Icatar Family Blog

We recently bought two new pets for the kids, sugar gliders, also known as sugar bears.  These cute little furry animals are part of the marsupial family and come all the way from Australia.  The attractive features they bring as pets are that they are clean, friendly, and need relatively little maintenance.  We’ve had them for about a week now and are still going through the bonding phase, and we think they are getting a little more used to us now. 

Here are a couple pictures and videos of “Oriette” and “Squeeky”, our new sugar gliders.  (FYI, Annalise wanted to name hers Oreo because it was black and white, but since it is a girl, she wanted the name to be more feminine, hence, Oriette!)

Click each picture for a larger view.

 

Here are a couple recent pictures showing some fun that we’ve been having.  Enjoy!

The kids try out this tractor during our visit to the Norwalk Department of Public Works.

Another picture of the kids at the Norwalk DPW.

Roneil getting ready for the first game of the Yankees playoffs.  He’s wearing his Yankees hat, shirt, jacket, snuggie, foam finger, shopping bag, and coffee mug.

Annalise is pretty upset that all the Yankees ice cream is gone!

The kids had their own sleepover party last night.

Isabella shows off a new hand-made shawl from a friend.

The kids enjoy treats from apple picking.  We actually brought a portable scale to the orchard so that we can weigh the apple that Isabella ate.  (By the way, the apple Isabella ate was 104g and 12g of carbs.)

From the odd and bizarre file.  This half eaten apple was still on the tree!

The kids pick out their pumpkin to prepare for Halloween.

Traditionally, the Labor Day weekend marks the unofficial end of Summer.  To say farewell to summer, we decided to rent a bounce house and ended up picking the Disney Princess 5-in-1 Combo bounce house.  I must say that it was one of the best investments we’ve made as the adults had just as much enjoyment from it than the kids!  Here are a few picture and a video of our fun weekend.

Roneil gets some help from the kids to position the castle in the yard.

The fully inflated castle was huge!

Isabella poses before heading down the slide.

Air Annalise gets some hang time on the basketball hoop.

Grandpa and Isabella get some rest from bouncing.

Grandpa, Isabella and Annalise get ready to slide.

Roneil and Julianne get their share of jumping in the castle.

Today is Nathaniel’s third birthday.  Unfortunately, we haven’t really had the time to plan anything big, so we just sang Happy Birthday to him and let him open a couple gifts.  Here are the cards that his older sisters made for him (click them to see larger versions), plus a couple short videos.

 

 

First off, I’d like to thank everyone for your strong showing of support during this extremely difficult time.  Words can’t explain the appreciation that I feel for everyone who has supported us over the last almost two years.

After we heard the preliminary results from the MRI where they saw a suspicious spot and would take a few days to examine in more detail, we decided to getaway for the weekend.  We knew that we would go crazy if we just sat around the house and did nothing while waiting.  With the extreme heat blanketing the northeast, we decided we would need some water wherever we went.  We decided to spend a day at Lake Compounce and the next day at Coco Key Indoor Water Resort, both in middle Connecticut. 

Lake Compounce is a theme park that includes a water park area and an amusement park area.  During the hot day, we spent that time swimming in the lake.  Later in the afternoon and evening, we went over to the rides area and the kids had fun on all the rides. 

After we were thoroughly tired out from Lake Compounce, we made the 15 minute drive over to Coco Key and checked into our hotel (luckily getting the last available room!).  Coco Key Water Resort is an indoor water park that includes a giant play area for kids, a lazy river, and several tube slides.  We were glad to hit the parks in the order that we did because it was nice to be indoors after getting all the sun we got at the lake. 

All in all, the kids had a great time as we were able to get away for a couple days on our impromptu vacation.  Check out the picture slideshow below to see some of the highlights.

Emmanuel T. Icatar - 1946-2002 from Roneil Icatar on Vimeo.

This video is dedicated to my dad, Emmanuel T. Icatar who died on July 25, 2002 after a short battle with lung cancer. Today (July 1) would have been his 64th birthday. It is impossible to capture an entire life in 10 minutes, but what I tried to show in this video is my dad's love of life and family (and the Beatles). We miss you.

Annalise had a very busy day this past Saturday.  She is part of the Norwalk Zeus swim team and is also part of the Norwalk Zoomers fast pitch softball travel team.  On Saturday, she had a softball game up in Bethel, CT which we had to get up very early for.  It was a hot day and she played the whole two hour game.  Once that game was done, we had to drive all the way from Bethel to Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT where she participated in a giant swim meet.  I’m usually wiped after a baseball game, and I can’t imagine having to swim competitively afterwards.  Anyway, Annalise ended up swimming in 3 heats:  100m backstroke, 50m butterfly, and 50m freestyle.  I should not that this was Annalise’s first time competing in an Olympic sized swimming pool.  Her usual swim meets are in a 25 yard pool, and most of her heats are only 50 yards.  We were curious to see how she would do in the slightly longer 50m and the really long 100m heat, but she did great in all of them.

All in all it was a great day.  We finally got home 130 miles and 12 hours later.  Check out the pics (click the picture to see a large version) and videos below.

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