Throwback Thursday - Kristen and Mark

This is one of my favorite pictures of Kristen and Mark.  I think it was taken at Kristen's college graduation party (note - date pictures, even if you think you will always remember when it was taken).  Our good friend Ralph Lathrop snapped it and gave us a print.  #lovethesetwo

Throwback Thursday - Mark and the Trash Men

I love these pictures of Mark.  He was 2 years old here and fascinated with the trash truck and trash men.  In the good weather he would sit out on the front steps and wave to them.  I'm sure they got a kick out of him and they would wave back.  For Christmas that year he got a hard hat, and from then on whenever he heard the trash truck he would run for it and put it on.  So cute (check out that little plaid bathrobe!).

Throwback Thursday - Bedrooms

I took a class with Becky Higgins recently and in it she asked which pictures you wished you had of your childhood, etc.

I really wish I had pictures of my childhood bedrooms (I had two, one before my grandfather died and one after he died). My Aunt Dot took a lot of pictures but, as with most people back then, she took pictures of people and events.  Film and processing was expensive, and it probably seemed a waste to take pictures of just rooms in your home.

I can still picture in my mind some of my second room, but I wish I had pictures.

So I went looking in my old photo albums for pictures of bedrooms.

These are pictures of Paul and my bedroom in our first apartment in 1970-72.  I find it so funny that I brought some of my stuffed animals from home.

I still have these bedroom lamps.  They were my mother-in-law's.  She gave them to us, she said, until we got new ones.  Almost 48 years later, we still have them in our bedroom, lol.

This is from our second apartment in 1972-73.

I'm thankful that I have these pictures because really, in the early years of our marriage, we didn't take many.  But I wish I had more close up pictures of the things in these rooms.

Then I started looking for Mark and Kristen's first bedrooms.

When I was about 5 months pregnant we moved from a one bedroom apartment at Belden Ct in Agawam to a two bedroom apartment.  Kristen had most of the second room.

This is the story of the little crib.

In 1973 we moved into our house in Feeding Hills.  We had three bedrooms.  This is Kristen's room.

The third bedroom was Paul's office, book room, stuff that didn't go in any other room, lol. We arranged the room to fit Mark in when he was born in 1974.  We took a couple of pictures, probably to show how little space Mark had in that room!

He eventually had the whole room and most of the stuff in that room found a place in our bedroom, lol!

I am trying to go through my old photo albums chronologically and hopefully I will find some pictures of their rooms.  I'll update this post if I do.

Luckily, I tried to take pictures of my grandchildren's rooms, but that will be another post.

Its never too late to take ordinary, every day pictures (such as bedrooms, lol).

In Becky Higgins' class, she shared a quote from Take a Picture Today, Feel Happy Tomorrow by Annie M. Gordon, PhD. "In the moment, we think why record our everyday experiences, we will remember them in the future and they aren't that memorable anyway.  Even just a month later though, our memories of the event begin to dim, the details fall away, and what once seemed ordinary feels a bit more extraordinary." How true!

Throwback Thursday - Brick Carport Project

The year was 1979, and this was part of the plans that Paul made to make a brick patio under our carport.  This part of the plan was to calculate the number of bricks he needed, which was 1800.

A year or so previously, he had made a brick floor out of used sidewalk bricks for the shed in the backyard, and liked how it turned out.

The idea for putting bricks under the carport probably stemmed from the fact that I didn't really like the look of the blacktop driveway that went under the carport.

He decided to put sidewalk bricks on top of the blacktop, and did a lot of research and planning before attempting this.

He bought the bricks from Gagliarducci Construction, a paving contractor, at 227 Mill St. in Springfield.  They were old sidewalk bricks from downtown Springfield, 8 cents a brick if you picked them up yourself, which he did because he wanted to hand pick them. This was a real bargain.  Used building bricks were only 5 cents a piece, but new or used sidewalk bricks were at least 25 cents a piece everywhere else.

Paul cut holes in the blacktop along three sides for the anchors that would hold the 4 x 6 fir beams that would be the border. Then he had Kristen and Mark scoop out (with their little hands) the amount of dirt equivalent to 45 lbs of concrete (half a bag).

The focus of these pictures was the kids working on the brick carport project, but I love so many other things about these old pictures. You can see our cat Callie on the back steps, the trash cans with "Radtke" that Paul put on almost everything, his grandfather's old wheelbarrow, and my little fenced in flower garden. In the back yard you can see the shed with just the wheel of what was Kristen's bike, and Mark's bike with the training wheels on.  Kristen was 7 at the time and Mark was 5.

I have always loved how our brick carport turned out.  It is still perfect even after almost 39 years.  We use it as a patio in the summer, but we can still park under it in the winter.

Job well done, Paul!

Happy 43rd birthday Mark!

The other day I was talking with Mason about starting 3rd grade.  I showed him this picture of his father when he started 3rd grade, in the same school that Mason is going to.

This was the same grade where Mark crossed his eyes during the class picture!

He thought it was so funny!  Obviously, I didn't.  Raising boys is no joke!

Happy birthday Mark!

Throwback Thursday - Father/Son Campout

This week when we took Dot out for a ride we were driving on Stony Hill Rd. in Wilbraham and Paul said that he would love to know exactly where the boy scout camp was that the Royal Rangers used for their Father/Son Campouts.  He knew that it was somewhere on Stony Hill Rd. and so we set out to find it and take pictures of it.  I wanted to show the pictures to my son Mark and see if he recognized it at all.  

