Boys Being Boys

Nathan has been enjoying his “boyhood” as he has been practicing a lot with his Lacrosse team. Here he is in the black shorts defending his goal during a scrimmage.

Sean has been having the itch of a “hunter gatherer” as this picture demonstrates an eagerness to get the garden started.

We received  a wonderful invitation from Dale to travel over to Canandaigua Lake for a fishing outing for the boys.

Dale had the catch of the day with this 1lb. 5oz. bass.

Sean finished a close second with this 10 oz. crappie.

Nathan’s catch of the day was two bucks that he caught blowing around the parking lot at Applebees!

Here’s to boys being boys….arr arr arr!

Easter 2009

We celebrated Easter in Saratoga Springs in 2009.

Here are the boys all cleaned up and ready for church.

Stephanie’s Mom and Dad treated the family to an Easter brunch in Lake George.

Thanks Mom and Dad.

“Is that a chocolate fondu fountain?”

“Yes, it is a chocolate fondu fountain!”

On the way out of town, Sean was very excited to get a close up look at Fort William Henry. They have been studying the American  Revolution in his classroom. Here are some pictures from the schools website showing the model of a British fort that the class constructed.

http://schools.dor.org/popup_info.cfm?pic=large88%5F0409091221%2Ejpg&page=8007&imageid=32124

We hope you continue to have a wonderful and fruitful Easter Season.

Express Update

Sean celebrating his 10th birthday on St. Patrick’s Day. 

Nathan racing by on his new skate board…oh dear.

Sean took his support for the Syracuse Orange to the next level.

If you look closely, his new braces are sporting the SU colors.

After a lot of hard work, Nathan earned his Wolf badge.

Nathan (and Steve) recently built a new bird house for our yard.

It was hung with care on Tuesday evening.

…and to our delight, the house had its first traffic on Thursday. 

Also on Thursday, Nathan’s class reenacted the Last Supper in costume.  Click below to link to his teacher’s web site and see Thursday’s slide show, and several others!http://www.myteacherpages.com/webpages/SSchading/

We hope you have a wonderful Easter!

All Star Weekend

Sean wrapped up the basketball season today with an appearance in the 2009 Boys and Girls Club all star game. He worked hard all season long, and the fruits of his labor really shined today.

Here is Sean filling the wing on the fast break.

Here is Sean playing defense. He had the task of guarding one of the leading scorers in the league. He did a great job.

Sean will have a few weeks off before he dons his basball glove and starts Little League baseball.

  

Another all star in the family is Stephanie. This past week she finally reached a goal that she has been working toward for quite some time. Her hair was finally long enough to donate to “Wigs 4 Kids”, an organization that you can donate your hair to for the purpose of making wigs for cancer victims. She has had some close friends and co-workers that have lost their battles with cancer in recent years.

  

Here is her new hair “do” after the donation.

Our all star Cub Scout in the family is Nathan. He has been working really hard and has nearly completed everything that he needs to do to earn the Wolf Badge.

This afternoon he worked toward that badge by spending some time in the park behind our house cleaning up the trash left behind from the windy and snowy winter.

We would be remiss if we didn’t mention one more all star in the family, and that is “Coach Steve”.  Steve has worked hard with Boys and Girls Club 3/4 grade “Team Black”, spending just about every Tuesday and Thursday evening, and Saturday morning with them since November.  And they came so far! Above he directs the kids on a play. 

At the end of the last practice, Steve treated each of the kids to a bottle of Gatorade, and then distributed special award certificates customized with a quality that they exhibited throughout the season.  In the photo above, Steve explains why each player received his/her award.  Each award had a quality such as “Hustle”, “Perserverance”, “Positive Attitude”, “Most Improved”, and for Sean: the “Dedication” Award.  This ceremony was a great way to wrap up the season and we are all proud of our favorite coach.

Nathan’s Adventures

Nathan recently participated in his second pinewood derby along with his fellow cubscouts. He and Steve had a lot of fun building the 2009 addition of his car.

Here Nathan is afixing the tire to the “rocket”

Here is Nathan posing infront of the track where all of the drama was to unfold. He ended up finishing 17th overall, which was in improvement from 19th last year.

Earlier in January, Nathan was the talk of the town.

He was front page news in the local newspaper. It wasn’t for anything bad, although he had just put a pie in the face of Sean’s teacher as they were having some “fun and games”  to commemorate Catholic Schools week in their school.

Nathan also wrapped up his basketball program at the local YMCA. He improved tremendously over the past several weeks.

In fact, it looks like he is running the whole offense.

Snowshoeing at the Audubon Center: 1/18/09

Stephanie spotted and planned a wonderful outing for the family this past Sunday. We went snowshoeing at the Montezuma Audubon Center in Savannah, NY. The program was called stories in the Snow and included a brief presentation by a staff person about tracking wildlife, and a guided tour around the area by snowshoe.

Just having had several inches of Snow made for great snowshoeing and animal tracking conditions. Above are some of the numerous rabbit tracks that we encountered on the walk.

As we made our way around the trails an extraordinary story unfolded in the tracks in the snow. The “story in the snow” took an exciting turn when a “perfect stepper’s” tracks joined the “hoppers” tracks.

As we followed the tracks out of the woods into this opening Sean proclaimed to the group, “Its a murder scene!”

Yes the “perfect stepper” tracks that had been accompanying the rabbits tracks were those of at least one coyote. The story that we followed ended with the coyote getting its meal. The person guiding us described our outing as one of the best of the year for the amount of tracks that we encountered.

