Memory Thursday - Christmas Musical 1946

When Toby's grandmother died last year, his mother found this in her things. Barbara gave it to me after I asked her if I could scan it.

Front row left to right is Daisy, my Aunt Dot's friend; Priscilla, my mother-in-law; my Aunt Dot; and above my mother-in-law is my Aunt Ettie. So many of the people I grew up with are in this picture.

Bethany has been doing Christmas Musicals for a long time!

Memory Tuesday - The Judge

This picture was taken some time in the 1980's and was given to me just a few years ago. Kristen (and Toby) were in Bible Quiz when they were in high school and Toby's Aunt Susan and I were judges. We had fun times going away on weekend quizzes with the kids. I really don't remember if this was an "official" sign or just a joke. Bill Hildreth, who was basically the head of Bible Quiz at our church, must have taken this picture. He is the one who gave it to me. Too funny!

Spring fever

Wow, what a beautiful day! Paul and I have been enjoying exploring the Connecticut shore and decided to head there today. On the way we drove by these "turkeys" in East Granby.



I guess certain towns have these fiberglass animals placed around their town. Bennington VT has Moose in their town. I took this picture back in 2008.



I know West Springfield has a Terrier dog. I haven't taken any pictures of that yet. I'll have to get on it.

Anyhow, we had lunch at Lenny & Joe's and then headed over to Hammonasett Beach. It was absolutely beautiful, 68 degrees. Talk about Spring fever. We walked on the beach and just enjoyed being outside.





At the edge of the water were tons of little shells.





I love taking pictures of seagulls.









After we left the beach, we drove along the shore for awhile, windows open, Pandora on the radio. I love days like this!

Saturday.....

Paul wanted to try a new restaurant today. When he was telling one of our neighbors about Lenny & Joe's, he told Paul about the Maine Fish Market Restaurant in E. Windsor, CT. We tried it for lunch today. Oh my goodness, it was wonderful! We both had fried scallops again, but this was more of a whole meal; salad, bread, potato or rice, vegetable. REALLY, really good!

After that we were going to go to Mark's tennis match but we had some time to kill so we drove by Paul's old work, Combustion Engineering, aka ABB, aka Alstom. The main building was completely gone, torn down.



By the sounds of it they are still doing environmental cleanup there (they used to build nuclear boilers).



After that we met Mark, Janelle, and Mason at the Enfield Tennis Club. Mark belongs to a league and this is their home court. He had a 2-hour tennis match (that he won by the way).





On the second floor there is a long room with windows on both sides where you can watch the games going on. There is a smaller room with a kids' tennis court set up, another room with toddler toys in it. In the main room there are lots of tables and chairs, a ping pong table, crayons, games, etc. Mason really liked the little tennis court. After some members of Mark's league finished on their court there was some time left and they said that Mason could play on it. He looked so tiny out there.







P.S. Some more post offices -

E. Windsor, CT


Conway, MA (from a previous ride)

Adding flickr to my blog

I just added something new to my blog.

On my iPhone I have an app called Photo365. The idea is that you take a photo a day with your iphone and post them to this app. It is also linked to a flickr photostream. I wanted it to also be available on my blog. You can either click on the flickr link here on you can get to it on the right hand side of my blog where it says flickr photostream. I also have another album called 2012 just for pictures that I like that I haven't blogged.

This new technology blows me away - and I love all of it!

Memory Thursday - The Waits

This is a copy of a picture that has been in our family for years.

It is a picture of my grandfather's father (Bernard) and all of his children, their spouses and children. It was taken on the front porch of my great grandfather's house in Greenfield. It had been hanging in Nan and Dot's house for years, and now is in Dot's room at the Atrium.

A few years ago Paul decided to name all of the people so they would all be remembered. The different families are color-coded. I think it's kind of neat.

Memory Tuesday, Grandma Radtke

According to my new plan, Tuesday's blog will be a memory since Paul and I have been married. This picture is of Paul's grandmother, Berta Radtke, Big Baba's mother. I'm not sure when this picture was taken but it is probably early on in our marriage, because in later years she had a very tiny live Christmas tree with almost no decorations (maybe that's where I am heading, lol). I don't remember if I met Grandma Radtke before or after I married Paul, but I really liked her. She was a very sweet lady with a very thick German accent. She and her husband were married in Germany. Her husband came to the United States first, got settled, and then went back for her. She was very young, about 18 when she came here. Until the day she died she had a very thick accent. I could understand her, but if she got excited, it was more difficult to understand her. I liked to get her talking about "the old days" and she used to get talking very fast and I would have to keep asking her to repeat herself. One of the things that we all remember about her was that every time we came to visit, a lot of the family that lived in that area (N. Quincy) would come and we would have a big dinner. Most of the time she made potato salad and ham. If it was Christmas time, she always made her famous Spritz cookies, half of them were frosted and half of them plain. I don't ever remember her actually sitting at the table with us. She used to sit away from the table, usually in a corner of the room, and just wait for someone to need something and then she would jump it and get it. I think of her when I have a big crowd here and totally understand why she would do that. She was just the nicest person and I wish that I could have seen her more and gotten to know her better.

