The Keenan Family 411

Owen's New Year's Resolutions

Owen brought his list of New Year's resolutions home from school today.  Much to our dismay, this list has apparently been hanging on the wall in the classroom for the past few weeks...

"MY NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS, BY OWEN.

1.  I'm going to eat a lot of healthy food to gain weight.

2.  I am going to focus more.

3.  I will flush the toilet after going.

4.  I will use soap when I wash my hands.

5.  I will stop ignoring what Shane says.

6.  I will stop teaching Shane that a penny is more than a quarter.

7.  I will stop teaching Shane that one dollar is more than a ten dollar bill."

Boy, Shane (and the bathroom) is going to be in MUCH better shape if Owen can pull these resolutions off!

Christmas Card Picture: Behind the Scenes!

Ah...the beautiful Christmas card picture.  It almost brings a tear to the eye.  A perfect picture of nothing but family joy, happiness and Christmas cheer right?

Wrong.  Every parent of young children knows that the snapping of that particular photo is preceded by generous amounts of frustration, irritation, cursing (under the breath, hopefully) open threats, and questions as to why in the world we decided to have children in the first place.   All of this is triggered by the fact that the children apparently coordinate their efforts to ensure that at least one of them looks absolutely horrible in each shot.

The other problem is that no less than 125 shots need to be taken in order to produce the one shot that is acceptable to send to dozens of family members and friends.  Not only is the photo shoot itself time-consuming, but then poring over all 125 photo's and agonizing over which one is "the" shot takes countless hours.

In addition to the trials and tribulations of our annual photo, we were required to hike to the top of T-Rex mountain with Nan and Pop-Pop  in cold and windy weather.  Please note that Nana does not have a favorable history of climbing large hills, especially around Christmas time (inside family joke).  This grueling trek put us in the perfect mood for the photo shoot!

For video footage of the work that went into our Christmas card photo this year, please click here, here, here and here. 

Oh, and don't forget to click here.

Enjoy!  And Merry Christmas, you blokes!

Holiday Weekend Whirlwind!

Our family schedule coordinator (that would be Amy) was on steroids this past weekend.  Both days went by in a blur as all of the following events were somehow jam-packed into one weekend:

Cub Scout trip to 106 year-old Avery Soda Company in New Britain, CT.

A cupcake stop at Fusion Bakery in Middletown, CT (Groupon, baby!).

An Italian lunch at Amici's Italian Grille in Middletown, CT (Groupon, baby!).

Meet Santa and slurp hot cocoa at an old log cabin in gorgeous Wickham Park in Manchester, CT

An intense indoor soccer game for Cameron at Sports World in East Windsor, CT.

A trip to a house in Glastonbury that was marketed on Facebook as having 9,000 Christmas lights coordinated with music played by a private radio station which was...a bust.  The house somehow didn't exist.  Sigh!

But never fear!  Off to Goodwin Park in Hartford, CT for Hartford Holiday Light Fantasia!

Make Christmas ornaments for an elderly and disabled member of our church.

Hand-deliver said ornaments to the church member's house, plus a special gift basket to another homebound member of the church.

Trek to the United States Coast Guard Academy (potentially Cameron's future home) in New London, CT for the annual free holiday concert performed by the USCGA band, followed by a tour around the campus.

Brave the cold, blustery weather to check out Fort Trumbull in New London, CT.

Polish off the non-stop weekend by discovering Hanafin's in New London, CT, which is a cozy, friendly and genuine Irish pub (NO Groupon!  Bummer.)

Luckily, I can now use the work-week to recover from the weekend!

Photo album's on the right...

 

A Holiday Blast

After a series of projects on Saturday (mostly tree-chopping and Christmas shopping) we had some time on Sunday to check out a big holiday fair in Niantic, Connecticut, which is a nice summer-town at the shore.  But it turns out that Niantic knows how to have fun in the wintertime as well.  We enjoyed carollers, ice carvings, a holiday chili cook-off, a magic show, a fantastic nighttime parade and our very first holiday firework display!

All Decked Out

Old-School Tree Cutting

Yesterday we decided to take a different approach to the annual cutting-down of the Christmas Tree; we did it the old-fashioned way, with heavy emphasis on the word "old". 