We found it and I got out to take some pictures.  Paul recognized the building and the grounds.  I'm not sure how many times Paul and Mark went here, but I found pictures from 1982 and 1983.  Mark would have been 8 and 9.  Paul thinks it was the first time they went that he made a walking stick.  He cut down a small tree and started whittling it.  Long after the campout was over, he was still putting polyurethane varnish on it to fill in the cracks.  He still uses it.  

These are a few of the pictures I have.

1982 - Mark is in the middle.

Mark is on the right.  The bunks were built right onto the wall, three high all around the room.

Mark is the boy standing.

1983 - Mark is in the front row, fourth from the left.

Mark is the kid looking at the camera.

I hope Mark has good memories of those weekends.  I know Paul does.  

This is the walking stick Paul made.  He still uses it (this picture was taken in 2010).  

These are the pictures that we took of the boy scout camp that we took this week.  Does it look familiar to you Mark?

Happy 42nd Birthday Mark!

Back before ultrasounds were done as a regular part of prenatal care and you were able to know the sex of your baby, it was a surprise at birth whether you had a girl or a boy.

Because I had already had a girl, I just thought I would have another girl (talk about naive!).  We had a girl's name picked out, Amy, but we could not agree on a boy's name.  Paul wanted Peter.  Now I like the name Peter, but not with the last name Radtke.  Peter Radtke?  I imagined him standing at the bus stop and being teased by the other kids, "Here comes Peter Rabbit".  No it would not be Peter!  I wanted Mark.  We never did come to an agreement because, after all, we were having another girl!

So, when the doctor said, "It's a boy", I said, "Are you sure?" (must have been the medication, lol).  Before the name discussion could even come up again Paul said, "Do you still want to name him Mark?  You get to choose, you did all the work".  I knew it was probably said in a weak moment, but I went with it, and he was named Mark Edward Radtke.

It was another story with Kristen.  She was 2 yrs and 1 week old, and expected us to bring home a sister, Amy. Someone (probably my mother-in-law) bought her a doll and we called her Amy.  Even so, she called him Amy brudder for quite awhile!

Happy birthday Mark!

Throwback Thursday - Disney gifts from 1975

The Gonsalves are back from Disney!  This got me thinking about other Disney trips.  This one is from July 1975 so Kristen was almost 3 and Mark was almost 1.  My aunt Dot had just returned from Disney World with my cousin Lynda.  Dot brought each of the kids Disney T-shirts and hats.  Where has the  time gone?

Throwback Thursday - 5th Grade version of "Alice in Wonderland!"

The year was 1985 and Mark's 5th grade class performed their version of Alice in Wonderland.  Mark was the March Hare, and his two classmates on either side of him were Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.  Together they sang "A Very Merry Unbirthday to You."

I was looking through some old pictures the other day, actually looking for pictures of my grandmother and her sister Sadie, when I came upon this picture.  Every time I see it, it makes me laugh.

I talked to Mark about it the other night because I wanted to get the facts straight (before I can't remember anything about it, LOL).  He told me that his friend Andy's mother, Norma Turcotte, just happened to have this large rabbit costume.  I don't think he was too thrilled to have to wear it!

Another story saved.

And just like that.....he's off

Mason started kindergarten this morning.  How is that possible?


Wasn't it just his Dad's first day?

(Mark is in the plaid pants)

That saying, "The days are long, but the years are short" keeps coming back to haunt me!

That Was Then, This Is Now - a scrapbook page, week #6

This is week #6 of Cathy Zielske's Hybrid Scrapbooking Class, and another page that is out of my comfort zone.

Picking out the pictures was easy.  When it came time for the journaling, it took me on a tangent that I had totally not planned on.  This class has been harder for me than I thought it would be.  I am learning a lot, but the page content that Cathy has picked for her class has been something that I would never have chosen to do.  When they are finished, though, I'm really glad to have done them.

So, without further talk, this is week #6....

Throwback Thursday - A little tease

Lately, Mason has been into teasing Marley.  The more she gets upset, the more he does it.  I tell her to ignore him, that he only does it to get a rise out of her.  I told her about how Uncle Mark used to tease her mother unmercifully and when I would tell her to ignore him she would whine, "I can't."  Now Marley says the same thing.

A while ago Marley said to him, "Mason, don't be like your father", to which he retorted, almost angrily, "I want to be like my faver."

In these pictures Mark and Kristen were 1 and 3.  The look on Mark's face says it all. 

I feel like it's dejavu.

Digital Project Life 2014, Week 10. Scrapbook pages Pennies for a Purpose and Hello Winter

It seems good to be only working on one year now.


I also did a couple of scrapbook pages from 2012.

Throwback Thursday - Soccer 1980 and 2013

In my last post I posted pictures of Mason playing soccer for the first time.  This is Mark playing soccer his first year.  It was 1980.  He was 6 and in first grade.

Now they have an even younger league, 4 and 5 year olds.  This is Mason in 2013.  He is 4 and in preschool. 

It's fun to compare.



Change....

Last day at 32 Carroll St.

First Day at 150 Elmar Dr.

This was moving weekend for Mark and Janelle.  We were lucky to have good weather, lots of help, and a moving company (a guy and his son that we had used to move Dot).  Even so, moving is such a lot of work, in so many ways.  The worst is behind them though.  Now it's the unpacking and organizing.  Good thing they're young!