Some friends of ours (Andre and Linda) have been bitten (pecked?) by the farming bug and have installed a chicken coup in their back yard. We were there over Memorial Day weekend and Liam got to hold one of the chickens!

Faced with the hassle of renewing my green card, I instead decided to once and for all be done with the pleasures of dealing with the INS and go instead for the full status of a US citizen. That process came to an end this week when I was finally sworn in as a US citizen in a surprisingly moving ceremony where in and a 99 other immigrants from 40 countries where welcomed to the US by a video from President Obama, took an oath and a pledge and sand the national anthem and were then forced to listen to…

John went in for what was scheduled to be a 2-hour appointment with the Immigration and Naturalization Service this morning, and ended up passing handily in a mere 13 minutes! That even includes the brief pause before his reply to the question: “what is the national anthem?” https://archive.org/details/Movieton1944 Other questions included “which ocean is on the west side of the US?” (not the first time one of the Kennymen have faced an ocean-related question in a high-stakes test! Liam was asked in a kindergarten placement test “what is the difference between a lake and an ocean?”) and “what happened on…

Hammock installed in back yard! Miles installed in hammock!

This week Liam had a few days off school, one of which was spent getting all dressed up and going to a boat at Navy Pier for lunch with all the other Whitney Young senior/final year students.  Again, all photos from Facebook and one really nice photo of Liam and Ellen Groove

There’s a bunch of photos from Liam’s trip to Birmingham Alabama that we’re posted to facebook by his friends that we thought it would be nice to share here.  Most are of him and the kids from Whitney Young hanging out (including Robert who will be joining us on the Ireland trip -he’s in a few, including the bus photo), but there’s also a nice one of him on the bus and them doing some actual work!

It was tricky figuring out how to sort out the place where the bottom of the wooden steps met the “ground,” especially since what was considered the ground was an uneven and badly made surface. The new ground level is made of the same pavers as the path, and we now have two nice steps up from the gangway to the paver path. There was a gap that I felt was possibly just right for a foot if someone were walking down on the left and though it was unlikely that someone would fall in there, I asked that a…

Yesterday’s work in the back yard had the biggest wow factor yet. It’s scary how nice it looks now !

The carpenters were here half day on Saturday and installed a new gate. It is a delight to take out the trash now !

A few folks have been asking for some more details on my ski accident, what was my injury and what happened on the mountain, so for all of you here are a few more details.   Once I realized I was unable to ski out my co-worker/friend Jay Riglar contacted the Ski Patrol who skied down to me, checked me out, put my leg in a splint and put me on a snow gurney, those guys are great (see below them skiing away with me)   This was surprisingly comfortable until I realized I had no idea if there were…