Ding dong!
Who’s there?
Two Bells!
We’re so happy that as of today, we have a pair of Bellarmine Bells in our midst. Henry started his first day of high school while Finn kicked off his sophomore year. Check out a couple shots of our handsome scholars:
It’s true—the Notorious H.S.N. has emerged victorious from Hoover Middle School & is on his way to high school!
The night before Hen’s ceremony at the SAP Center (aka the Shark Tank), we went out to our favorite Italian restaurant, Palermo, to honor the occasion as well as Margot’s birthday & the successful conclusion of Finn’s first year at Bellarmine.
The next day—Margot’s actual birthday—Hen gathered with his class & walked up to receive his certificate, a lei made of candy, and some congratulatory fist-bumps from pals. And from there it was immediate “wheels up,” as Hen, Seamus, and I departed for the first leg of our summer road trip (more on that as it unfolds!).
Check out our gallery of pics.
Check out our handsome G-Man, stepping into his own as the sole Nack rep at Hoover Middle School. Here’s to a great year, kiddo!
Here he’s rocking his “WEB” shirt, denoting his role as an ambassador to help younger kids get acquainted with the school.
And here he’s being Peak Hen, taking beautiful morning photos—including ones featuring insulators. 😌
Can it really be, we have a high schooler in the house?! And yet, the day has come—Finn’s first day as a Bellarmine Bell:
We were glad to help kick off the year right at yesterday’s picnic & Mass, where we met Bellarmine chancellor Fr. Wade. Here’s to a great first year!
After rolling into Denver on the Mountaineer, we were delighted to reunite with Margot & Finn (who’d driven down from Leadville), then rest up at our cool hotel just across from the Rockies’ baseball stadium.
From there we were off to Denver’s famous Brown Palace Hotel, an 1892 icon, to celebrate my folks’ 50th anniversary 🎉.
Though the hotel was founded by a Brown unrelated to Leadville’s famous Unsinkable Molly Brown, she did stay there just a week after escaping the Titanic (!). We were happy to add our names to the illustrious guest list, alongside everyone from the Beatles to Bill Clinton.
Dinner was exquisite, as you can see in the gallery. Thank goodness the chocolate truffles are exclusive to the location, as otherwise we’d all be equally round in no time. 😅
We’re so happy to say that Finn has finished up his grade school career with flying colors! Over the course of several days last week, we got to join him to receive awards marking his accomplishments in bilingual learning & theater arts…
…plus his official graduation from Hoover Middle School!
Following the ceremony we forced him to hold still for a few family pics😉…
…and then headed to Palermo Italian Restaurant for a joint celebration of his milestones + Margot’s birthday. Check out the gallery!
(…among those born in 2008, anyway!)
We are equal parts delighted & amazed to wish a very happy 14th (!!) birthday to our tall drink of water, aspiring DJ, and doodle-wrangler par excellence Mr. Finn Nack!
Ahead of his birthday, Finn let it be known that he’d like to expand upon his recent piano-learning forays by getting a little MIDI mixing device. He was chomping at the bit to order it himself, not knowing that Margot had pulled the trigger some days earlier—so it was all we could do to delay him until it arrived, as shown below. 😛
We planned to celebrate the birthday itself in pretty low-key fashion—but before we headed out to dinner, Seamus made things unexpectedly exciting by helping himself to a big chunk of the cake!
Thankfully the chocolate didn’t do him any lasting harm, and we enjoyed a lovely meal out at Palermo, followed by the opening of presents. Finn’s now in receipt of some great books and a puzzle from Grandma & Grandpa Nack, plus a root-beer-making kit from Auntie Laura & Uncle James. Check out some pics from the occasion.
Wow—I can hardly believe that today marks the three-year anniversary of our fluffy, goofy, once-little guy arriving at our home!
It’s insane to remember how small he once was & just how quickly he zoomed to AT-AT Size (maybe 6 months, tops):
Finn & I took him on a three-mile walk this morning, and I type this our man is noisily chomping his way on “The Bosstrich,” a giant leg bone of an ostrich that we bought to celebrate the occasion.
Here’s a little gallery showing our celebrations. Here’s to many happy returns, curly amigo!!
As I noted a couple of weeks ago, the boys & I rang in Henry’s 12th birthday with some high-flying zipline adventures:
After we came home tired & happy, it was time to celebrate officially. Here’s a handful of shots, plus the total highlight of the day—Henry getting his great-great grandfather Liggett’s railroad watch! Check it out:
Amidst all the excitement of changing jobs, flying to Illinois, and more, I’ve been remiss in marking Finn’s thirteenth birthday. Happily we weren’t belated in celebrating the day, as you can see in our photo gallery from his big day.
Highlights included getting a pair of cute dog bookends that have been in Grandpa Liggett’s family for generations; scoring great new mystery stories (and Sherlock Holmes socks!); getting my old Cranium game from Galena; reeling in the big Lego police station that Henry had requested for his own birthday (but graciously deferred to Finn to get); and dining on a choco-tastic cake from Flower Flour—which was about the size & density of a manhole cover!
