And They're Off!

Our trip to Italy finally kicked off a few hours ago, not without a few hiccups....

Mr. B  locked himself out of his apartment with his carry-on locked inside.

Nanny and Pop ran into some undisclosed delay.  Luckily, planning for an extra TWO  HOURS more than accounted for their 45 minute tardiness.

Pop and Poppy independently put on entertaining displays passing through security, and Pop has impressed several airport employees with his "I have Guinness on tap in my house" routine.

Threw back a couple of beers here at the Albany Airport Grille, and getting ready to board for JFK in a few minutes.  Unfortunately my connection cable to upload pictures is packed in the checked luggage.  Hopefully we'll have some decent Wi-Fi access as we go along, and we'll throw up some photos.  Maybe even some audio/video.

Ciao!

The Great Pinecone Challenge

The tension was palpable as the gun sounded on Tuesday, 3/24, signaling the start of the inaugural Carstead Sheehans' Great Pinecone Challenge.  A windy and relatively warm winter yielded an unusually large crop of pinecones littering the property at 4 Carstead Drive, in addition to the thousands of branches, sticks and twigs.

Each participant (Aidan, Nora, and Maeve) logged in his/her estimate of the total number of pinecones before the competition began.  Then the race was on.  Over the course of 60-90 minutes each athlete scurried about the grounds, scooping up as many pinecones as possible until the entire lawn was completely cleared......(a fine start to Spring cleanup.)  

The winner, whoever collected the most, is to receive the newest and grandest of March Madness trophies, the finely crafted Golden Pinecone. As an added bonus, the winner is also exempt from the curiously less popular Branch, Stick and Twig Challenge in April.

The count is now complete, with the final tally currently in the hands of our auditors.

Stay tuned for the results as well as full coverage of the banquet, awards ceremony, and reactions from the winner (and the losers that are going to have to pick up all the sticks).