Sharon Get's Into the 21st Century

This is all new to me. I've done photo albums for about 100 years (well actually, only 50 years), but my kids thought I should take the photo album thing into the 21st Century, so we'll give it a try. I love looking at our friends blogs, and keeping up with the latest news that way. Also I'm kind of a fanatic about writing Christmas letters so its just kind of natural that I figure everyone must want to see my families' pictures as much as I want to share them. So -- welcome to the Francis Family Blog. Most of our kids do their own blogging, so I'll just try to hit the highlights, and not duplicate what they are putting on, but since our kids are kind of our life, there just may be some duplicates. I hope you check us out from time to time and see what's new with the family, maybe you will try blogging too. And to all of you out there--Welcome to the 21st Century!!

Our new home away from home

For the past year we've spent a lot of time building a gathering place for our family. We found property in Fruitland, Utah (about 10 minutes East of Strawberry and only 1 hour and 15 minutes from our home in Provo) in December of 2007, and we began the next spring building our cabin. It's been a different experience than any other home we've built, but now that we have a pillow to lay our heads on, we think it was all worth it. We hope for years to come (actually generations!), we will all enjoy the togetherness that comes when you forget the everyday routine and get away as friends and family. There are fishing streams and lakes close by (a must for the guys), hillsides to four-wheel on (a real adventure for the kids, and kids at heart), a loft for the kids, and a game room for the rest of us. We spent Thanksgiving up there (2008) and even though we had only one bathroom that was working, and no doors yet installed we had a great time getting it all put together (thanks to Gram and Kristi who worked till wee hours getting beds made and dishes and everything else put away). From before Thanksgiving until way after Christmas we were moving box after box in, and at each moving visit we had to begin by cleaning, because in between visits the sub-contractors would be finishing up "one last thing". (This is the main reason there was no Christmas letter last year) During December I took the grandkids up, a few at a time. We made gingerbread houses and watched classic old Christmas movies. Since then we've had lots of fun visits with family and friends at the cabin (I'll post pictures of some of those visits later). We now have more than one bathroom working perfectly, and doors on every room. The fireplace works, and we've all even learned how to light a fire without setting off the smoke detector!! We'll be clearing brush and laying gravel, trimming trees and building sledding hills for the next few years, but we look forward to lots of fun times spent at our new home away from home.