Lara and I have long been unsure how to best share photos with loved ones. We did not want to turn our blog into a never-ending series of baby pictures and stories (for a good many reasons, including some technical and philosophical), nor did we want to flood social network streams with loads of photo albums some people simply weren't interested in, nor did we want to have the photos hidden away in some scrapbook or RSS stream that interested parties couldn't find or would forget to check. We tried out Tumblr and considered Flickr. We played around with shared Picasa albums and Pogoplug cloud drives. All services had pros and cons, and a wide range of prices, but nothing quite hit the sweet spot.

I am always open to more suggestions, but I think I have our solution: a Google Plus page.

We have been users of Google+ since its inception, posting and sharing privately with a few close friends and family members. Google has made it incredibly easy to upload and share photos, and to explicitly designate what gets shared with whom. However, I don't want to just designate who sees what, I also want my followers to be able to filter my posts based on their own interests without me having to guess what they like and manage a pretty complicated set of circles. Google+ Pages fill that need.

So, if you'd like to subject yourself to loads of cutesy pictures and endless Seriously So Blessed anecdotes, visit or follow our "Claire" page. Eventually it will be re-named "Claire and X" or "Our crazy family" as it will be the home of all future family photos, but for now, Claire is the main attraction. This blog will resume its erratic postings of musings and travelogues, and our individual Google+ streams will continue to have occasional Claire pictures/stories but mostly links to articles we find interesting.

For Google users:

Addendum: Note that you must "follow" the page for us to be able to add you into the circle of allowed viewers. We originally thought we could just keep it public, but have since decided to keep it private for now.

Link to BabelFox:
http://elliottandlara.com/babelfox

Christmas Prank

Last December, Lara and I went up to Alaska to spend Christmas with her family. It was going to be my first time meeting one of her brothers, who'd recently returned from a church mission. I had heard stories of pranks done on his other brother-in-law (and last visit I myself had been short-sheeted by another of Lara's brothers), so I knew come Christmas time, it was game on.

Continue reading...