with the idea of possible full closure in the future. This is not the most practical approach and not what I would recommend except if you know you're the kind of person who takes longer to recover and who might end up changing their mind later on. If so, you either set the pictures aside and make layouts later on should you wish to. Or if you're using pocket pages, simply work out for a few pages (keep the number down as much as possible!) where you'd put the currently dreaded photos and journaling but fill them at the moment with something else that you'd be ok to see go if you do have a change of heart about it later on (a slightly redundant landscape/detail shot, a picture of something that feels more like filler than something important).

As for your sons: scrap as things happen. Perhaps don't over-document their current relationship statuses and keep it simple until they're further along into the relationship. But breakups and divorces happen. It's hard to figure out who you are afterwards and how many reminders of that person you wish to keep. I don't think revising history is a great thing but I also firmly believe documenting should be first and foremost about someone (you or your children), not who they are in relationship to people who are not "permanent fixtures" in their life. Not to say you shouldn't include romantic partners but it's good to remind yourself to keep the focus on the key people overall and to not over-associate them with their current relationship when you journal/document about them.

My philosophy is, life is like a book. All the sentences, paragraphs, pages, chapters, characters, etc... comprise our whole story.

Some paragraphs and some chapters are wonderful, some are good, some are horrendous, some are adventurous, some boring and mundane. Some of the characters of your book.....are in it for a moment, some for awhile, some for a lifetime. People come, people go. All of the characters, have their place in your history.

Just because, someone may no longer be in your life....you don't tear out those pages of your book.
History is finite. It is what it is.

I would, include the photos in the scrapbook.

I agree with this. 

As to the "sensitive current girlfriend"...that is not really your problem; and it's bigger than scrapbooking/not scrapbooking a photo. 

We always joke that the in-laws have to stand on the end for family photos, so we can crop them out! This is in DH's family, so I am the in-law.

I am currently scrapping my years in California and I am actually including my first marriage. I took out any photos that were just of my ex by himself, but if I am in them or other people I scrapped them. now my first wedding was in Las Vegas and the pics were with a point and shoot so it's not like I had a formal wedding album. But my mom, sister, brother and other relatives are in those photos and I looked good.

In my sons' books I included all their previous girlfriends and if someday they want to toss those pics or layouts they can.

Right? This hasn't happened yet (we don't take many trips and my sons haven't had anyone serious enough to invite along), but I can see it coming and this definitely has brought up something it wouldn't have occurred to me to think about! 

That can be the benchmark when my sons ask if a SO can come on a trip: are they important enough to be included in the scrapbook?  Forever.   

my husband has a gazillion pictures of one girlfriend. It was during his photography phase and she was the usual subject. When i get back to those years i plan to put her in the albums.