Thankfully I am feeling considerably better today since both the girls are home today due to the cancellation of school because of the weather (yeah- the automated voice messaging system called at 5:15am to let us know there was no school!!). Thanks for your well wishes!!

But like I said yesterday, there are no sick days for mommies. So yesterday I mustered up enough energy to make sure that Flat Stanley got off on the first leg of his journey through rain, wind, snow and ice to the deep south for his first ‘vacation’.

For those of you who don’t know who Flat Stanley is, click here or here (we actually have an old original copy that belonged to my husband when he was younger!). My daughters assignment is to send Stanley, by mail, to somebody who will then journal and photograph Stanley,  then send him back to us for her school assignment (some of the assignments on the linked page are a little more elaborate than this one.). Of course she came home and stated that Stanly is going to Alabama to visit my very pregnant sister and her husband! I’m sure my sister will be thrilled to have him - at least he doesn’t eat much! LOL! Anyhow - my daughter is just THRILLED about doing this, so I made sure we did it right!

Here’s Stanley getting ready for his trip. Since he didn’t have proper ‘inclement weather’ attire, we put him in a nice brown envelope complete with return address and postage for safe travels! (note the nice footprint on the side of my mailbox from one of the kind neighborhood kids who decided to try to rip off the flag on my mailbox! can you believe that? I was able to fix it enough so that it stands up again, but when it’s down it hangs down. seriously annoying!)

Gotta make sure the flag us up so that our mail lady knows that he’s in there!

I made sure that Ms. Nikki - our awesome mail carrier - got to have her picture with Stanely too! Ms. Nikki has been the mail carrier in our neighborhood for MANY years and she was thrilled to be able to give Stanley a ride to the post office in her mail truck. But before I could take her picture she had to put her lipstick on! LOL! She made sure that Stanley got off to Alabama safely so now he is on his way to warmer weather.

Auntie - you have to take good care of Stanley, show him a good time and make sure that you take lots of pictures for his journal!! Maybe I’ll bring him home with me on the airplane next weekend, but we’ll see if he’s having too good of a time to come back just yet!

Thanks for looking!

You know - moms don’t have time to be sick. Seriously. There are no days off. No time to rest and recover. So don’t you think it would be fair if we didn’t get sick at all?

I was not feeling that great on Monday, but powered through the day and even went to the PUG meeting (hopefully I didn’t get anybody else sick!)…then I wake up Tuesday with the full blown FLU that my little one had several weeks ago. And you KNOW when you’ve got the flu - the fever, the aches, the chills and the inabilitly to lift your head off the pillow….all I was thinking to myself was “you’ve got to be kidding”. I am admitedly the worlds worst sick person - probably because I just don’t have time to be sick. I most certainly can not show up at somebodies house to take newborn photos like this! And making my 25 lunches for the ‘Winter Relief’ homeless shelter being held at our church this week is out since my friends who I paired up with don’t want my germs there either! It is nothing but annoying and exhausting. And now I’m grumpy about it so keep me in your prayers that this quickly passes and I’m back to healthy by the weekend!

On a positive note, since I don’t ever post without photos, I’m posting some darling family photos of my friends the Barnhills that we took before the holidays. We had a lot of fun and the kids are just as delightful as they look - I think I’ve made friends for life! Allison is the owner of Handmade by Allison - check her out if you need invitations - her work is truly one of a kind and her customer service is outstanding. Enjoy!

Thanks for looking!

First I have to start off with talking about the awesome PUG (Pictage Users Group) meeting I attended last night with my fellow Baltimore PUG members. Evan, Jill, Ray and myself treked down to Bethesda to the DC PUG meeting to listen to Justin and Mary Marantz speak to us about creating customer loyalty. Not only are they the cutest couple, but their talk was inspiring and they are involved in several really wonderful causes - one of them being The Portrait House, a worldwide fundraising mission to raise money and awareness for Habitat for Humanity and the Spead the Love Workshop in Chicago in April. I also made some new friends - Kristiaan and Lionel of eYeWonder Photography and got to see some of the Baltimore PUG regulars (which was nice after missing the last meeting). It was a really fun night and I’m really glad that I went even though I wasn’t feeling the greatest - it was totally worth it!

And secondly I have to talk about how wacky the weather in Maryland is! Seriously - 70 degrees on February 18th?? It’s just crazy! But I am not one to lose out on  a nice weather opportunity, so I let the girls run wild outside and took a few photos for fun. We got out the bikes, scooters, sidewalk chalk, jump rope and hula hoops and enjoyed the beautiful weather while it was here. Check them out!

Grandma got her a ‘real’ hula hoop and this girl has mastered it!

This one gives new meaning to the word ‘cheeeeeeeeeese’! What a goofball!

Have a great day! And thanks for looking! I’m off to rest - I feel like I might be getting the flu - ick!