Christmas 2014

                2014       

       Merry Christmas

       from the Blaneys!

Ken and Cathy celebrated Cathy's first year of retirement by taking the camper out of storage and spending nine days camping, visiting Mackinac Island and returning home via the western side of Michigan and Chicago to visit Erin. We made it home just in time to go to the Packer game!

 

Kathleen joined two friends and spent two weeks traveling through France, Italy and Spain. She continues her work as a Nurse Case Manager at the AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin.

  

Erin is in her second year of a two year Masters program at Loyola University Chicago. She is loving the city and will earn her Masters Degree in Social Work in May!

Merry Christmas!            

Ken, Cathy, Kathleen and Erin!    

November in Door County

Door County in Nov.

Some people ask us what we do in Door County during this time of year.  So while this weekend is not typical, I think it's worth sharing.

   On the Friday after Thanksgiving Egg Harbor has this very cute, very low key Christmas lighting in Harbor Park.  The event includes free hot chocolate, warm cookies, hot cider, caroling and a visit with Santa.  The tree gets lit at 5:00 and the town square is pretty much emptied out by 5:45.
   After a quick pizza at home we headed over to Hands On Art Studio.  It's an artsy kind of place that has adult night on Fridays.  They encourage you to bring in a bottle of wine, listen to a good acoustic guitar player/singer and paint or create a piece of art.  They fire your art item and you can pick in up a few days later.
   On Saturday we made cut out cookies and watched Home Alone

before meeting Jon and Mary Jo for lunch at the very picturesque White Gull Inn.
   They tried a new fund raiser in Egg Harbor this year.  It was a raffle of sorts.  They sold squares on a very small piece of property.  They walked around a calf with paper antlers strapped onto his head to make him look like a reindeer.  If the calf poops on your square, you win $500!
   Kathleen and I had our photo taken with Santa and headed back to the cottage in time for Mass which was followed by a wonderful leftover turkey dinner served with dressing and potatoes that Jon and Mary Jo brought over.

   Jon, Mary Jo, Cathy and I went to a Letterman Christmas Concert at the Door County Auditorium and nobody enjoyed it more than Cathy.
   On Sunday we had a wonderful breakfast and watched "The Holiday"
   By the way, it has snowed 5-6 inches in Fish Creek and we actually had our driveway plowed out.
   Thanks for letting me share our weekend with you.

Christmas 2013

                                                      Christmas 2013
                     Merry Christmas and Greetings from the Blaney Family

2013 has come and almost gone and once again we are grateful for the blessings with which we have been bestowed.  Here is an update on our family.

Erin at Wrigley

After two years of working as a bilingual family support worker working with mothers and infants for Family Services, Erin decided to go back to school to begin work on her Master's Degree.  So, at the end of August, with the help of Mary Jo, Jon and Kathleen, we packed her up and moved her to Chicago.  She began classes in September at the downtown campus of Loyola University of Chicago, just two block from the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower).  After unpacking, we toured Navy Pier and we were able to make a pilgrimage to Wrigley to take in a Cubs game. Erin is enjoying her time in the city and seems to have adapted to not having a car for the first time in quite a while.

Kathleen continues to work as a Nurse Case Manager for the AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin.  She

  Min, Kathleen, Ethan, Tim & Anthony

recently completed two trips, one to the west coast, the other to the east coast.  She traveled to California in October to spend some time with her uncle, aunt and cousins and to see her friend star in a play.  Tim, Min, Anthony and Ethan could not have been more gracious and welcoming.  They toured UC-Merced, much of San Francisco and spent a day at Yosemite.  The east coast trip was a mixture of business and pleasure.  She attended a health conference in Boston and was able to extend her trip so that she could visit friends in Providence, RI and New York City.

Bridget & Jeff

The family highlight of the summer was attending Bridget's wedding in Minocqua.  Bridget and her husband Jeff had met at Camp Kawaga so it seemed fitting to have their rehearsal dinner, reception and dinner there.  Many of us stayed at the camp and had a great time. The wedding was beautiful.

In 2013 we continued to better appreciate the simple pleasures that life offers.  They include time at the cottage, visits from family and friends, a family friend's wedding in Milwaukee and an Early Family gathering in Door County.

May God bless you during this holiday season.
Ken, Cathy, Kathleen and Erin

ADDITIONAL PHOTOS

Navy Pier (Chicago)

Anthony, Kathleen and Ethan (San Francisco)

Joan of Arc (Marquette)

                

Christmas 2012

Christmas 2012

Merry Christmas from the Blaney Family. 

