Archives - Jim McNelis' Website

Archives - 2007

12/30/2007 - Today Colin turned 11 years old! I'll have a party for him this Saturday, but today I took him to breakfast and had him open his presents. Colin got a Wii for his birthday. We set it up and he kicked my butt in baseball.

I also added the recipe for the carrot cookies I make every Christmas.

12/25/2007 - Merry Christmas! Jimmy, Colin and I hope everyone had a great Christmas this year. Jimmy was sick this Christmas, but is feeling better. He's been working a lot this season. Colin and I opened gifts at my sister's last night and at our house this morning. I forgot my camera last night, but took some pics this morning. Colin's favorite gift was Rock Band for Xbox 360. He's playing the drums pretty well already!

12/20/2007 - Pajama Day at Colin's school today. A pair of bulldog pajama pants, a white undershirt and the robe (an early Christmas gift from Ruth) and Colin was set.

12/16/2007 - Went to see Trans Siberian Orchestra! What a great show. I'm making this a Christmas tradition. I took Colin two years ago and he loved it. I think he's ruined now, because he thinks every indoor concert should be as good as TSO.

12/13/20007 - We got Elfed! Have you seen this yet? It's a Flash application provided by OfficeMax. Crop some headshots of yourself to their application and watch the elves dance!

12/07/2007 - Just got Colin's pics from his hockey season. They turned out very nice. Click on the pic to the right for a better view. New pads, re-taped stick (red tape for team colors), longer hair and a bigger smile. Colin has had a blast playing this year. He's even picked a few extra lessons with Darren Hersch at the Goalie Academy in Sterling.

12/01/2007 - Big day! Colin had a game this morning and had 28 saves (93%) and they won 3-2. Off to Middleburg for their Christmas celebration, then to Reston Town Center for a carriage ride, then to Alexandria for the Scottish Walk (missed the parade), lunch at the marina, then to IKEA, back to Alexandria for the 8th Annual Holiday Lights Boat Parade. Added a few more decorations to my house as well.

11/23/2007 - What a nice Thanksgiving! Almost all of my family showed up at my house to celebrate. Don't let the number of chairs fool you, I had about 11 for dinner. We had; pita and humus, a vegetable tray, a pickle and olive tray, steamed shrimp, and a new recipe; sweet and sour sausage, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, biscuits, acorn squash, butternut squash, spaghetti squash, black-eyed peas and a juicy turkey which I brined overnight. My brother Timmy brought his famous corn pudding. My sister brought a ham, my mother brought deviled eggs and my brother-in-law brought his famous cornbread stuffing. For dessert I had a devil's food pudding pie, an apple pie and a cherry pie. My Mom made two pumpkin pies, chocolate chip cookies and sugar cookies.

11/04/2007 - I participated in a community chili cook-off yesterday to benefit a child who is recovering from a kidney transplant. The Chili Cook-Off raised over $1000 for the family of the child.

I named my entry "Celtic Chili" just to set mine apart from other chilies. And I know a lot of you are thinking that I made it spicy! Well I didn't. I toned it down, probably too much (hence not getting first place). I did tie for the Neighbor's Choice category, so I do have bragging rights for that at least. I had a lot of fun and it gave me another reason to wear my kilt!

11/02/2007 - Got a picture of Colin and his new pet goldfish, Guido. Colin got the goldfish from a Halloween party. He named it Luigi to keep in the same theme as his friend Chandler's new puppy, Luigi.

11/01/2007 - Colin and his friends Brendan and Chandler went out together this Halloween to go "Trick or Treating". Colin went as a Zombie Doctor and Chandler is a Grimm Reaper (looks like it anyway) and Brendan is a party animal.

10/28/2007 - We celebrated Olivia's Birthday a week early. My sister held her party at a local Pumpkin Patch. What a great idea. The kids had lots of stuff to do and the parents got a chance to relax. An interesting part of the pumpkin patch was the motorized toilets that the kids got to ride. Joel and Olivia wanted to model their Halloween costumes so I threw in a few pictures of them too.

10/26/2007 - Colin was the top seller for his school for the Sally Foster Fundraiser this year. He won a iPod and several other gifts as well as lunch with the Principal. Colin sold over 100 items and over $1000. Half of the money goes directly to the school.

