Knowledge often comes from difficult situations.

Sitting around dinner, my wife shared a story about the school book fair. This year they implemented a new rule that only kids that had money were allowed to go down to the book fair to look at and buy books. In one class out the size of 22 kids 3 of the kids had to stay back in the room by themselves while they other kids got to go to the book fair. Perhaps they forgot to tell their parents about the book fair or the parents choose to not spend the money on books. The kids appeared to be really dejected about not being able to participate. It reminded me of the time that I had forgotten to tell my parents about the scholastic book ordering form and when all the books arrived I was the only one who didn't get any. It is in difficult situations like these that you hope the kids or their parents take this opportunity to learn. Learn that you don't have to do what everyone else does to feel like you belong. And if it is important to you next time you will remember to be prepared. Next time you'll remember to bring in the money or bring home the form to order books. It is another way for kids to learn responsibility without being explicitly taught it. It is about learning to handle difficult situations that seem huge at that age but really aren't. Without knowing, my parents allowing me to fail occasionally or deal with the consequences of my misstep or my irresponsibility. This allowed me to learn and mature. These experiences while difficult are easier experienced and learned from at a young age; Rather than when you are older and the consequences are so much greater.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving! The Lewis's had a wonderful family dinner. We got to see the Aunt's which was nice it has been a while. I did get the traditional picture of the dinner table and Turkey. I have to get around to upload them. This year the 2 things I am Thankful for are probably the same 2 things that I was thankful for last year but can't remember for sure. Family and living in this great country.

Memorable Get Togethers

We weren't able to hook up with friends who came from out of town this weekend. Family, kids and life seem to get really complicated some how as you get older. I was looking forward to perhaps recapturing some of those memorable reunions with friends over dinner. There were 2 get togethers that I recalled this morning and both were "before kids" Marc and Cheryl were visiting from out of town and we ate dinner in the North End in Boston. We laughed through the whole evening. Another time was dinner with Riccio, Jack S and Lou where we ate at Elizabeth's in Newport. You could bring your own wine and beer to dinner. Fun times, unfortunately not this weekend. Make the most you weekend.

Happy Halloween

Fun times at the Lattanzi's. I don't recall my parents ever taking us out for halloween. As kids we just went. I remember being in the 3rd and 4th grade and just going out for halloween. Our daughter was thirteen before she went out for halloween by herself. Man times have changed when it comes to protecting our kids. Happy Halloweeen all!

Summer Vacations

The vacations I remember most growing up were the ones I spent with my family at the beach or traveling doing long road trips. At the end of the summer we got the family to do both. We did a family roadtrip to Niagra Falls and Toronto. We got to see Tio and the family in Mississagua. We didn't do it old school style though. Where the kids lay across the back windshield above the back seat in a huge 1970 Chevy Impala. We did it the safe way with seat belts and just a little speeding. We got some skateboarding in, experienced the full fury of the falls including the Maid of the Mist. Over came some childhood fears with that. I recall being a kid and going to the falls and thinking. Thank god our parents didn't have alot of extra money to go on those boats. Those boats look scary and those people are nuts. My son who is about the same age thought the same. We both decided to do it anyways with the reset of the family. What a thrill and will be quite memorable. The other tradition of summer vacations and roadtrip travel is to do the vacation with the uncles, aunts and cousins. So we all experienced Niagara even the brave little nieces too!


I was so happy to also get to go to the beach for a summer vacation with the family. It had to rate in the top 3 vacations our family has had. Extremely relaxing and replenishing for each of us to enjoy each other in a non-scheduled way.








Canada 2009

Work is Part of Life

Recently through work I got some mentors that are vice presidents. They asked me to tell them about my work history. I looked back at the jobs I have had over my career. I have had relatively few jobs after I graduated from college. When I thought back earlier in my life, I realized how many more jobs I have had. College internships as a surveyor, summer college jobs as an engineer, working during high school as a dishwasher at a nursing home, clerk at a supermarket, meat market and aerosol can factory. Man there is a lot of work and jobs in life and you start young. I was probably 13 when I first started working. I am so proud of our kids because our kids have started working without anyone really asking them to. The desire to work is in them. My son has started cutting the grass. He looks like a big guy pushing that mower around. My wife claims he cuts the grass better than I do. I have to agree. My daughter has pulled her resume together and got a baby sitting job. She got the job herself without her mother or I pushing her or helping her. Our kids make us both proud and thankful to have such great hard working kids.

People not things make your life a richer experience

It isn't nice to be jealous of others but we are all human and I have been jealous of others. Seems for many the ability to make friends with many people comes much easier than it comes for me. For the most part I have had the same core set of friends for a long time. I have been jealous of some of my friends and even my wife because of their ability to easily make friendships with people. Enjoying the company of people makes life a more enjoyable experience. It isn't the materialistic things in life that make it fun. What makes it fun is being able to share those things with the friends and family around you.

