Off To A Good Start!

Well, so far, 2011 is off to a better start than last year. Which isn't saying much - but it could be a lot worse - so again I keep trying to find the positive!

We started off the year celebrating with a group of longtime friends in Sonoma for the weekend. Eleven adults and 9 kids. Wow - that is a busy house! This year marked the 10 year anniversary of this gathering - and we were all amazed by how quickly time goes by and so much changes...yet stays the same.

The beginning of this year saw a two week period of extreme cold here at home. The low would be 35 and the high would only be 42. That is cold for us, it is not normally that cold. And there was a constant layer of fog that settled into the valley. Creating a very cold and wet outside world that made us want to stay inside! Our heater was running constantly throughout the day and night trying to keep the house and its occupants warm enough.

And sure enough we all caught colds (except Travis) and have been sick for a couple of weeks now. Teagan seems to have gotten over it - she has the ability to get over colds without it turning into something else. But Wyatt - oh Wyatt - he does not have the same ability. Wyatt got tubes put in last September then got an ear infection at the end of November and just got another ear infection in the middle of this month. So that is 2 ear infections within 60 days and the kid has tubes! Geesh! I want to go back in to see his ENT Dr. because I am worried about his hearing at this point. Oh and I have a nasty sinus infection that I am not able to shake even being on anti-biotics for the last 10 days. But there is a warming trend in the forecast so I am hopefull that it will help us all feel better.

We got all the Christmas decorations down and stored away for next year. Wow - that is a lot of work for three weeks! It was also a fun challenge for me to find a place to put all their new toys in their rooms...like a giant puzzle: this can go here - oh and that can go there....

We are busy with school, work, and birthday parties. This weekend we had back to back birthday parties, I think that is the way we will be spending a lot of weekends in the coming years. The kids are LOVING school and are learning so much. They are starting to learn the alphabet - they can generally pick out letters - they are learning numbers and can count up to about 12 or 13 before they lose it. It is so cute to hear one thru ten...then eleven, twelve, sixthteen, thirteen, eleven, twelve, fourthteen. You see whenever they get off count they throw in a "th" in the number almost as if they know they are off and they are trying to just make their version of the number make it work! LOL

And the best news of the year so far: The Goodrich Family has an iPad. Yeah!! The kids love it, Daddy has become obsessed with "Angry Birds" and Mommy loves to Google every health ailment anyone in the house has. It is pretty cool to see our kids growing up with this amazing technology. Our kids can figure out an app probably just as fast as Mommy can. Pretty impressive how quickly this new generation takes to technology.

Travis is desperately trying to gear up for his British Columbia bike race in July this year by starting to ride. This is a picture of him braving the 40 degree temperatures to go ride 40 miles that morning! Doesn't it look like such fun?!