Quincy's World

Where does the time go? “Who has time? But then if we never *take* time, how can we have time?” Bonus points to whoever tells me who said that quote.

I never know what to post of interest these days. We had an idea at dinner tonight though. He’s become a really good colorer lately. He has one coloring book in particular that is his book – no adult help allowed (our rule). He’s done some nice work. And because I’ve been doing some scanning lately of random things, I figured why not scan in some of his coloring pages to share and save. Why not, indeed.

Without further ado, I present four of Quincy’s coloring efforts:

Christmas 2009 was a nice quiet one in Maine. This is the second one in a row where we’ve stayed in Maine. Can’t say that I’ve missed the travel around Christmastime. We paid our travel dues this year at Thanksgiving.

Quincy was a lot more into the whole Christmas season this year. It was neat to see him get excited about all the different aspects of it. He was a big help putting up decorations around the house too. The highlight for him was getting his own strands of colored lights hung up in his room. I’m sure this will have to be repeated every year now.

All the pre-Christmas hoopla did wear him out though. Our Christmas Eve service at church was not late, 6:30pm, but Quincy fell asleep in the car on the way over. He then proceeded to sleep through the musical rehearsals and about half of the actual service. He awoke right around the time that Dara was finishing up her flute part to a carol. Quincy was then awake and back to normal, or as normal as a four year old can be on Christmas Eve.

Fortunately for us, we had everything all done well before bedtime ’cause we were not going to stay up late knowing full well that Quincy would probably be up early. He did surprise us a little by sleeping in a smidge though (but I was up getting breakfast ready). Growing up, we had a rule that we couldn’t open our stockings until we drank our juice. We go a little further here. Dara and I decided that we’d actually eat breakfast first. For the second year in a row we had crepes with strawberries. In the pictures, you might notice that I have a whipped cream covered honeyball as well. Needed my greens!

Quincy was great about opening his gifts. He didn’t just tear into one, look at it, toss it aside and then rip into another. We decided that there was no need to rush him – we weren’t going any where that day. The few times he was ready to move on quickly was over clothes and books (hmm, don’t most kids do this)? The rest of the day was putting together Legos, or playing trucks, or with some other neat toy. His favorite new shirt is his Lego Star Wars t-shirt.

Grammie and Grampa Rock arrived later on Christmas day in time to have supper with us. Quincy was excited to see them and that he had more gifts to open. More Legos!

We had a very large meal on Saturday – the type of meal that keeps on giving for about a week. Quincy had a great time playing with the grandparents – even if he did wear them out after a while. Dara was not used to having Quincy at her all the time to play and she wasn’t sure what to do with all that freed up time. Quincy was sad to see them go on the 27th, but we’ll probably be seeing them sometime in mid 2010.

All-in-all, we had a very nice, blessed Christmas here in Maine and we hope you all did as well.

In case you missed the link earlier in the post – Christmas pictures.

Honeyballs have been a Rock family Christmas tradition that goes way back to my childhood. The only time we make these cookies is at Christmastime. Make them any other time, and they would lose their luster and their specialness. This past Saturday, December 5th, was the day we got our Christmas tree, did the interior decorating and did the first batch of honeyballs. Pictures from that day can be found over in the galleries.

What the pictures over there do not show is how the honeyballs were a complete, total, utter, disaster. I might be overdoing it, but they got messed up. I wish I could blame Quincy, but his only job was to roll the ball in the green and red sugar. I can’t blame Dara either. All she did was roll the dough into balls. Hmm, that only leaves me. I will shoulder part of the blame, but believe it or not, I’m going to blame this on Ashby. Allow me to explain.

Ashby has been gone since mid-September, but there are things in the house that remain from his time with us. One of those items still around is the baking soda I bought to de-skunk him a while back after he was sprayed. This is no ordinary baking soda either. This is Walgreens baking soda. I had to buy generic because Ashby got skunked late on a Sunday night and I could not find anything else that was open. Okay, so how does this relate to honeyballs?

The only leavening agent in these cookies is baking soda. There is no baking powder to help carry the load. So, we believe we had old, skanky baking soda that, for whatever reason, was unable to perform its given function. It had one job to do and failed to do it. The resulting cookies? See for yourself:

The honeyball on the right was made today, December 7th, with Arm and Hammer baking soda. Huge difference. The honeywafers, as I call them, are now soft and very, very chewy. Dara will pawn them off at work and we’ll keep the good ones.

Oh, I might be at fault just a smidge too. The dough seemed “wetter” than usual, meaning I might have shorted it on the flour. But, for my money, I’m putting all the blame on the generic baking soda.

This year for Thanksgiving, we drove over to Suffield, Connecticut to spend it with the Parnins. The drive to their house is on the short side of things when you consider we have driven over to New York and down to Maryland. Quincy did complain more on this car ride, including telling us that “my butt is sweaty”. This was most likely true, as he was riding in his car seat in fleece pants. Needless to say, we did not make that same mistake for the car ride home.

Quincy hadn’t seen the Parnin girls, Mary and Sammie, for two years when they came to our house for this same holiday. There was no trouble with him warming up to anybody. They all jumped right in and started playing all sorts of things. Sammie is a big fan of the movie Cars, as is Quincy, so that was nice. Quincy’s biggest worry was that there would only be dolls to play with. Now, I have nothing against Barbie (and Mary has a bunch), but it just isn’t Quincy’s thing.

Thanksgiving day was a day of too much food – the way it should be. Steph and Dara did a great job on the meal prep and getting things ready for the company. The other company was Frank’s parents, Auntie sister (she’s a nun) and his sister Marie and her family. It was nice to see all the people I hadn’t seen in years.

On Saturday, we drove up to Holyoke to go to the children’s museum that is there. Coincidentally, Grammie and Grampa Rock were in Holyoke for the weekend for a reunion. So, we invited them to come to the museum as well. Quincy had a great time playing there and getting to see his grandparents for most of the day. We saw them on Sunday AM for breakfast too, before we left for ME.

All in all, it was a really nice getaway for us. A big “thank-you” to the Parnins for putting us up for that many nights. We enjoyed our visit and were glad that the kids all had fun playing together.

There’s a bunch of pictures from the holiday over in the galleries.