How old?  Try pre-invention-of-the-wheel old!

It went something like this:

Step #1:  The entire family climbed to the top of "T-Rex Mountain" which is a rather long and steep embankment at the back of our property.  In fact, it's so steep you can reach out in front of you and touch the ground as you're climbing

Step #2:  Hiked about .3 miles across a wide-open cropfield in the middle of nowhere.

Step #3:  Found a tiny tree farm and chopped down the largest Christmas tree in family history.  And yes, we paid the farmer for it first!

Step #4:  Hauled the enormous tree across the cropfield (did I mention it's a .3-mile trek?) with the help of one of Cameron's camouflage tarps, cursing out each other and the weight of the tree every step of the way.

Step #5:  Transported the tree down T-Rex Mountain (did I mention it was wicked-steep?).  This falls squarely in the "don't try this at home, kids" category.

But everyone is still alive and the tree wasn't entirely mangled during the trip.  It was quite a tree-cutting adventure.

And here's a trivia question:  I'll give you three guesses...did this idea originate from me or Amy?!!

Photo album's on the right...

Dash for the Eggs!

The Keenan's enjoyed a fun Easter weekend this year.  My parents joined us for most of the day on Saturday, and we made the best of a rainy day with delicious food, Bingo games and a wild post-rain soccer match with a notorious no-out-of-bounds rule!

On Easter morning, the boys confounded us by sleeping late.  In fact, the only other morning of the year that these weirdo's sleep in is Christmas morning!  The other 363 days of the year at least one of them is up by 6:30am.

Anyway, once the boys finally woke up we checked out some presents left by the Big Bunny: a super-soaker for Shane, a Nintendo DS game for Owen, and Cameron received an invitation to a book-signing event in Massachusetts involving his favorite fiction writer, Rick Riordan (of Percy Jackson fame).  This was followed by a mad scamper about the house to find all the Easter eggs the bunny hid!

Then we all piled into The Beast and trekked out to Wappingers Falls to rendezvous with the rest of the Sinclair clan. 

As for that gathering...they say a picture's worth a thousand words, so check out the photo album on the right for about 26,000 words!

Ringin' in 2011!

Although we missed the dropping of the big ball in Times Square (again) we rang in the new year with tons of fun as Nana, Pop-Pop and the "Fasig's" came to town to celebrate the holiday.

Amy, Kerri, Tony and I spent Thursday evening at the Max Amore bar re-living the good 'ol days, thereby providing at least 15 weblog posts' worth of material.  Those Sinclair girls are much crazier than I thought, which is saying something!

New Year's Eve Day was eventful as we enjoyed some delicious and entertaining hibachi at Sake in Rocky Hill. 

Then things really heated up (literally) as the party got started at the house.  After we started up a campfire at Fort Timberwolf, which was fueled mostly by cardboard boxes left over from Christmas, we partook in an age-old New Year's tradition of archery practice in the backyard.   Not unsurprisingly, several of the arrows went missing after flying past the target and into the deep snow, so we'll have to wait 'til spring to find them. 

After the sun went down the campfire was stoked to maximum height and the crew started dancing to very loud pop music as bottles of Long Trail Ale sloshed around in the grown-ups' hands.  Meanwhile, our new neighbors looked mornfully out of their window at us as they questioned their recent real estate purchase and wondered just how far a house's fair market value can plummet in one evening.

We ended the night with a scrumptious all-appetizer meal and Mickey Mouse drinks for the kids.  The adults also squeezed in a game of Pictionary before bedtime.  More details on that particular game will follow in the next post.  For now, let's just say we were very lucky to have only one of the kids present during that game.

We were all in bed before 10pm, well short of the big midnight celebration...but I'm not complaining one bit!

All in all, it was a perfect way to celebrate the end of 2010.  Well, perfect except for the fact that not a simgle smoke bomb was lit off. 

Photo albums for New Years and Christmas Day are on the left sidebar!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas and safe travelling, everyone!

We look forward to seeing all of you clowns in Milford and "The Falls"!

Caroling, Caroling...

Cameron belts out a tune during the Winter Concert at school last week.

Hang on...those two kids in front...are they awake?!