A Sunday Dinner To Remember

We had a nice dinner all together. We had chicken, corn, and sweet potatoes; pretty regular food by our dinner standards. Reuben and Jacob can be counted on to eat very well with this dinner. Faith is another story. However tonight with very little prodding she ate all her sweet potatoes, and more astonishing ate all the chicken on her plate. There were only 4 small pieces, but it was impressive for her.

Perhaps it had something to do with the decadent desert that Fred got the kids at Wegmans; chocolate covered brownies with sprinkles on a stick.

Arlington Cemetery

Nana and Mr. Fred are visiting. They are first victims, I mean guest using our new convertible sofa. Initial word has it that's pretty comfortable. Today we all went out to breakfast. Mixing things up and playing on the wild side we went to Silver Diner instead of IHOP. Breakfast was good all around. Afterwards, we visited Arlington Cemetery.
A nice man from Pennsylvania, “oil country” took our picture near Kennedy's grave site. 4/5 looking at the camera is pretty good. We took the tourmobile around the cemetery. Good thing we did, it was very hot, 94 or so and humid, walking the whole place would not have been possible with or without the kids.
We saw the changing of the guard which takes place every 30 minutes during the day. The actual /inspection/changing process takes about minutes so its almost like a continuous cycle. We also learned that all the remains of the unknown are know known as result of recent DNA testing.
The kids were very well behaved and respectful at the cemetery, so we thought about treating them to I-C-E C-R-E-A-M. I spelled it because I wasn't sure Karen and company would go for it. Didn't do too much good as Reuben answered “Yeah, Ice Cream!” Uh Oh. I think Karen and I need a new language. We stopped off at our new favorite ice cream place, a new Carvel near us. Smiling faces all about.

Day 2 in NY - Westchester

Day 2 – Visit to Westchester. We started off from LI early. I wanted to see my friend Chaz, his wife Lisa, and daughter Sara. So on the way up to Westchester , on our way to see and stay with my brother Steven, we stopped off at Chaz' place. I haven't seen Chaz in about year and I'm not sure if I ever saw his daughter. We had nice, but much too short a visit. Sara just about finished showing our kids many of her toys by the time we had to leave.
Here is Chaz and his daughter. Reuben naturally gave her a big hug when we left. 15 minutes later we were at my brother's. He had recently found a great park about 1 mile from his house. Beautiful park. I'll let the picture do the talking
Just your ordinary neighboring mansion overlooking the water and the park.
After the park we all went back to Steven and Tracy's and hung out at their house. Little Nathan could not have been a better host. But wait there's more. Uncle Steven brought out the tee-ball set! Jacob was hitting great....
	... but Uncle Steven could use some practice.

Back From NY - I

We returned tonight from a long weekend in NY. Late Friday (actually early Saturday) we arrived at my parents on LI. Then on Saturday we had a wonderful, leisurely day. The weather was beautiful and the kids played in a nearby park for a long while in the morning. Later Mark and Jess, and Steven and Tracy with baby Nathan came over for a BBQ. What a great time. Mark and Jess brought an amazing toy, Stomping Rockets, that the kids just loved. Kept the boys busy and entertained for hours! We also all got to spend some quality time with baby Nathan. A very good and really cute baby. And... we also celebrated my Dad's birhtday. All that and it really was a leisurely spent day.



And the Stomp Rockets Movie

Baker Reunion

Yesterday was a fun day! I met up with college buddies at one of their houses in MD. Five families represented, 7 Bakerites + 2 non MIT spouses, and 12 kids none older than 9, with a median of about 4 (hey, we're MIT alums). Number 12 is missing from the photo after falling off the couch and banging his head.

I came with our three kids, but had to go without Karen who had a pre-school board meeting. Kids were really great and watching all three by myself was pretty easy, though there were 4 other mothers at the party.


The cool moms!!! Next time with Karen.


Three year olds and their tea parties.


As luck would have it (a 5.7% chance, assuming that there is a 44% probability of not everyone having a unique birthday) we had a birthday boy in the house. My friend Neal.


Reuben made yet another new girlfriend.

Time flew and before I new it it was 8pm and the cake was yet to come. We stayed for cake and then made a run for it. Got in around 9 and all were to bed before 9:30 and before Karen got home; phew!

Visit From Uncle David and Aunt Kathy

Yesterday Uncle David and Aunt Kathy came down from Maryland for a very nice visit. It was also Kathy's birthday which we celebrated with an ice cream cake.

Jacob was making sure the cake got cut!! First time all day he was sitting straight at the table ;-)


Uncle David meanwhile was having fun with Faith teaching her the finer points of the Time Sq. shell game.

Early afternoon, my folks went home. Though we'll be seeing them again in a few days as we head to NY this coming weekend to see my new nephew Nathan again. All the while my Dad was hear we would walk Tipper together and look for the fox. No sightings. Wouldn't you know tonight as I'm coming back to the house I meet up with my another neighbor walking his two dogs, which are going going crazy as we approach. There in the middle of our court is one of the foxes. It then sauntered away as we approached, more bothered than scared of us.