Here are some great examples from this past weekend that point this out. While having a new guitar is nice, the experience of sharing that guitar with people is 10 x more fun. This past weekend we sat by a fire pit. My son, brother and his family sat around eating Smores while the boys played guitar. It was a memorable and enjoyable experience. Another example from this past Friday was the Tall Ships were in Boston. Thanks to Susan's friendships we were invited to a 50th birthday. Her friends husband invited 10 couples to tour the harbor in a Yacht. It was a memorable experience seeing all the boats and celebrating her birthday. We even got to stop by the airport and watch the planes fly overhead right before they landed. I am pleased to say that the Portuguese Tall Ship was the best looking Tall ship in harbor and I am not being biased. It definitely was.

While Roberta and her husband could have been on that boat alone.. the experience of having their friends their to enjoy it made for richer experience. Hope you all enjoyed your fourth of July. Here are some pictures from the Tall Ships.

Smell the Flowers Every Day.

Sad news today Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson died today. When people that you watched as a kid on Television or heard on the radio die, it makes you stop and think. Fifty years old is less than 8 years away. Am I living life the way I should and the way I expected. The question becomes more like am I living each day the way I should. Enjoying the people, friends and family around me each day, hour and even minute you have an opportunity to. Days like today remind you that I have to. Smell the flowers once in a while. Today's picture is taken by my daughter.

Surviving to adulthood

My wife often kids me about how my brother and I survived to become adults. Usually she says this, after I tell her many of the stories about growing up as a kid. I think nah.. it wasn't that bad.. but when your brother has just as many crazy stories as you do about growing up then you realize; Yeah maybe you were pretty lucky to make to adulthood. Tony shared an interesting story about how while my father was sleeping, he decided to make himself some food on the stove. He was only 3 or 4 years old. Since my dad worked in the evenings he slept during the day when my mom was at work. One day while dad was a asleep, Tony turned on the gas oven. Luckily my dad woke up and turned of the gas. Then I thought about how many other stove incidenty had happened growing up. We had 2 grease fires back in Cumberland. I remember the Fireman saying hey haven't we been in this house before for a fire... I was like nah you must be mistaken. Who would have 2 grease fires in the same house. I guess having to deal with some adversity when your young helps you better handle it when your older. Make sure to give your kid some adversity.. I think sometimes kids including my own don't get enough of it now a days.

Summer is coming.

My favorite season of the year is summer. I was going through my photos from last year and came across this one in my Flickr.com photo stream. What struck me was that I really liked the photo and there were ZERO views on it. Meaning no one had looked at it. My most popular photo by the way is a the URI cheerleaders at the URI Uconn Game. I guess that is why they put good looking guys and girls in beer commercials. Its been busy and haven't had time to download the latest photos so in accordance with this years green theme I am reusing this photograph. Crane's beach MA.

Family Walk

Family walk. First of the warm weather in New England this year. We took the whole family for a walk. Our second walk with the the entire family and the dog. Pretty cool park over in Gloucester even when there aren't any leaves on the trees. Here are some of my favoriate pictures. I try to squeeze in the photography when I can with the family it isn't easy. Good pictures are made up of 4 very simple things. The right light, subject, composition and timing. But dam is it tough to get all 4 of these things at the same time. When I look at our kids on these outings I often wonder if my parents had the same thoughts like I do now. What will our kids think when they look back on these times and will they remember? I hope they do.

Life Is More Than Who We Are

The post title is a song title by the Goo Goo Dolls. That song pretty much captured where I was at when I took these pictures that evening. I kind of liked how all the pictures together on the PC Windows file manager from that night also captured the story of what was going on in that evening as a collage. Kind of neat how the little me is in focus but the big me is a blur. The self portraits where taken in the car as you can tell by the dash picture.

Belated Saint Patricks Day.

It was a special Saint Patricks Day. Susan made her first Saint Patrick's Day boiled dinner. There was plenty of olive oil and vinegar, since I am the only one who likes to put that on the dinner. Like any good Irish Dinner the guys almost ended up duking it out because of political differences.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter to all. Susan cooked one of the best Ham Easter dinners we have ever had. Missed the Lewis' I actually thought you guys were coming. Just shows how out of the loop guys are when it comes to holiday meals. For that matter guys are pretty clueless about a lot of other things when it comes to stuff like this.

Here are my favoriate shots. Sinclair was the most well behaved dog. I never expected he would be as good tempered as he is. He just laid on the floor in the dining room while everyone ate. Eli would have been working the table thorough the whole dinner.







Easter Egg Hunt

Rapid blogging - Snow Boarding Rules

Some memorable times freezing my butt off watching my son and nephews on the mountain and warming up by the fire in the lodge. They were turning and carving down the hill by the sixth week.