Happy B-Day, Finnster. We love you so much, and we can’t wait to see what adventures await.
Our big, bounding, curly boy has turned two!
“The days are long but the years are short,” and that applies to four-legged kids just as much as the two-legged kind. We can’t believe this lovable man has been on this planet for two years, and in our home for nearly that long. We couldn’t ask for a better quarantine buddy.
To celebrate we got him a smart-looking kerchief & party hat, plus a new chew toy he immediately put into play. Check out a little gallery of the good times.
How can it be a decade plus one since our crazy young amigo charged into the world (photos), trailing clouds of silliness & strong opinions? 😛 What a ride it’s been.
At the moment he’s off on a surprise mission with Auntie Laura, Finn, and Charlie to ride the glass gondola in Vail, and soon he’ll be back in Leadville to enjoy some cake & presents with the rest of us. Yesterday he & I spent hours exploring some abandoned railroad tracks just outside of town, picking up treasures (? 🙃) much as I did as a kid. Here are a few photos showing that outing, plus some late-night stargazing with our friends the Wiggii.
[Update: Check out some pics of Hen unwrapping gifts (including the super cool vintage train photo Mom-O found in nearby Buena Vista, showing a 19th-century train traversing tunnels there) & enjoying cake.]
Though it technically happened just this month, Finn’s 12th birthday—about which I neglected to post amidst all this craziness—feels roughly 1,000 years ago. Be that as it may, let’s take a moment to celebrate a dozen years of enjoying our crazy-verbal, floppy-haired, bedimpled amigo!
We partied first with the gang (including Seamus!) at home, enjoying what felt like a 50-pound Meat Monster pizza and cake. The next night (Finn’s actual birthday), Mom-O was out of town, so the guys (minus Seamus!) and I headed to the mall for round 2 of pizza & cake. Check out some views of our celebrations.
Our big furry boy Seamus turned 1 year old on Friday, December 6th! We are so happy to have this fuzzy goofball in our lives. Hard to believe he’s been with us since February! We have all come to love him so much, and he is the perfect addition to our family, especially our Westy adventures.
Finn was so excited to celebrate the big day with his dog – he’d been talking about it for weeks! We found a recipe for a dog-friendly “pupcake,” complete with frosting, to make for him, and our lovely dog-walker Terry brought him a bag of treats, balloons, and party hats to help celebrate. Here is a gallery showing our buddy on his big day.
Look at these handsome, not-at-all-micro Micronaxx—just look at them! 😛
Our best blonde-haired, Fortnite-loving, Murdoch-watching, dog-walking, book-devouring fella Finn has somehow completed 11 (!) full trips around the sun with us. On Saturday we celebrated with the arrival of a giant Lego wind turbine plus some great gifts (a forensics kit & more!) from Grandma & Grandpa Nack, after which a whole gaggle of young dudes came over for Nerf wars, cake, and a movie. Check out a little gallery plus an epic battle to blow out candles. 😝
For many, many months, our budding junk (er, treasure) collector Henry has been obsessively watching YouTube channels that demonstrate the fine art of metal detecting. Accordingly, he’s been badgering us to buy him some crazy-expensive kit like the pros use. Happily we were able to talk him down to a much more reasonable little starter kit, and as we hoped he went SUPER BERSERK upon receiving it as an early birthday present. (Our G-Man is nothing if not reliably expressive. 😝) Here’s a little gallery showing the unveiling plus a first treasure-hunting mission with Finn & Charlie.
The time has come! Our man Henry got his braces off after 15 months. He was a complete orthodontic champ for the entire duration of brace-wearing. He was always on top of wearing the required rubber bands, and he never complained about tooth or mouth pain – kind of miraculous for our little grump! He was pretty nervous about how painful it might be to get them removed, and also anticipating how weird it would feel to not have them on his teeth anymore!
Happily the removal was no big deal, and he is getting used to having more room in his mouth and beautifully-aligned pearly whites. To celebrate the braces’ removal, we gave Henry two more of his dad’s old Lionel train cars – a flatbed and a crane car, so he was immediately off to the basement to add them to his rig!
To commemorate our big man’s tenth (!!) full orbit around the Sun, I compiled a little photo tour of him through the years:
Compare that to how grown up he looked this week reading the qualities of a good Scout at our recent pack meeting:
And just for completely random comparison, here he is cavorting with Grandpa Nack right after Hen was born (“Kinda steep!”):
A decade, man… a decade of this dude, and I’m at a loss for words. It feels like some blow-out retrospective is in order, but rather than wait on that to come together, I can at least share some fun festivities from Finn’s little party.
Despite often telling us that “Being the center of attention is not really my jam,” the Finnster does really enjoy hanging out with a few pals. Therefore on his birthday we rounded up some of the “M Force” (M as in Minecraft, naturally :-)) for some pizza, Nerf battles, and ‘crafting. Here’s a little gallery from the occasion.