10/17/2007 - I know of at least two families who are affected by autism is one way or another. Maybe someone you know, or a family member or a colleague may be affected. There's a walk for a cure this Saturday in DC. Click the link to the right to find out more.

10/15/2007 - A friend from work brought some hot sauce back from his travels to Taipei and Australia; Togayashi Hot Sauce (Japanese), Congo Habenero Sweet Chili Sauce (Panama), Great Red Shark Hot Sauce (Hawaii) and Hot Heads Delight (Austrailia). I'm eating Hot Heads Delight so I won't add it to the collection.

10/13/2007 - I took Colin, his cousins Noah and Joel and his friend Chandler to the Fall Festival at Cox Farms. Lots of stuff for the kids to do. Plenty of apples, apple cider, farm animals and lots and lots of slides. All of the boys had a great time. They mostly spent their time on the slides and rope swings. At the end of the day, we checked out the animals and took a pumpkin for each of us.

10/07/2007 - Colin's travel baseball team had it's first tournament. Well, it's more of a mini-tournament, it was only two games. We lost the first game but won the second. Highlights for Colin were hitting a triple and knocking in 2 RBIs.

10/06/2007 - Today I went to a festival called "In the Street" in Frederick, Md. I've been hearing about it for some time. This was their 25th anniversary which stretched 9 blocks of downtown Frederick. All types of food, culture, music and lots and lots of people. I sampled Indian, Ethiopian and Thai food while I was there. There was 6 stages there with bands playing Country, Jazz, Alternative, Big Band and Rock. I'm going again next year.

10/02/2007 - I went on a field trip today with Colin's 5th grade class to Hemlock Overlook Center. What a day! It was a lot of fun watching Colin and his classmates work out solutions to each challenge presented to them. Some of the challenges Colin's team encountered were a rope swing, climbing a 10 foot wall and riding a zip line. I have a video of Colin riding down the zip line and is teammates helping him over the wall.

09/29/2007 - We went to "Caps Kids Day" at the Kettler Capitals Iceplex. After the Caps practiced, four of the players signed autographs; Eric Fehr, Mike Green, Nicklas Backstrom and Alex Ovechkin. I bought us new jerseys for the upcoming season. Colin got his autographed by all four Caps. We had a great time we had. Can't wait for the season to start.

09/17/2007 - My Godson Joel played his second soccer game of the season this weekend. I just received some photos from my sister from that game. Check the photo gallery for pictures. I hear Joel likes playing soccer but can't wait to start playing baseball.

09/09/2007 - Colin had his first baseball game of the fall season. They lost, but the team played well. Colin had several hits including a double. Colin's really excited about playing for this team.

09/05/2007 - Redskins fans, I have posted the schedule for the upcoming season in CSV format. It can be easily imported in Outlook. Just save it to your computer and select FILE -> IMPORT and select CSV from the file format. It's really easy.

08/14/2007 - My officemate brought me two hot sauces from her vacation in Rehoboth Beach Delaware. She brought me "Del-A-Where? Road Kill" and "Smack My Ass and Call me Sally, The Second Slapping" (what a great name for a hot sauce). This brings my collection up to 149 hot sauces.

08/05/2007 - My niece and nephews (Olivia, Noah and Joel) had their first sleepover at my house this weekend. I took them to see the Frederick Keys play Wilmington Blue Rocks. Keys won 5-1, but more importantly, all of the kids ran the bases after the game, Colin caught a foul ball and there were fireworks.

08/02/2007 - Added another hot sauce to my collection..."Ass Blaster Hot Sauce". Got it from a friend at work. He also gave me "Widow No Survivors", a duplicate. I usually don't mind getting a duplicate, but this one is rated anywhere from 85,000 to 90,000 Scoville heat units (SHU).

07/23/2007 - Jimmy gave me a couple of hot sauces; Vicious Viper and Orange Crush. My collection is now up to 146 hot sauces. I got a chance to catch up with him this weekend. He and Leanna are doing fine and the cast on his right hand comes off soon.

