Quincy's World

Last week, Dara was off for an extended period of time for the Easter holiday. So, we decided to do something fun on Thursday (April 9th). Our original plans fell through at the last moment so we decided to take Quincy to Acadia and Bar Harbor. We gathered up some beach stuff for him and headed on over to Sand Beach.

It was really windy that day at the beach. The waves were taller than I’d seen thus far. Couple the high winds with the temperature not exceedingly warm and we didn’t stay there for very long. We headed into Bar Harbor for lunch and browsing through stores. We ate at Geddy’s – some of you have been there before with us. Kids’ meals come served on a frisbee. Quincy has one frisbee already from there. He had another, but I shredded that with the lawn mower – whoops. After lunch, we went to the grassy area near the waterfront and then played frisbee for quite a while. Dara took a lot of action shots with the camera. Some came out good, but others were blurry. You can see them for yourself.

After we were all frisbeed out, we did a little shopping and enjoyed the fact that there are no people in Bar Harbor at this time of year. Even in May there aren’t a lot of people around either. I’m sure we’ll be heading back to the beach there when the weather is a bit nicer. Plus, we can continue to add to Quincy’s frisbee collection.

Quincy has always loved LEGO products. Uncle Bill and Aunt Melissa started him off right with a big box of Quatros when he was very little. We still use them for bridges and tunnels with the Thomas train stuff he has. Once those seemed a little too simplistic for him, we moved on up to the Duplos. I think I got more fun out of those than Quincy did. I would make all kinds of contraptions for him. They, like the Quatros, still get used. They have both been supplanted, however, by the standard LEGOs.

Over a short time, Quincy has accumulated a good bunch of the standard LEGOs. He has a few construction ones, a couple fire and rescue ones, a ton of just figures and a tub of loose pieces. He’s always asking me to make things for him from the instructions. The other night, Quincy, by himself, built a truck just like it showed in the instruction manual. He didn’t use the same colors, but he used the correct pieces for it. Dara and I were impressed he could figure out the steps to make it.

Today, Quincy wanted to play with the Lincoln Logs. So after having him clean up the loose LEGOs, we dumped his Lincoln Logs all over the living room floor. I did not stay to watch and/or help him as I was baking some onion rye bread – yes, it is very tasty.

I could hear Quincy getting upset with his construction process and he asked me to come and help him. He tends to build his log homes too tall and too unstable. After I installed the appropriate crossbeams, he was all set to keep on building. Before the roof could be attached, we had to fill up the house with the tiny pieces. Hmm, you need a ladder to get inside this house.

Clicking on the small picture will bring the full-sized picture up for you to view. These pictures are not in the regular photo galleries.

Did you know that you can easily see the International Space Station at night? Quincy now knows this. When we were in Maryland, we took him to the Air & Space Museum building out at Dulles International Airport. One of the items there is the Space Shuttle Enterprise. Quincy really like it and all of the planes. We bought him a space-themed t-shirt as well.

So, in keeping with his new found interest in space, I decided to haul the family outside the other night to watch the ISS go by. It just so happens that the Space Shuttle Discovery is docked there right now too. So how does one know where and what time to look? Simple – you can either go to NASA’s website and find the information there or you can use the method I use over at Heavens-Above.com. Simply plug in your latitude and longitude and then you can find out when the ISS and other space objects will be visible to you. We’re lucky living up here in Maine because the station flies by every night – sometimes twice, not to mention no light pollution at our house.

It was fun trying to explain to Quincy that the bright object moving silently across the sky was the space shuttle and space station. I’ve watched it many a nights and it is always really cool to see. Just an FYI for you – the space shuttle will be leaving the space station later this week and that means it will look like two stars chasing each other across the sky. The shuttle lands on the 28th I believe.

We had a taste of Spring-ish type weather not too long ago. It was sunny and in the 40s. The snow was melting, or rather compacting, and the end of winter seemed to be in sight. What a difference a day, or in this case, night, makes.

They were calling for between 12-18 inches of the white stuff last night and into this morning. When I measured this AM with my tape measure, we had about 15 and maybe 1-2 more fell later. I got the driveway all cleaned up and then Quincy and I drove Dara to work – not because she couldn’t do it, but because we thought it would be fun. Plus, there’s a Tim Horton’s on the same street where Dara works, and Quincy does like his Timbits. For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about: Tim Horton’s is a better version of Dunkin’ Donuts and the Timbits are the donut holes.

After we got home and relaxed for a while and had lunch, we went outside. Quincy has really started to like playing in the snow. I, however, had to shovel the front walk – which was buried in said snow and the snow from the snowblower. Once I had my chores done, I had some fun with Quincy – which you can see over in the gallery I posted today.

I’d like to say we’re done with snow, but it is still only February and we do live in northern New England.