Lately, Mason has taken to calling me Grandma Radtke, completely on his own. The only Grandma Radtke I know is Paul's grandmother, so I have been thinking of her a lot lately!

Mystery Puzzle

Yesterday afternoon I thought it would be fun for us to do a puzzle, one that we had never done before. Marley wasn't feeling well and this would be something quiet that we could do. I knew we had some old puzzles in the cellar, so Marley and I went hunting for one. We found one that my mother-in-law had given me years ago. She knew that I loved mysteries and cats, and this puzzle was a mystery puzzle with cats. How perfect. Except that I never put it together. The box wasn't even opened! It was called Feline Frenzy by bePuzzled. There was a small booklet that told the story of the mystery, then you had to put the puzzle together to solve the crime.

Marley and I started out doing it, but Kristen couldn't help but get involved. We actually worked on it for about 3 hours. The frustrating thing about this puzzle is that the puzzle image is not the image on the box cover, so you have nothing to go by to put the puzzle together! We had a lot of fun doing it, but didn't finish it.

Early this morning Kristen called to say that Marley still wasn't feeling well and she didn't think she should go to school; could she stay with me for half a day. After she came, we put an American Girl movie on and then set out to finish the puzzle. Even Paul got involved today!

By the time Kristen came to pick Marley up, it was all finished! Once you finished the puzzle, you were supposed to guess "who done it" and then check in the little booklet. The answer was written backwards and you had to hold it up to a mirror to read the whole explanation.



It was so much fun, that we ordered another bePuzzled puzzle on the Internet. This one is called Murder on the Titanic, and it is twice as big. Can't wait to start that!

Oh, by the way, Paul put the Christmas tree away today. What? It's only March 5th!



Maybe next year we can be normal!

Tulips

Paul brought home tulips yesterday. This morning they looked so pretty with the morning light coming in that I decided to take a picture of them.

Tulips always remind me of what my mother-in-law used to quote:

Tulips in the garden
Tulips in the park
But the best tulips
Are the two lips in the dark!

LOL, funny the things that pop into your mind!

Something new...

Well, today is March 1st and I have been laid off from my job for four months. I had thought that for this first year that I would post something every day of what I have been doing, and I have done that so far. But, after four months, things have settled down to a routine that I think I have successfully blogged!

So...I'm going to add a little something new. Every Tuesday I am going to blog a story about something that has happened since Paul and I have been married. I have lots of stories; we have been married for 41 1/2 years! On Thursdays, I am going to blog a story from before we were married. So, expect something different at least twice a week. I still want to document every day life, so on those days, if I feel something needs to be told, I'll add a blurb at the end of the post. Sound good? I'm excited about this new little project.

So, today is Thursday, and today's story will be of something that happened before we were married. Here we go.

The picture above is of downtown Springfield. I am not sure of the year, but by the looks of the cars and trolleys, it is probably sometime in the late 1920's.

My friend Leslee, from my former job, and I used to talk about downtown. We have a lot in common. We were both raised by our grandmothers and we used to compare notes about that. She and her grandmother lived in Springfield not too far from Mercy Hospital. She used to go downtown with her grandmother when she was young, and then as she got older, with her friends. I used to go shopping downtown with my aunt Dot on Thursday nights. Some of her favorite stores were Steigers, Forbes and Wallace, and Peerless. She would pick a few things out, we would go into the dressing rooms and usually I would be sent out to get a different size or color. Most of the time she didn't buy anything. As a child, I could never understand how she could spend so much time shopping and not buy anything. I sure know why now!

She also took me downtown to see Santa Claus every year when I was young. We used to park in a parking lot quite a ways from downtown and then walk. It was probably free there, LOL. I think that parking lot is under the highway now. We probably went to Johnson's Bookstore to see Santa. I have pictures up until age 7 or 8; I wish the name of the store was on the pictures.

Leslee always talked about going with her grandmother to Poole's Dry Goods, which is the store on the right of the picture above. Leslee remembers so much more about downtown than I do. I always wanted us to take a walk down Main St. so that she could point out where certain stores were. Maybe we can still do that.

One day I was "Googling" the history of downtown Springfield and I came across this picture and printed it for Leslee. She was so excited to get it.

I really miss seeing Leslee every day.