07/15/2007 - Went to the Folklife Festival today.....just a few minutes late. Arrived just in time to see everyone taking down their exhibits. Looked like it would have been nice; Northern Ireland, Mekong river and Virginia were the attractions at the Mall. The only thing I got to take photos of was an art car parked at the Mall. Oh well.

07/01/2007 - Caught the Frederick Keys Friday night. Saturday night, I missed Loudoun County's 250 birthday bash at Dulles Town Center, but made it to Helene's party for her daughter and son-in-law. Sunday night, went to see Greg Proofs at the Improv.

06/23/2007 - RUSH! I took Colin and Jeremy to see my favorite band, Rush! What a great show. They went on stage around 7:45 and ended close to 11:00 pm. No opening band, just Rush playing almost 30 songs. This was Colin and Jeremy's first "big band" concert. They both had a great time.

06/22/2007 - The Washington Capitals unveiled their new jerseys tonight at their Draft Day party. Colin, Jeremy and I were there for all the fun. I like the new jerseys and I especially like the new eagle logo.

06/17/2007 - Father's Day! Jimmy called to say that he's recovering from surgery on his hand. He currently has a slight infection, but antibiotics will take care of that. Jimmy will have a few months of recovery ahead of him, but his hand will be better off for it.
Colin came over this morning and we went to see the latest "Fantastic Four" movie. We really enjoyed the movie.

06/12/2007 - Well baseball season is over for Colin. We made it to the quarterfinals in the playoffs. Colin's team played very well and made some new friends, improved his skills.

I created a photo gallery of some pictures from baseball season, photos from the team party and added pictures of my nephews, Noah and Joel from their baseball teams as well.

05/29/2007 - Nice Memorial Day weekend. Colin spent half of it at my sister's swimming and camping in her backyard. After that, we went fishing with one of his friend's (Jeremy) in my new canoe. We went to see "Pirates of the Caribbean"; a very long movie. In fact, the movie was so long that we missed out on eating the ribs I made in my smoker. This was the second weekend in a row that I smoked ribs and I was left to eat them by myself.

04/12/2007 - I got to go on Colin's field trip to Jamestown and Yorktown! What a good time. I took a lot of pictures. Had a great time. Colin asked me to chaperone for him and two of his classmates, Brendan and Connor. Yorktown was nice but it was Jamestown that was the real treat.

04/07/2007 - Last game of the season. Bad news...Caps lost. Good news...I was chosen to go down to the ice after the game and receive a player's jersey right off of his back. Players chose our names from a hat. Guess who chose my name? Alexander Semin!

03/27/2007 - Jimmy goes in for surgery on his right hand today for an injury incurred from throwing the football around after a Redskin game. Poor Jimmy, he has the worst luck when it comes to injuries.

Colin has started baseball (four practices now). He's playing for the Dodgers in AAA in the Dulles Little League.

I've updated my Hot Sauce list with a few more additions.

03/17/2007 - So, here's the first recipe, and it's not even mine. It's Colin's! he has a sandwich that he just loves. It's simple, but good. It's the Colin Special!

03/10/2007 - It's Jimmy's 21st birthday! Happy birthday Jimmy! Jimmy has been working at S&K Menswear for a while now and is working his way up the ladder. He's currently holding the sales manager position and has set his sites higher.

03/9/2007 - Went to the Caps game last tonight and was able to get seated in the penalty box for the pre-skate warm-ups. Later, we toured the Comcast SportsNet trailer and met Joe Beninati and Craig Laughlin. I had Joe and Craig sign Colin's jersey.

02/05/2007 - Here's a photo that I've been meaning to post. My sister was taking of her kids (Noah, Joel and Olivia) except I had to stick my head into the shot from the door.

01/15/2007 - Jimmy left me with some recent pics of he and his girlfriend. Most of from their adventures over the summer (mostly vacations and long weekends).

01/06/2007 - Colin celebrated his 10th birthday today. His birthday is actually on December 30th, but with Christmas so close, it's better to give a week in between to allow his friends and family to recoup a bit before his party.

01/01/07 - Happy New Year! I wanted to have dinner for my family, but it turned out that people needed to show up at different times and more then more people wanted to come, so it turned into an open house. We started around 11:00 and and ended around 9:00 pm. About 20 or so people showed up. Lots of food. Lots of family and friends.

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