God bless you little dude

Christening of Jack and Tina's son. Little Jack. I really like this picture it captures the special moment with Grand ma and Grand dad looking watching their kids on the alter.

Rapid blogging - "Happy Birthday Little Dude"

Happy birthday to the Nephew! He was loving the skateboard and the bike!

Being Trendy Is A Good Thing Sometimes.

Seems like the "Cool" thing to do lately is be green. People seem to be more aware of our environment and the impact they are having on it. I think this year is the "Green" year for our family. It started by getting the "Green" car of the year that gets over 40MPG on the highway. My wife is planting a fenced in garden so we can grow our own organic vegetables. The local organic co-op we joined last year didn't really work out. So Susan decided to make a garden.I will be posting a picture of Susan's garden tomorrow. We also have begun mulching our leaves and our garbage. We got our trash down to 1 barrel per week and recycle the remaining plastic and paper goods. The other green thing we did is reuse our rescued dog.

I think my parents were green even before it was the cool thing to do. They never owned an 8 cylinder engine car or truck. They always had a garden their entire lives. They always shut the lights off to conserve energy because they didn't want to pay a huge electric bill.

I think the economy is helping everyone get green again. So it OK to be trendy if a good thing comes from it.. Although as far as my daughter is concerned it still doesn't make me cool.

Happy Retirement

After a long life of working hard at many difficult jobs Avo Candida our Mae retires. Thank you mom for all you have done for us! Enjoy your retirement. We took her out to the Top of the Hub for dinner.

"Rapid Blogging" Sinclair

Twitter allows you to micro blog on the go from your Iphone. I told you about Twitter over 2 years ago before it became the rage.. "Rapid blogging" is when you fall behind with posts because you are too busy but need to catch up because some important things have happened in your life. If you don't post on them on the blog you'll likely look back and be upset that you didn't. Rapid blog's are short and simple catchup posts that you normally would do on Twitter. Since most of you don't Twitter I am catching you up with the Rapid Blog. I just coined the term.

Sinclair joins the family. We rescued this guy from a terrible situation down in Tennessee. We drove 2 hrs up to New Hampshire to get him. Poor thing is between 1 to 2 years old and he didn't even know how to walk up stairs. So we are teaching him and loving him.

The connected paths of life

Growing up we use to go to Scaraborough beach for one or two weeks. We would pile at least 2 families into a single rental. We we spent all day at the beach and then eat dinner back at the house. After dinner I would go down to the basket ball courts down by Cumberland Farms RT 138 off Knowles Way. I would also usually stop in to to get an ice cream. I got to know the girl. Her dad was a pharmacy professor at URI. Years later I ended up at URI and her dad had become the Dean of the Pharmacy school. I always wondered if I would run into her on campus. I instead ran into my first "girl friend" from when we first moved to the united states.

I was six years old and when we were living in Cumberland. We were renting an apartment in in a 4 unit double decker. She was a our neighbor. I would hang out in a tree that was growing along a wood stockade fence line that separate our properties. I would climb up the tree and she would climb up the tree on the other side of the fence. We would hang out together in the tree. We started the hanging out in the tree trend with your significant other way before "Twilight" made it cool. (I threw the Twilight reference in so that my daughter will finally think I am cool. I know it is hopeless.. I digress...) Her name was Vanessa. So years later, to be exact 14 years later, I was on campus at URI walking into the Library. She was coming out the rotating door and I was about to go in. I looked up and I saw Vanessa. I said "hi Vanessa". She looked at me like "huh"? I told her I use to be her neighbor who use to hang out with her in trees, Carlos. She thought some more and then said "WOW"! She couldn't believe that I had remembered her face and even her name. While I never forget a face, I always forget names. So even I am still a bit surprised that I remembered her name.

So there is a little secret about my past life and story on how you never know where life will take you and who you will connect with once again.

Even Casinos are slow.

I went to see my college friends and one of them was playing in a band. My first time to Mohegan Sun Casino. Very nice building and location for the casino. We got to enjoy some good country music. I even got to squeeze in some photography while I was there. This shot was of the stone mineral columns that were lit from the inside. Big thanks to Mike for setting up the get together. Super Matt has a great voice and his band sound great. There weren't a lot of people there because of the weak economy.

Post update. I have forgot to give photo credit to Lou who was the passenger and photographer for the first shot of the casino at sunset.

Trees and Skiis

Made some time for photos and skiing this past winter. I am only getting around to posting them now.

Yet another thing Busch screwed up.

Now that he isn't in office I feel like I can finally share all the things this guy did to put the country in the mess it is in today. This was one I just discovered this evening. The big three had proof of high mileage concept vehicles they had developed using government research dollars. The program had been established by Clinton with $2B to reduce our oil consumption. The program was canceled by George Busch. A Diesel Hybrid that was capable of 60MPG 10 years ago. Maybe if they hadn't canceled their plans I would have been driving an American Car instead of a German VW Diesel built in Mexico.

