Abby’s Birthday–Part Deux

We had Jean’s family over to celebrate Abby’s birthday on Sunday May 23rd.  We had a crazy week and it was the first chance we had to get the Wynne’s over to celebrate her big day.

We had Mike and Dot’s family along with Carole and Natalie.  Dinner was fantastic once again, although this time I’ll take the credit since I ended up grilling the burgers and dogs.    We also had a little striped bass that Gram and Pop brought back from Kate and Aaron’s house.

For whipping something together very last minute, it ended up being a nice way to wrap up our weekend.

Mother’s Day 2010

The Mothers Day Weekend was a busy one for us. Jake had a couple of games on Saturday, Brett had a baseball game, and Abby had a soccer tournament out in Neshaminy (which included two games Saturday afternoon and one on Sunday morning).

As always, my Mom took a crew of people down to Center City with her to take part in the Komen Race for the Cure, which she has walked in every year in memory of her sister Jackie, who we lost to breast cancer back in 1996 at the young age of 40. This year’s race took on an added significance because of my mother being diagnosed with breast cancer a little over a year ago. It’s been an emotional year for all of us, and my mom has been amazing in coming back from her double mastectomy last June. She’s back as good as she was before surgery and it’s almost to the point where you’ve forgotten how much she’s gone through.

Being the not so wonderful son, I committed to having Abby play in the tournament earlier in the spring without thinking about how important the day was to my mom. To compound things, if Abby’s team had won on Sunday morning, they would have played for the championship of the tournament at 1 pm. Luckily, they lost 3-0 and Abby and I were able to get home at the same time as everyone got back from the race. It’s one of the few times I wasn’t upset watching the Cheetahs lose.

Jean stayed home with the boys to get the house ready for guests because we were hosting everyone for brunch. Her morning consisted of running around getting all the food, which my mom had order earlier in the week, along with last minute prep around the house. Our fare consisted of chips and burritos from California Tortilla along with bagels and sandwiches from Barrister’s Bagels, both of which are located in the Target shopping center.

Brunch was fun and the list of guest ended up being pretty extensive: Mom, Kate, Casey, Jack and Mary Kay Gvodas, John and Nicole Gvodas (who is insanely pregnant right now), Mike and Dottie, Judy and Joy Glass, Alexandra, Sue Krimmel, and Joe Palombit (with Adrianna, Megan, and Ryan). It’s the first time we’ve had Joe over to the house, and we just celebrated our fourth anniversary of moving in.

By the time everything wrapped up around 4:30, we were whupped. We cleaned up and vegged out as a group by watching the movie The Blind Side as a family. If you haven’t seen the movie, I highly recommend it. It’s a nice real life story that leaves you feeling good about people.

Happy 14th Birthday Jake!

Sunday marked Jake’s 14th birthday!The time really does just fly by.

He spent the night before sleeping over at his cousin Mikey’s house, who shares his birth date. The two of them spent the entire weekend together, with sleep overs both nights (at Mikey’s house) as well as a trip to the St. Eleanor’s dance on Saturday night.

Jake had a baseball game Sunday afternoon (Sacred Heart just got nipped 17-2 by Holy Family), but other than that the day was pretty laid back. Following the game, we invited Jean’s family over for dinner.

Jean’s parents were there, as well as Mike and Dot’s family. Joining us for dinner as well were Liam and Meghan Haffey, who had spent the day hanging out with us. Tom and Carole weren’t able to stay because they had other dinner plans, but they made the trip down to our house to wish both the boys a happy birthday.

The bonus to Tom and Nate coming is that they put in a set of clothes poles for Jean, who’s been wanting them since we moved out or our house on Pine Street back in 2002. For those of you keeping score at home, that was two houses ago. It’s a bummer she’s married to a husband who has trouble piecing Legos together, let alone any thing of actual substance. She was just hoping for a wooden set of poles, but Tom and Nate fabricated a set out of steel. It was much nicer than what she had been expecting and a great surprise.

Jake’s desired meal for the day was ribs, which Jean did a kick ass job of making. She rubbed on some sort of barbeque seasoning over the ribs and then threw them into a Nesco slow roaster for about six hours. By the time we ate, the ribs were just falling off the bone. They were perfect.

Jean also cooked a pork loin, which was excellent, but it didn’t get the same response as the ribs. I’m thinking we could have doubled the amount of ribs and still run out, they went that quickly. To put it into perspective, even the kids that don’t like meat that much (Abby and Emily) devoured them.

Jake’s sole birthday wish was for Flyers playoff tickets, which I was lucky enough to score for Game 4 of the series against Boston. Once everyone left our house, Jean and I broke the news to Jake that he was stuck with Dad this upcoming Friday night for a night down at the Wachovia Center. It’s been quite a while since we’ve seen him that excited. It always feel good when you know you’ve picked up the perfect present.

With the Fly-boys down 2 games to zero in the series, hopefully the game will mean something? A win on Wednesday night in game 3 will make our ticket a little more exciting.

Crazy Vacation/Work/Camp Week

Things are a little odd this week with the McMenamin family all spread out.

