Marita's Confirmation; Tobin is the Sponsor

Marita made her Confirmation on Mother's Day, May 8th, 2011. 

She asked Tobin to be her sponsor the night he recieved his!

Carmen jumped into the picture here.  Tobin and Carmen served and Abram lectored at ourchurch at 11:30. We then drove to Manchester to be early for Marita's confirmation. We spent many hours in a church that day.

She made her confirmation at St. Joseph's cathedral in Manchester, NH.  I believe there were five parishes being confirmed at the cathedral that day. 

Here are Zebedee and Oswald (Marita's and Tobin's confirmation names).

Marita brought up the gifts.

I mentioned that we had spent many hours in church that day.  At four, when the confirmation was over, we rushed to Ben and Jerry's with a chocolate shake emergency.  We hadn't eaten since breakfast.  I saw a Ben and Jerry's in the center of town.  Abram walked into the ice cream shop and actually said: "We have an emergency! We need 6 chocolate shakes FAST!"  I laughed so hard.

Back at Chip and Marie's house Sierra was being her cute self.  I had to take a few shots of her. 

Princess Sierra always needs something in each hand.  It does make crawling and pushing strollers a challenge, but makes very cute photos.

Junior prom

The Junior Prom was on May 14th this year.  Tobin went with Steph Kalinowski. 

She came to rent the tux and pick out his tie and vest.  Her dress was pink and with many options she was smart to bring pieces from her dress so we could match the color as best as we could.  I kept the pieces and used them to order her wrist corsage. 

Pinning on the boutonniere

putting on the wrist corsage

Beautiful smiles

We asked them to do a funny pose and they did this:

I attempted to take a nice picture of him and he made this funny face at me

I got this one later. 

Then Steph and her friend Teagan posed

I love the back of her dress; it's all tied up.

Steph's dress looked like a princess dress

We then drove them to Jimmy's house for a huge group photo.

Kevin Shae, Kaleigh Filiere, Steph and Tobin

Two friends of Tobin's: Rob Matthews and Nate Nelson-Maney

Nice shot of the wrist corsage

Tobin doing his Usain Bolt pose

Jimmy's back yard was amazing.  Abram took this picture of the back yard koi pond and waterfall.

They even had a chicken coop

I know they had a great night. It continued by going to the after prom party at the YMCA. I picked them up at 5am. Steph was asleep in 4 minutes after leaving the parking lot. It was a long day but a good one with great memories.

Easter 2011

Easter was so long ago, I've forgotten what date it was. I looked it up, April 24th.  I'm very late in keeping up with the blog, but thankfully I remember the events well and can still retell it.

We began our Easter celebration with the Easter vigil. The kids really like that mass regardless of the fact it is three hours long. Going to mass Saturday night makes our Sunday mornings more relaxed. Each Easter the kids make up questions for each other, hide them in eggs around the house and create clues to find the eggs. I guess we've blended an Easter egg hunt with a scavenger hunt. Either I or Abram come up with a Bible question that each child has to research in order to answer. This usually takes a good hour or more before they find a clue as to where their Easter basket is.

Here is my Easter bunny, waiting for the egg/scavenger hunt to begin!

I even treated all four cats with time outside.  I just love how regal Cappi looks.

Here is Friday.  I only allow her to stay out for a max of 10 minutes.  She wanders too much for my comfort level.  Plus, watching four cats is a bit much.

Zori and Marley went out, but this in the only picture I have of Zori.  She was either hunting a leaf or saw a chipmunk.  No she did not catch one. 

Later in the day, we drove to NH to see my mom, Lawrence, Joel, Noah and Matthew. 

Rachel and Noah played a few games of Botchi.

At some point I realized that both Joel and Carmen were wearing grey and white striped shirts.  I attempted to get some picture of them together. 

Then there was the slouching contest between Joel and Tobin

Here's a nice photo of Noah and Rachel together. 

For those who don't know, Joel is Carmen's godfather and Noah is Rachel's god father. 

We had a wonderful Easter!

April vacation: Boston Marathon and college visits

April vacation in Massachusetts begins with Marathon Monday. We had wanted to visit some colleges with Tobin over vacation. Monday began with a scurry to get to the finish line in Boston, or as close to it as we could, before the lead men finished the marathon. Miraculously, we were able to find a parking spot right on Mass Ave across from MIT. We walked across the Mass Ave bridge and found barricades near Abram's fraternity house where the race route elbows two the last 1/2 mile.

Here is my gang hanging out waiting for the lead men to arrive.

This is Chi Phi, Abram's fraternity house, at the corner of Hereford and Comm Ave.  We saw the lead cars with times arrive before the runners did.  It was a good spot to stand and get a glimpse of the runners.

The magnolia trees were blooming that day.  It was a beautiful spring day. 

Here are the three lead men, one was American, at the final stretch being directed by the police officer.

There were still wheel chair racers coming in with the lead men.  It is difficult for the racers if they follow some of the lead cars because the cars cannot go past this point, but the racers need to take a right to finish the race. 

Here was one of the lead women. 

We stayed to see some of the finishers.  I was able to download an app to get updates on a friend who was running, but we did not stay to see her finish.  The marathon was a treat and now we were going to walk to North Eastern to meet up with Nico who was going to give us a tour. 

While walking down Newbury street I found a clothing store that had their display window full of old sewing machines.  I was so interested in looking at them. 

This is North Eastern from the street view.  The green line is above ground here and has a stop where we were waiting.  I wasn't sure how the school would seem being right in the middle of Boston.

Then Nico took us into the heart of the campus and it was amazing.  I was struck by the fact that less than building width ago we were right on the main streets with all the noise of the city and now it was quite and beautiful.  It was almost like you were transported into a new place.

This is North Eastern's memorial wall for veterans.  It reminds me of the wall in DC for Vietnam.

As we are walking through campus, we find a statue of someone with a cat.  Of course my girls will pose well with a cat statue!

Nico took Tobin to eat lunch in one of the main campus areas while we discovered that Pizzaria Uno has a fantastic GF pizza!  Thanks Nico for taking time to show Tobin and us around your campus.  I know he liked the campus. 

We briefly walked through MIT before we left the Boston/ Cambridge area.  MIT was having a four day weekend due to the holiday so we couldn't show Tobin some of the larger classrooms nor the chapel where he was baptized.  So Abram, Isaac, Aidan and Tobin returned for a tour and talk on Saturday to learn more about MIT.

Thursday we headed to western Mass to see UMASS Amhurst.  The UMASS running coach had shown interest in him earlier in the year so we went out to see their campus.

It is huge!  We couldn't see one end to the next.  It is a beautiful campus though. 

I love that there are bike lanes and walking lanes on campus.

We ended the tour of campus by eating at the best cafeteria, as told to us by our guide.  For starters, we ate for free.  The cafeteria was huge.  There were so many different choices for food it was overwhelming.  We sat in cafe booths with soft cushions.  Very nice!

Friday, Tobin and I went to WPI for a tour.  We didn't get to see Dylan though.  He was off campus, plus it was final project week so everyone there was very busy.

Not every day was dedicated to Tobin and colleges.  On Tues I hosted a soccer party for Carmen's indoor soccer team.  I had ten 13 year old girls over from 2-8.  They were great, squeally for a bit, but everyone had a great time.  I have a picture of the soccer ball cake I made, but cannot find it as I write this blog.  Once I find it, I will edit this blog and update it. 

Overall, we had a full week.