birthday present

pat's birthday was this past saturday. for his birthday, my good friend, analia, and i negotiated and then bought him his dream car - a mini-cooper S. i got to sing "big guy in a little car" (think chris farley in "tommy boy") to him and feel like i've assured his happiness for at least the next 10 years or so. here are some pics from when we picked the car up. my parents and my niece were with us (hence the extra child in the pics). later, my parents watched all the kids so we could take a drive and go out to eat.

diddle, diddle

diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son, jake

was dressed for school after he did wake

with one shoe off and one shoe on,

he was sent to school like dumpling john

and while this rhyme is a tad bit lame,

it's there to show that mom's to blame,

and sometimes she just does not think,

and dad must give her a knowing wink...

(...after he comes home for lunch and sees jake's shoe on the floor. have i mentioned that a week ago sunday, we had to drive 2 hours round trip to retrieve my purse at a restaurant in rhode island? fun times at the hinckley household!!!)

lessons learned

we returned home from our vacation to wisconsin on father's day a week ago sunday. since then i've downloaded 300+ pictures on my computer, met up with my sister-in-law & her family in new york city and went to an air show at a military base in rhode island where we saw the blue angels, canadian snowbirds and the F-22 raptor perform.

i still need to go through my pics of our vacation, but am all set to blog about our day in new york. my wonderful sister and her two kids agreed to take the train with me to NYC so i could meet up with pat's sister's family. it was an adventureous day, but a good one nonetheless. i used to have a poster that said: "all i ever need to know i learned in new york." while i can't say i learned many life lessons on our little adventure, i did gain many other tidbits of wisdom such as:

1. new york city is much more wheelchair friendly than paris. however, the man at the information booth at grand central station is not aware of this. new york locals are much more aware of which subway stations have elevators. this doesn't help when you have already gotten off the subway and are trying to exit.


2. if in a pinch, i can take jake's wheelchair (with jake in it) up an escalator.


3. it might, just might, be easier to drive into NYC and find parking for a vehicle that needs 9 ft. clearance than navigate the subways.


4. you can fit a wheelchair, folded up double stroller, two adults, and five additional children in a very, tiny elevator.


5. don't get off the elevator unless you are sure that you are on the correct floor (especially when you have all the aforementioned things in tow.)


6. do follow that prompting to grab those rain poncho things that they gave you in niagara falls even though the weather forecast said no rain. (this was learned the hard way.)


7. don't take your kids to a playground with a water park when you are expecting your amazingly talented sister-in-law to take pictures of them. (it really wasn't that big of a deal).


8. most new yorkers are willing to show their big hearts when they see someone needs help. (i.e. making room for a wheelchair in the subway, giving up their seats for the kids in the subway, helping you find the elevator to exit when you look lost, offering to help you find a subway station w/an elevator, just opening the door themselves and setting off an alarm when they see you waiting for someone to come open the gate so you can exit, suggesting an inexpensive chinese restaurant to eat at when you are trying to get out of the rain, etc....) we'll just ignore the two ladies who immediately pressed the close doors button after entering a (rather large) elevator; they didn't look like they were from new york.

unfortunately i forgot my camera in the car at the train station, but my sister-in-law was all set to take pics. i had her do some of grace since i didn't have her do school pics this year. despite some craziness, we had a great time with annie and brian and especially enjoyed seeing their kids. (although i have no pics of jane.)

i put this pic in just so you could see what annie had to deal with. fritzy worked hard to keep a frown on his face (even when i pretended to be shot in the bum) and lily was picking a scab in most of the others!


i like this one a lot!!! it truly is amazing that annie got such a great shot in the very brief period of no rain.

evan likes to do lots of martial art like poses.

i mentioned there was a water park, right?

annie's boy with my sister's girl

family day & the wonders of facebook

before we headed off to family day for pat's work today, i remorsed on facebook about how i would be missing our friends who usually join us for family day, but currently live in japan. anyhoo, scott (the dad) read that statement a mere 6 minutes later and called to say he was in town on business. he was able to come with us. we had a blast even though we missed his family dearly. -APRIL, COLLEEN, BRIDGET & ASHLYNN - wish you could have been there too!!

here's a pic of scott with jake. scott was one of jake's first teachers at church when we moved to ct seven years ago.

lily was first on the bungee jump swing. here she is ready to take off.

the rest of us waiting for our turn. (note the scowl on gracie's face. she thinks it the greatest injustice that i tend to make the older child wait and the younger ones go first).


lily in mid-air.


fritz, all geared up.

fritz in the air. if you look up from him and a little over to the left, you can see grace doing a flip.

i have absolutely no idea how much cotton candy my kids consumed this year. it's all they asked for; their wish was often granted. other times, a certain 5 year old would just sneak to the cotton candy booth while we thought she was playing in the playground.


ready for the rock wall.

lily did really well on the wall and actually climbed up a good distance for her age.

first swim of the season.

so, exactly how much cotton candy was consumed? ...enough to totally hide gracie's face, multiple times...