Air & Space Again

Last week Karen and her parents went for visit. This week it was my turn with my parents and Reuben and Jacob. We had a great time. Started out the day with breakfast at IHOP and then went straight out to the museum. Now that the boys are 4, they can spend a couple of hours in one place without a tantrum or fight breaking out. Makes going out so much nicer.



Grandma lecturing the boys on the excessive operating costs of the concorde.



Grandpa is career-long Grummanite. The Air & Space museums (DC and Dulles) are like a look down memory-lane for him. Here is the recently retired F-14. I actually got to work on this program too on one of my summer jobs during college.


Everyone was pretty fascinated with all the different aircraft engines. My Mom would be a great engineer of today with its emphasis on COTS. Her comment was "why do they need so many different ones, couldn't many of them use the same." Engineering has certainly rubbed off on her.


Finally, here is the crew looking at the flight suit of an astronaut that my Dad worked with at Grumman. His name is Fred Haise and he was a pilot on the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission. As a young kid, I got to play ping-pong with him at a Grumman party.

Around The House With Grandma and Grandpa

Faith is feeling much better. You want to see no tonsils... School bus cookie jar gift from Grandma and Grandpa. I think opening the present was the best part! Bring out the bikes. Reuben has fallen a few too many times on his two-wheeler (four if you count training wheels) and is back to the tricycle for now. On the tricycle, he's much faster than Jacob is on the two wheeler; at least for now. Then we all sat down for a nice dinner. And finally here is "A Day At The Races." There were two or three other races before this, before Karen got the camera. (This movie was taken on Wed. night not on Friday after the surgery).

Tonsillectomy Success

Busy morning today. Jacob had summer school with the bus picking him up at 7:25. Reuben had camp at 9:00. And Faith had her surgery scheduled for 8:40 with a check in at 7:10. Fortunately, my parents came down to help us out while Faith recovers from her tonsillectomy.

All went extremely well with the surgery and she's been really handling it great. In part it may be the Tylenol with Codeine, but also she has such a strong happy streak.

Anyway here are some random pics from today.

Jacob had a chance to play in the sprinkler this afternoon. One of his favorite pastimes.


Tipper was playing in our butterfly bushes chasing the bees and butterflies. Luckily she didn't get stung.


This is a zinnia that Karen and the kids planted from seeds this Spring. We are now starting to get lots of blooms.

These pictures came from Karen's new/former camera. It was a Casio EX-Z600, pretty small and relatively inexpensive. Took very nice pictures, but it had a hard time focusing while taking movies. Karen is big movie taker, so the camera is going back.

Butcher, Baker, And Candlestick Maker

Sometimes I forgot that our kids are still so young. Today I put Jacob on a big school bus for a summer school session. He felt so old. Seeing pictures like this one (Karen's handiwork) is comforting; I still I have my kiddies.

DC Tourist Season - Second Stop, National Zoo

Today's tourist attraction was the National Zoo. The kids have been dying to go to the zoo ever since we tried going and couldn't get a parking spot. Having had the parking problem before, we wanted to get there early. We tried to hurry through breakfast, but Faith wasn't eating using the “my tummy hurts” excuse (note subtle foreshadowing). We hurried her along and she finally ate some of her cereal. Then trying to get out the door Faith said that she didn't want to go but instead wanted to go to bed (note less subtle foreshadowing). Well, we would have none of that and plopped in her car seat. We got the zoo parking lots before 10am and lots A and B were already full, but we easily parked in lot C. When we got into the zoo, all were excited!!
All were excited that is until we went into Amazonia. Faith cried upon going in that it smelled. It did smell a little, but this is a ZOO. Anyway after we got in, I picked Faith up and then realized she wasn't looking too good. Two seconds later she puked all over my shirt. I ran her out of Amazonia just in time as her second puke missed a crowd of people by about 5 seconds. Things settled down after that. We cleaned Faith up and I was left roaming the zoo shirtless until we could get to the zoo store; a long walk away. I wound up with a nice wild cat t-shirt. The boys then had a quick lunch and we were homeward bound.

DC Tourist Season - First Stop Udvar Hazy

While the kids were at camp, the adults minus me (hey someone's got to put bread on the table) went to the Air Space Museum, Udvar Hazy annex. Karen and her parents spent a few hours there. We've had previous visits with the kids: visit #1 & visit #2. Truly a great place. While there Karen tried to capture some pics for the kids' to hang on their walls. They are very big into cutting out pictures to hang; mostly cars and trucks, so airplanes will be a good addition.
Here is a Curtiss P40 Warhawk And here is the Enola Gay a B-29 Superfortress.
And still the one that can't be missed...The Space Shuttle Enterprise.
It was a hot afternoon, so Karen got the sprinkler for the kids out and they had a blast cooling off
Jacob looks pretty COLD, even though its 90 degrees out.	Looking much better here.
Guess they couldn't get Grandpa Michael or Grandma Rochelle to run through the sprinkler.