Communion Preview

Jim and Grace had everyone over today to celebrate Grace's first communion. Jim was snapping away with his Nikon - so i am sure he will have much better pics.

































This was **supposed** to be our "Arthur between the Doubting Thomas's" - however one Thomas was not so doubting....

Easter 2009

A little cake for the joint cousins birthday party. My notso-little Godson Thomas provided the Ham. And there was much rejoicing.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin D. Martin House

Before the Splint Alex and I headed over to do the grand tour of the new restoration(nearly complete). The visitors center was just opened that day. Nice.

We saw two of our old profs. Alex bought bricks.

Looks great. We used to have parties in the house when I was in grad school. I remember sitting n the dining room drinking labatts out of a cooler sitting in folding chairs with prof shibley and day.

Looks great.

the 25th annuaul splint mcgriff

Man I am getting old.

25 times we have done this silly thing...

Yet...it still is something I look forward to every year.

strangers bearing IKEA gifts

Eric and Mot stopped by for 4.3 minutes enroute to a party....while here they imparted upon us, or more imortantly, the Kitchen....some new shiny silver pots!

Yeeaaa.

They are so nice I will be leaving them out and NOT using them.

IKEA- Looks too good to use!

We took pics but Jimmy forgot to reset the autofocus and therefore all were a little blurry...nice...here's what I could salvage.

Thanks you guys!

Slainte

For the first time in 5 years I was able to take Grace to the St. Patty's Day parade. Mostly because it always coincided with Splint. It turned out to be a gorgeous sunny day so grace and I went to a corner near my office and we made the most of it.

We saw our friend Annmarie Brogan on a float, we took goofy pics and just enjoyed watching all the silly people. The flower city glass float was very popular because everyone used it to take pictures of themselves including us.

Happy St. Patrick's Day to ya all.

here's some christmas photos

well it sure would be nice if jim posted some of hose darn pictures he's always taking. Well here's some for "y'all".

Here's the gang "Samplin the Spirits" or "Doin Inventory" as the folks say....but this year we got out the cognac that Mark L bought me like thiry years ago. I am not sure why we saved it but we did. So after many a story over the years as to its origin and travels I regailed everyone with why Mark gave it to me... I don't know. Suffice to say it was out of friendship and Mark's emotional downloading or typing all his letters of intro when he was at SUNY B for accounting. We sampled it....and it was lovely...even velvety, I guess. The bits of cork floating in there gave it a delightful full bodied like thing.




Thanks Mark...Cheers.



















Mot and Eric head south to the tropical southern tier for a respite from that darn Syracuse lake effect....
















the evil"twin" sisters plotting over some Christmas confection

The holiday highlights would not be complete without the loudfamily band firing out 100 versions of eye of the tiger...yeahhhaaaah. Even Pop needed some jam time.

No fun here....practice up....Grace and I are coming back down for the American Idol rematch.

and we leave his post with yet another lovely picture of the evil "twin" step sisters laughing over our mortal follies.

Time Flies 2009

Cathy, Elizabeth and Thomas came over to visit this weekend. Scary how a year goes by. We went to dinner at Coleman's. [ An Irish pub here in Syracuse ] The chicken pot pie and the Guiness stew were quite yum yum. Afterwards, we rented Wall-E to watch. And there was much rejoicing. Here is 2009 and 2008.

At Least I got the lights to work

I had to get a special washer to get the track lighting to work...several weeks of phone calls the washer shows up....yea! Not sure it was worth the wait but I likey the lights.

gift from the past

Mom and Dad brought this back from Ireland in 1973? Its a nice irish linen with a pretty cool 70's graphic.

It sat in the dining room hutch for 20 years....I think I asked Mom for it about ten or 15 yers ago and then it sat in my attic until last week....

Tada...now its nicely framed...most expensive frame I have ever done....try to ignore my reflection.

Maybe this belongs in Pop's Pub for a little while? Whada ya think Pop?

Can you find the bottle of guiness??

Kristin's 40th birthday party [ the real one ]

Our sister Kristin celebrated the big 4 0 December 1st. We always try to do something "interesting" for the 40th birthday and Kristin's would be no different. Cathy and Mark started cooking up a limo ride and lunch way back in September and we all blocked it off on our calendars.

The trick was....the surprise. Kristin, of course, would be expecting something naturally. So Cathy planned a Faux birthday party for her the weekend right after Thanksgiving.

















A A deliberately sad and somewhat limp kinda thing, just enough to to completely let our sister down. I love looking at this picture. Here is Cathy with a rather sad cake and a big secret.
And my little sister Kristin trying to make the best of things. It helped that I was planning to be out of town that weekend - so the light attendance also proved to be a rub..

[ as you will see in the videos....]

The night before the party, I spoke on the phone with our cousin Kelly, who dutifully reported that Kristin was not quite happy about the whole schloppy thing. Almost too much actually.
It is always fun to know that a surprise is in store to set everything right, but personally I am not sure I would want to take it to that level again. So - Monday Lunchtime came the big surprise.

You can see the rest for yourself on the 3 part video.

Part 1
Dad the candidate, The big suprise...




Part 2
Past 40th parties, cranberry sauce




Part 3
What's for lunch? and Early dismissal

emerging patterns

The kitchen construction is really almost done...tweaking the track lighting, a couple pieces of trim, a couple of plugs...

Anyway the patterned stainless steel I put in behind the cooktop picks up the pendant lights in a rather amusing pattern/reflection.

2008 Kalachki production

Annual output at the Felice family Kalachki factory is meeting this year's production goals. There has been a slight problem with finished product disappearing. Management is working on the problem.

Gracie does the Nutcracker (again)

Despite the mayhem of the last practice and the dress rehersal Grace was still in and did a terrific job. Here's some cool pics the Nikon caught. Way to go goose!!

Kristin gets the big surprise for her 40th

Clockwork.

It was just right.

She was a little let down that we did not do something for her...then wham...the limo...the siblings....lots of laughs and then lunch.

Watch for the movie...here's a few pics.

the fake birthday party.....

the shock and awe in the limo that we could pull this off.

then a lovely lunch at the statler hotel on the cornell campus...at the banfi grill...fabulous.

Happy 40th Kristin.