Happy Belated Valentine's Day!

This year for Valentine's Day, we took an unexpected, unplanned road trip and found ourselves heading up to New Jersey late Friday night (Feb 13th) for the weekend. Before we hit the road, the fun began with Zachary charming all of his favorite teachers at daycare... he gave each of them a long-stem red rose with a pretty bow and a tag wishing them lots of love! It was definitely a crowd pleaser, but of course, that's to be expected from our little Prince Charming. Here's the little critter wearing his special "Ladies' Man" Valentine shirt for the celebration at school - -

Our little Picasso also gave his Mommy and Daddy this masterpiece of a Valentine, that he made himself at school (with a little help from his wonderful teachers, I'm sure)... the red hearts on the front are hand-painted (literally) by our very own little Zachary! It is my most favorite Valentine ever!!

We headed to NJ for an incredibly sad reason, though, as we lost a very, very dear family friend to cancer and attended her memorial service Saturday morning. I wish we had a happier occasion to be "on the road again," but it was so nice seeing our family and celebrating Valentine's Day together. I'll share more pictures from the weekend in a future post, as you can imagine, I took tons... I guess you could consider me fully back in the saddle again with my handy-dandy little camera!

In this post, we would simply like to take this moment to wish all of our very special family and friends a very Happy (and belated) Valentine's Day... we love you all SO VERY MUCH!!

S.W.A.K.!!!!

Where does the time go??? - A look back on January, 2009

Let me first start by saying we're all still here, finally well, and enjoying the winter so far! January was a tough (yet still very exciting) start of the year for the little Goodman family, and I think we're finally back on track (I hope I didn't just jinx us)!

I'll start by catching up with the rest of January...

If I had to sum up the month of January 2009 in one word, I think it would be...... VIRUS! That's right... January was a month of one illness after another throughout our entire household. If one of us was healthy (for however short of a period) the other two were sick, and it was a vicious cycle that never seemed as though it would end! At one point I turned to Len and desperately asked, "What more can we do to make this stop????" I think you'll chuckle at his response... "move!" he said! Well, I'm happy to report that short of a runny nose or two, we've turned a corner and find ourselves back on the healthy train! And believe it or not, I think Zachary was the "least" sick (if there is such a thing) of all of us, though he did experience a mild bout of RSV, which he was exposed to at day care. The doctor said that if indeed that was what he had (there's really no way to test for it), she was impressed with the fact that he was only exhibiting mild symptoms and his body was doing a great job of fighting it. Len and I were quite concerned at times (the cough and wheezing it causes can sound pretty bad), and her assessment of his overall health was very reassuring. Zachary was a real trooper throughout it all, and I think he really liked staying home several days with Mommy and Daddy, and getting extra-special loving attention as we spoiled him back to health! Thank goodness he didn't really get the severe stomach bug Len and I each had TWICE throughout the month (I can't even imagine what that would have been like for all of us)! I'll tell you, even if we had planned on heading up to NJ for a visit, I know that would not have actually happened, so maybe our moratorium on road trips was good timing!

So, here I sit writing only my third blog entry for the year (January and February were my worst months yet) and it feels just great to be back in the saddle again! Here are some of the limited photos I took (you know I had to be sick not to take endless pictures of my adorable little critter)!!

We emailed this self-portrait to Daddy to cheer him up when he was having a long day at work...

One of Zachary's favorite past times continues to be reading books, especially with Daddy...

And tubby-time is (almost) always a fun, splish-splash time for all!

(You'll notice the bandage on his left arm... as you may already know, part of the one year well-visit to the doctor includes an order for blood work... Zachary went for his test in January, and he was a real trooper. Let me tell you, for me, it was 10 times worse than the vaccines. Good thing Daddy isn't as queasy as Mommy!)

January closed with some exciting football for Baltimore fans... here is Zachary in his Ravens warm-up suit... he got a lot of proud wear out of it this season!