Here's our card!

Starlight Flurries Christmas Card

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Christmas Cards!

Shutterfly is having a great giveaway for bloggers-- they are offering 50 free holiday cards in exchange for blogging about them. I've ordered my Christmas cards from Shutterfly for the past 4 or 5 years, and always been very happy with the choices they offer, the price and the quality. I also buy their photobooks a lot. I was on-the-ball enough to make actual scrapbooks for the kids' first years, but have used the photobooks every year since.

Here is one card that I'm considering this year, with this picture:


I also really like this one and this one, with these pictures added in:


I love sending photocards for the holidays, and I really enjoy receiving them from others. I prefer the flat cards to the folded ones, that way I don't have to write anything in them! I know that this makes it a lot less personal, but I don't think that I'd ever get them out before Christmas otherwise. And besides, I think that the pictures make them personal. My cards always tend to have black-and-white pictures, which I think makes them look a little special.

Be on the lookout for the Francis family Christmas card in your mailbox soon!

It's a girl!!!

Soccer is over....

Look at that form!

Halloween!

Ruby was Snow White (originally a zookeeper, but she can't resist a princess dress!) and Jack was a ninja. I have a feeling that Jack will be in some sort of black head-to-toe outfit for the rest of his Halloween career.

The kids were so polite at each house-- Jack had a very articulate "trick OR treat" for everyone, and Ruby always remembered her "tink-ewe" at the end.


We let the kids eat as much candy as they wanted when we got home-- maybe not the best idea. Ruby was acting like she was on drugs for about 2 hours. I guess 6 suckers will do that to you. Then they chose two pieces of candy to save for the next day, and left the rest of the candy out for the "Sugar Fairy" that came during the night. She left them each a little gift in exchange for their candy. And now we don't have to worry about anyone begging for Halloween candy for weeks to come!
This was the first year that we've just trick-or-treated in our neighborhood, instead of trying to tag-along with other family or drive around to visit people we know in town. We were only out for about 45 minutes, which was perfect. It gets really busy out there! Our community does such a great job of handing out candy, so we get families from a lot of neighboring communities visiting that night.

The kids had a lot of fun, and John and I actually did too!