...enough to make a beard...

...and enough to make your kids go like this the minute you get in the car.

truth be told, there are lots of actions shots of me today; i played volleyball, did the bungee swing, climbed the rock wall and flipped off the diving board. another little or rather large truth would be that i've gained 40 lbs since i went to family day last may. it's still kind of schock when i see current pictures of myself with all the extra padding. so when we got home and downloaded pics, the plethora of pics of overweight me in so many mid-air shots had me in stitches from laughter - just imagine a beached whale trying to do a back flip in the water. (now i know fat jokes are not appropriate and i steer away from them - but it's ok, when you're talking about yourself, right?) while i got a good laugh out of those pics, i'm not humble enought to post them. this one pic of me almost reaching the top of the rock wall was actually decent (or rather hid my weight) enough to post.

oh, and come next spring, if i haven't lost the weight, will someone please remind me to try and restrain myself on the diving board? thanks.

science fair

grace and her partner, darien, won the science fair for their grade at school and placed 2nd in the whole district. her project was testing the different forces that affect flight. after reading their results, pat was a little worried how reliable the testing was, but the girls came up with a good question and evaluated their experiments well. they also did the project on their own. pat got them started, but the rest was all them.


the girls with their teacher when they presented their project to the district for judging.

lily "patiently" waiting to hear what gracie's award will be.

getting their trophies - 2nd place - beat out by the tooth enamel experiment.

the girls with their trophies, awards and younger siblings.

grace also won her first math bowl and is now off to compete against another school next week. pat and i do find it interesting that she is a top math and science student at a performing arts school. that might help, but the girl is genuinely smart and has always had a burning curiousity and love of learning that i hope remains with her throughout her life.

memorial day weekend

we had a great memorial day weekend filled with outdoor walks, exploration, quiet time, puzzles, mud, canoeing, s'mores & visits with family & friends. could you ask for anything more?

we took the scenic route on the drive up where we crossed three covered bridges, lily "saw china" and i saw a sign with the words: "3 kids for sale" on it (drove by too fast to actually read the descriptions of the kids). a third generation "harry belafonte fan" was solidified as that was all gracie listened to on the drive up and back; (i believe harry belafonte was pretty much required listening when pat was growing up.)

we spent the weekend at my good friend from high school (darlene)'s house near montpelier, vermont. darlene and her husband were gone the first couple of days, but caught up with us on monday. sunday was spent visiting with our niece, chelsea, and her husband. chelsea just graduated from vermont law school. saturday was spent on the stowe recreational path (after both pat and i took turns having late morning naps). the pictures pretty much tell the rest -

who knew a little foot bridge could be so much fun? i think we spent a good 20 minutes here while we walking the recreational path in stowe.

jake with a swollen bug bite at the top of his nose. we weren't in vermont for more than a few hours before he had a bite. the bugs have always loved him, poor guy. (when mosquitoes get in our car, i go after them with a passion that verges on maniacal because i worry they will just bite jake).

we also found a museum (??fine art store) off the path. it had a sculpture garden and fun stuff inside like this couch made of nickles.

one of dar's cats, harry, totally clinged to us when she was gone. we were fully prepared to be completely ignored when dar returned on monday.


chelsea and jake came over to eat dinner and roast marshmallows on sunday. they are cute couple and we've enjoyed getting to jake better through these visits. he's a good guy which chelsea more than deserves.




we were able to complete 3 of the 4 american girl mystery puzzles. i was a little disappointed that the clues to solve the mystery were just written on the puzzle in glow-in-the-dark paint. i would have preferred a more challenging and subtle approach, but the puzzles were enjoyable to do nonetheless. during the first puzzle, grace did abandon me for other things (in fairness to her it was after a good amount of helping). it just reminded me of all the times, i had abandoned my dad on puzzles while growing up and came back after he had made progress to help finish things off. sorry, dad! but no worries, i'm getting my just desserts now.


on monday, we went to the beachfront near dar and gerry's house. they have a canoe and we had fun going out on it. lily was scared to be on the canoe at first, but soon changed her mind and enjoyed it.



the men with the kiddos.


fact of life #241: kids always gravitate to mud, n'est pa?

dar and i holding our own in the canoe. we had done canoe trips together when we were teenagers (CUE "Memories" music - not "Memory from "Cats" - but the other one - doesn't barbara streisand sing it?).

jake fell asleep on the blanket and got a sunburn on the part of his arm that we left exposed.

grace and i went out together after this pic was taken. we did well until some high winds kicked in and struggled getting back to shore. but we made it once the wind died down - only to find out that dar was the only one who had faith in us returning. THANKS for the vote of confidence, DAR!!!!