For those who didn’t know, my mom rented a beach house in Ocean City, NJ for 6 weeks, beginning June 20^th and running until August 1^st.  We went down to the house that first weekend (Father’s Day) to open it up and move everything in for my Mom, who was still recovering from surgery and is still not back to full strength.

We then went down for vacation from June 26^th until Monday July 6^th.  We spent the first two nights of the trip in Wildwood at a beach soccer tournament (Cape May Beach Blast) for Abby before heading over to my Mom’s.  Jean and I had a funeral to attend on Wednesday for Jean’s friend Sandy up in North Jersey, but other than that it was spent just hanging on the beach.

Jean’s parents also rented a house down in Ocean City starting on July 4^th and running through July 18^th.  That first weekend, they had Mike and Dottie and their kids down for the weekend, as well as my niece Natalie.  We invited them all over to my Mom’s beach house on the 4^th for a nice little clam bake, which was a relaxing way to hang out with some cocktails and fireworks.

On Monday, things got a little hectic as we went our separate ways.  I left the beach house early Monday morning (5:30 ish) to go straight back to work for the week.  Jean and Jake came home a little later on Monday.

Jake has basketball camp at Villanova this week, so Jean dropped him off and helped him get moved into the dorm room he’s sharing with his cousin Michael.  The two of them went together last year and they had a blast; Jake liked it so much he also recruited two of his buddies from Sacred Heart to go this year (Connor Tivanen and Tim Carroll).

Jean had to come back for a variety of reasons.  She started her final school course (yahoo!!) which is being given on Monday and Wednesday nights for the next three weeks.  She also has to teach Spinning class at the YMCA on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, as well as squeeze in her little side job.  She’ll bring Jake home from camp on Thursday afternoon so he can spend one night at the Sacred Heart Fair before they both head back down to the beach on Friday morning.

Abby has spent the last few nights hanging out with Jean’s parents and her cousin Natalie, while Brett spent a couple of nights at my Mom’s house before heading over to the Wynne’s on Tuesday night.  I’m not sure which of the two beach houses the kids will be sleeping at tonight?  What a great parent, huh?

This will be the longest stretch that Brett hasn’t been with us, but he really doesn’t seem to be missing us yet.  We’ve made a few calls to check in on him, but he can’t be bothered to actually get on the phone to talk to us.  I’m guessing that means he’s enjoying himself.

Weekend Update-Feb. 6th-8th

It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to post, but here’s what we’ve been up to recently.

Jake wrapped up his basketball season over the weekend.  We finished off the year playing in a tournament over at St. Eleanor’s, losing both of our games.

The team had a rough season, starting off 4-2 in the league, but they lost their lost 7 to finish off the season.  It was a rough season to go through, and we lost a ton of games by less than 5 points.  We had some issues with personality conflicts among a few of the boys, and I’m pretty excited the season’s come to an end.  It will be good to have a bit of a break.

Abby still has another week to 10 days to go in her season.  Her team has done much better, with only one loss.  They generally win their games easily, winning by 20 on Saturday and 17 on Sunday.  They start their playoffs on Thursday against the team they just pummeled on Sunday, so I expect them to find a way to make it to the finals.  We’ll see what happens.

Saturday night we were invited to a “White Elephant” party at our friends house,  Jen and Juan Portela.  I believe it’s the second annual one, although I missed last year’s because I was out of town traveling.  Jean had a blast at last year’s, and we were excited for this one.

The concept of the party is to wrap a present that is unusual, and then each person who brings a present also comes home with one at the end of the night.  Each person is given a number, and you pick gifts in sequential order.  When it’s your turn, you have the option to unwrap a new gift, or steal one that’s already been opened.

Last year, Jean was stressing out trying to come up with a gift when she stole my rubber chicken. I got it as a gag gift last Christmas from my sister Kate.  It made an abnoxious noise everytime you squeezed it, but the kids loved it.  The kids and I begged her not to take it, but to no avail; Jean snuck it out of the house and she’s caught grief from the kids ever since.  That being said, it ended up being a hit.

This year, we ended up grabbing two gifts to take, Jean found an oversized remote control at Spencer’s, and I reached back into my teenage years and I grabbed a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20. 

I was looking to find either the orange or grape flavor (which is all I recall from those days) but I had to settle for strawberry bananna. Mad Dog seems to be one item that’s weathered inflation over the years.  Current market price on 750 ml of Mad Dog is only $3.99, a true bargain, that is until you wake up the morning after drinking it.

We had a great time hanging out with our friends, and at one point we managed to get my chicken back; he had been ”regifted” from last year.  We thought he was ours to keep, but Karen Cressman “stole” him from us right at the end of the night. 

We came home with two unique gifts, one was a hot potato cooker, the second a potato powered digital clock, but the chicken would have really made the night.

Saturday also marked the first time that Jake watched Brett while we went out for the evening.  He was a little bit nervous being home alone at night, so we grab his cousin Michael for a sleep over to help him out.

We were out until 2 am (I told you we had fun), and we didn’t hear from the boys once, which was good news.  The only bummer is that when we pulled into the house, the boys (except Brett, who went down around 10:30) were still wide awake.  We were hoping that they would have fallen asleep, but I guess we can’t complain too much.  It was a free sitter.