I bought a coupon from Living Social for a photo book from Shutterfly a few months ago. At first I was thinking of doing the photos all based around Precious since I take so many pics of her. But then I couldn’t decide on the time frame. I couldn’t really do her first year since we don’t have any pictures from her first two months. I thought about doing the day she joined our family until her adoption day, but I wanted to have the book out at her adoption party so that wouldn’t work. And what about Ladybug, our first child through foster care? I had intended to make a scrapbook of her time with us since I took about 300 pictures during the 5 weeks, but I never got around to it. I wanted to have some kind of album to honor her, too. I finally decided on doing a family yearbook of 2011, starting what I hope to be a tradition of making a family photo book of each year. With careful planning I managed to stick to 20 pages. Even though I’m a graphic designer by day, I decided to use one of Shutterfly’s templates for the book rather than doing a custom design—because I had a feeling I’d spend way too much time on the design and the book would get put off. So here it is:
I’m really happy with how it turned out. It chronicals the biggest milestones of 2011. Here are a few of the highlights, starting with our niece Eliza’s birth day in February.
Jason’s and my anniversary
Preparing our home to become foster parents and when Ladybug joined our family
Our first weekend trips with Precious to Pigeon Forge and Cincinnati
The birth of our niece Iris and our friends’ son Jaron, Thanksgiving in PA with my family
“Surrender Day”, purchasing the land for our future home, and Christmas
myMCMlife.com 
When we did our adoption book shuterfly didn’t have that adorable template! Very cute.
We do that every year now, and I’m at 200 pages per book these days… Guess I’m not so good at paring down my photos! Love how yours turned out!