PNGV Partnership New Generation of Vehicles

Program Overview on Gov website.

GM Paper on the research

Postives of a Down Economy.

I was sitting around wondering what to write about this weekend. It occurred to me that there are some positive things that can come from a down economy. I am trying to do my best to use the old analogy of looking at a glass as being have full rather than being half empty. The good thing is I haven't had to travel in a long time. In fact my last trip was back in September to Austin. I was one of the fortunate ones that got to stay instead of going to ROME and Singapore. Darn economy! I would have like the trip to ROME. Oh well. A down economy I think makes you value materialistic things less because your realize you can quickly loose them if things don't go your way. A down economy makes you think more about how you can be "greener" by using less resources. A down economy reminds you to ask yourself where they hell does all our money go??? A down economy keeps you from being bored ... although I am bored right now. I need some excitement in my life. Not alot going on lately. I did get to ski with my snowboarding sun last weekend. You can check out my photoblogging site called www.fuzzyshot.com/broadcast It allows you to automatically upload and commment on your Iphone photos. I told you guys about Twitter 2 years ago before anyone even knew what it was.. and I am telling you now about fuzzyshot. There are some pictures of us skiing.

ICA Shepard Fairey

Vacation days with the family. We went to the ICA today in Boston. I always come back from there inspired to be more creative. I see why artistic people like to be around other artistic people. Each of them help each other collaborate to be more creative. While I was there, I took out my phone camera because I didn't have my real cameras and took this cool shot. It just shows you don't need expensive equipment to take an interesting photo. The artist we went to see was Shepard Fairey. He is the now famous artist who did the portrait of Barack Obama. He went to RSDC in RI and graduated at about the same time we did. I suspect that I probably had seen his Andrea stickers in Providence at the time and didn't even notice. The guy is huge now and very talented. He inspired me to hack a bit with my own creativity. I took one of my photos and experimented with photoshop. Maybe in 20 years I can make it look good too.

Simpler Times

I was cleaning up and backing up our music since our computer is showing it signs of age by failing to come on occasionally. When it does come on it has been slow. Funny how even machines get old and exhibit the same characteristics as humans in some ways. Anyways stumbled on a song that immediately brought me back to a time when life was much simpler. Songs can do that, bring you back.. So can smells. This time it was "Hey Jude" by the Beatles. It reminded me of being at the back on the bus with my fourth grade girl friend. On the way to see a Christmas Carol the movie. It was like a date. The excitement of going to see a movie and being with someone you think the world of. Sometimes it pays to be naive. But is it really naive. Maybe sometimes adults are the one's that make it too complicated. Listen to the music and bring yourself back. Remind yourself that it isn't that complicated. Remind yourself of the things your parents taught you, not by what they said but by what they did. Things like being strong and making sacrifices for your family and your kids. Things like enjoying the simpler things in life like food, people and the places where your share time with them. I won't share the sacrifices because there were many for both the kids and the parents. The sacrifices make you stronger. Sacrifices are what allow you to be strong enough to handle life when get older. It's been a while since I have taken a picture so I searched for a picture that would capture this posting. This one was taken by a friend Michael when we were doing exactly what this post says. Enjoying food, people and places.

Memorable Dinner at the Top of the Hub

A memorable and fun dinner with only the family adults. How can you top being at the Top of the Hub and talking about royalty?????

First moments of a new life

I occasionally have conversations with my parents or kids where I think I need to capture that story because some day I'll forget it. Someday one us engaged in this conversation will be gone and this story or experience will never be able to be known, appreciated or helpful to future generations that come. You and your kids are like the branches on tree that all lead to the same trunk.

Proud To Be and American Today.

Many of us stopped what we were doing this morning to watch history being made. I was overcome with emotion seeing Barack Obama being sworn in. I am so happy to see this man become president of the United States, at multiple levels. I am once again proud to be an American after 8 years of being embarrassed to be an American.

Here is his inauguration speech.

We went to a inauguration party and we were visited by Barack himself.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Happy Birthday TOO!

Been busy with the holidays. Often at each family gathering many of us will recall past times, causing us to recall a few past memories that sometimes each of us have forgotten. Thanks to the power of the mind and a group of people, the past can be recaptured again. Like the time that some how my brother and I figured out a way to go sledding even though our parents never gave us sleds or took us sledding.. Tony ended up crashing into a tree as "Killer" the evil neighbors dog, nipped at his arms and feet as he flew down the hill. At first I thought he was seriousously injured and then I thought how would we explain this to our parents. Fun times!

Since we have had 3 snow storms.. I thought I would share some of the pictures from going sledding with the kids and a couple of memorable christmas shots of the cousins. Merry Christmas all and happy new year!