2012 was a wonderful year for us as we hope it was for all of you. 
 
We did not do a lot of travelling this year but when we did travel it was to the east coast to visit Kathleen.  Cathy, her dad, Erin, Jon, Mary Jo and I flew in to Providence to witness Kathleen’s graduation from Brown University.  She received her master’s degree in Public Health.  We were able to take side trips to Connecticut and Massachusetts in her 1997 van with 150,000 miles on it with no air-conditioning.  Every we time we stopped and got out, the seven of us pouring out of that van reminded me of a circus clown car. 

Later that summer, Cathy went back out to spend some one-on-one time with her.  Cathy drove and Kathleen navigated as they made their way into the heart of NYC.  While there they attended the Broadway musical, “Mamma Mia”

Watching all the news coverage about Hurricane Sandy made me want to jump on a plane and fly east.  So I did and I am grateful that Delta was the only airline flying into Providence the day after the storm.   Before driving back to Wisconsin we took a side trip to Cape Cod and Nantucket.   Kathleen cleaned out her apartment that served her well for two and a half years and we headed west.  We made side trips to visit Yale, Hershey PA, Gettysburg and the NFL Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.   Because of the devastation of the hurricane, we avoided NYC but still spent 3 hours searching for and waiting for gas in New York & New Jersey.  We’ll always remember the people we met at Walgreens.  The area had no gas, no electricity and no heat for days.  Walgreens was being powered by generators and people were huddled around a powerstrip that the store provided so they could recharge their cell phones and laptops.

This year Cathy and I are especially thankful to have two gainfully employed daughters.  Erin continues her work as a bilingual social worker for The Healthy Families Program of Family Services where she works with at-risk infants and first time mothers.  Now well into her second year with Family Services, Erin has fallen in love with many of “her babies” and they with her. 

Kathleen has accepted a position with the AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin as an HIV Nurse Case Manager.  Her duties include clinic time in Green Bay and home visits in the surrounding area. 

Other 2012 highlights include Kathleen’s trip to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC, and Ken receiving an alumni award from his high school.

Cathy continues to teach 2^nd grade in our neighborhood school.  She struggles with the lack of materials, support staff and the increasing needs of her students but continues to make a terrific impact on her student’s lives.

As always, we'd love to hear from you. 

Merry Christmas!

Ken, Cathy, Kathleen and Erin

Vermont

     Greetings from Vermont. We started the day with a tour of the Cabot cheese factory. Go figure, we live in Wisconsin and have to travel to Vermont for a cheese factory tour!
     After learning all we could from the experience, we traveled 30 miles down the road to the home of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream. After a brief video, a tour of the plant it was on to the free sample! Today's free flavor was Steven Colbert's Americone Dream.
     Next stop was the Cider Mill where I had a chance to drink a jug maple syrup.  It was very cute and very New England. 
      Montpelier was just around the corner so we drove through town and saw the capital.
     Our last stop was the Von Trapp's resort in Stowe, VT, (think The Sound Of Music).  The huge resort is still owned by the "Trapp" family. From 4:30-5:30 they have a sing-a-long at the resort, lead by a harpist. All in all it was a full and enjoyable day. 

We're Off!

I have a conference in Boston so Cathy and I left a few days early, picked up Kathleen in Boston and headed to Bar Harbor, Maine.  The Maine state motto seems to be “lobster, lobster everywhere, why don’t you eat some?”  So we did.  We ate lobster, lobster roll and even lobster mac-n-cheese.  We took a 2 hour scenic boat tour and saw thousand of Maine’s famed lobster traps, spent some time going through Acadia National Park and saw stunning views from Cadillac Mountain. 


Kathleen on scenic cruise near Bar Harbor Manie

Mass at Holy Redeemer in Bar Harbor

Cathy and Kathleen on scenic cruise

stop at the LL outlet store



view from our hotel room in Bar Harbor



Kathleen on Cadillac Mt in
Acadia National Park

believe it not it's mac-n-cheese with lobster!

Cathy on the cruise

on the cruise

Egg Rock Island Lighthouse

our cruise ship the Acadia




lobsters are everywhere!

More Convention photos.

Chairman Jason Rae introduces
Dr. Jill Biden

This is the shot that CNN showed of Kathleen.  Jason
Rae is just over her right shoulder



The MSNBC set
Chris Matthews,
Debbie Wasserman-Schultz

Jason, Kathleen and Caroline Kennedy