Throwback Thursday - The Lathrops and Belden Ct.

This is a picture of our good friends Linda and Ralph Lathrop, and their first son Bobby. It was taken in 1972 in our apartment at Belden Court in Agawam.

Linda has been a friend of mine since childhood. She married Ralph and moved to Florida where Ralph is from. After a year or so they moved back here and got an apartment at Belden Court. Before Paul and I got married we visited them and loved their apartment. After we got married we rented an apartment across the parking lot from them and lived there for two years.

This is a picture of where our apartment was. Our first apartment, a one bedroom, was where you see our little blue Volkswagen, and our second apartment, a two bedroom, was to the upper right of the pillars. Both Paul and I have very good memories of that place.



Linda, if you are reading this, could you fill in some blanks for me? What year did you get married, what year did you move back from Florida, and was this your first apartment after you came back from Florida? Thanks.

By the way, Happy First day of Spring.

The weather feels more like the first day of Summer. We hit 79 degrees today and tied the record for 1945!

Mark and Mason came over late in the afternoon. Mason brought his bubble gun that he got at the Big E, and had lots of fun with it.

Throwback Thursday - Winters of the past

This is what winters used to be like in New England.

This picture was sent to us years ago by Paul's Uncle George; his mother Priscilla's brother. It is of Priscilla shoveling snow off the roof of their childhood home on Virginia St. in Springfield in 1947.

This is when they walked 10 miles to school in 10 feet of snow (slight exaggeration). Certainly not like this winter!!

Mason's "Bible Quiz"

For a while now, Mason has been calling his Bible, his Bible Quiz. I am sure this is because of all of the talk of Marley in Junior Bible Quiz. Last week in Prims Miss Pat was teaching the girls how to use the Table of Contents in the Bible and had them looking up scriptures. I was passing out Bibles and I asked Mason if he wanted to use a Bible. He said, no, that he had his own Bible Quiz.

This week, Mark and Janelle packed his "Bible Quiz" in his bag, and tonight he sat in the story circle with it. Before Christmas break, he was sitting in the story circle for the whole story. Since the break, he hasn't wanted to sit in the circle. Tonight though, since he had his own "Bible Quiz, he agreed to it, at least for a little while.

He is such a little character!

What a busy weekend....

On Friday, 3/16, my aunt Ettie and cousin Lynda came for a visit. Friday was actually Ettie's birthday, so I decided it would be nice to have the family over for a birthday dinner.

She was surprised when we had a birthday cake.



We all had a good time together, including Dot. We never left to bring her home until after 10 p.m. and she never asked to leave. She seemed so happy to be with all of her family.



The next day, Saturday, Ettie, Lynda and I went to visit her at The Atrium.



The weather was so nice we took a walk around the grounds, and then sat in the little garden that they have. Dot immediately went to work cleaning out the flower pots, weeding, pruning, etc. I'm so happy that they have a place where she can do this. She loves it.



Dad, Marge, and Ettie stayed and had dinner with her there, and Lynda and I went out for dinner. It was nice to catch up on each other. We don't do that enough. We all had a fun time that evening visiting with Dot in her "living room." At times I wondered if we were going to be asked to leave. My family is loud. We talk loud and laugh loud. At one time, one of the residents was in her room crying out and moaning a little. Dot went to see what was going on. She entered her room (the door was open) and ended up praying for the woman. Would you believe that in minutes the woman calmed down and fell asleep. I have noticed that the residents really do look out for each other; so nice to see that.

On Sunday, we all met at The Atrium again. Ettie and Lyn were leaving around 12:30 to go home. Dad and Marge were coming to take Dot back to their house for a corned beef and cabbage dinner. Dot seemed tired, but she was still up to going to Dad's house.

On the way home, the weather was so beautiful that I called Paul and asked him if he wanted to go to the Cape for today and tomorrow (Monday is his day off). The kids were all at the St. Patrick's Day Parade. Surprisingly he said yes, so we packed an overnight bag and off we went.

We stayed in Eastham at the Town Crier where we had stayed last year. The Cape was beautiful and warm enough that we were able to drive with the windows down.

The next day we headed up to the Provincetown area and went to Herring Cove Beach and Race Point Beach. The weather, again, was beautiful and the light was gorgeous. At Herring Cove Beach there were whales out by that NOAA boat. In this picture you can see two black dots on either side of the boat. Those are whales. We were told that they were Right and Humpback whales.



We worked our way back down the Cape, driving by all of our old haunts. What a fun day it was. Such a spur of the moment mini vacation.

Here are some pictures from today.



















P.S. More post offices. Be prepared - we went by a lot of post offices on the Cape!

East Sandwich


West Barnstable


Cummaquid


Yarmouth Port


Dennis


North Eastham


North Chatham


Chatham


Harwich Port


Dennisport


West Yarmouth


As I said, what a busy weekend!

Throwback 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!

Throwback Thursday - 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)