It has really inspired us to want to get out and enjoy nature and the snow more this time of year.

Nathan’s Photolog of “Christmas In NJ” 1/3/09

Our last excursion for the holiday season was a holiday gathering with all of the relatives(Stephanie’s Mom’s family) that live down in New Jersey. We gave Nathan the task of capturing the experience in pictures for us. He took all of the pictures that follow.

This was a great picture of Aunt Susan. If you look closer, he did a masterful job of capturing all of the levels of Christmas cheer occuring in house.

Kyle, Blake and Jeremy checking out their new toys.

A nice moment between Jeremy and his Aunt Katie.

Steve and Uncle Charlie catching up.

I’m not sure what Kyle did, but it looks like he had some explaining to do for Kim, Aunt Linda and Aunt Sharon.

Great photography Nathan!  (Stephanie is holding up Sean.  If it weren’t for the party…he would have been in bed hours ago!)

Happy New Year!

Well, we took our show on the road to ring in 2009. This year our destination was Steve’s Mom and Dad’s.

As is family tradition, the New Years Eve evening started out with a tribute to the birthday boy in the family.

In all honesty, our “Rockin’ New Years Eve” party started out a little bit slow. Our goal was primarily to try and stay up until mid-night.

I’m not sure, but I think Sean’s confidence in making it to New Years is a little bit shaky in this picture as he checks the clock on the tv.

Carmella was even trying to not-so-subtly tell us that our activities were deviating from our normal routine…”And this isn’t our house?”

When suddenly an unexpected voice of cheer rang out from the recliner.

“I want a shot of Jack and a beer chaser!”

Yes. The party finally came to life. For about 10 minutes things got really crazy.

“Cheers!” Yes everyone made it to the New Year for the first time in our household. Although we don’t believe Sean stayed up much beyond the first fifteen seconds, or so, of the new year. He certainly wasn’t up long enough to be photographed. Nathan on the other hand, might have rung in the new year with California if we had let him. FYI he enjoyed sparkling juice for his toast.

First Kisses of 2009!

“Even after nearly 13 years of marriage I still occasionally have the feeling that my mother is looking over my shoulder when I am kissing Stephanie.” – Steve

We hope you have a healthy and prosperous 2009!

Christmas 2008

The Christmas Holiday started for our family on Saturday the 20th when we traveled east to visit with Steve’s Mom and Dad.  We had a nice lunch and exchanged gifts. 

After our visit we rendezvous”ed” with Aunt Susan.  The boys were off from school for the week and were spending the extra time with Aunt Susan and Stephanie’s Mom and Dad. After the children were safely buckled into Aunt Susan’s car, we had the opportunity to take care of a few last minute details for the Christmas holiday and enjoy an extended 4 day “date!”

We made our way back east to Saratoga on Christmas Eve, arriving at Christmas Eve Mass right on time – (we really did!).  Later we left out a plate of cookies and some reindeer food and a note from Nathan.  It looks like Santa found everything just fine.

And despite the fog and these economic times Santa Claus came through. Although he did have some logistical issues to overcome.  Below Sean reads a letter from Santa explaining what his Elves were up to overnight.

As you can see by Sean’s expression, he was pleased with their work.  He was even heard saying “I do believe, I do believe!” 

As it turns out Santa and his elves took the intiative to deliver a ping pong table to our home while we were in Saratoga, and installed WiFi to enhance the boys video game experiences. “Wow! Cool!”

Another gift highlight was an electric guitar from Grandma and Grandpa. Uh oh… he looks like a natural.

Here Nathan tries his hand at Wii tennis.  If any of you have the capacity to play Nintendo games online we will have to let you talk to Sean about trying to figure out how to play together. The boys have been having fun playing Mario Kart with other people from around the globe.

 

 

The gifts from Sean and Nathan brought smiles to Susan and Dave’s faces.

 

It was great having the extended holiday in Saratoga.

 

Grandpa didn’t have to ask Nathan twice if he was interested in going for a ride on the four wheeler.

 

In fact, he even had a chance to drive all by himself for the very first time! (Oh my goodness!!!)

Just like that, it seemed like the time in Saratoga had flown by and we were loaded up and on the road home.  Everyone was a little tired from all the action – including Miss Carmella!

As soon as we got home the boys rushed down to our basement to see where Santa had placed the ping pong table.  It was so exciting! Steve became a little nostalgic hearing the pinging and ponging coming up from the basement.

This week we are taking a brief pause as we are both off from work for a few days before we resume our Christmas/New Year’s 2008 tour. We will keep you posted.

We hope you had a wonderful Christmas too!

Blessing of Our Christmas Tree

We felt inspired to have our own blessing of our Christmas tree after a Christmas tree blessing was incorporated into our Sunday liturgy today. We appointed Nathan the role of officiating our family ceremony as he genuinely enjoys filling this role for our family. Above he guides us in prayer.

After reading the prayer he had the honor of dipping a piece of bow from the tree in our holy water and completing the ceremony as we illuminated the lights. Below, we took our blessing into the front room where we have a little tabletop tree.  The beautiful tree topper angel on the little tree was made by Sean in art class.

 

Lord

our God,

The heavens are

the work of your hands

the moon and the stars you

made;

the earth and the sea, and every

living creature came into being

by your word. And all of us too.

May this tree bring cheer to this house

through Jesus Christ your good and holy son,

who brings life

and beauty to us

and to our world.

Lighting this tree, we hope in his promise.