Patrick won his elementary school’s Spelling Bee today after only studying “for about, like…I don’t know…20 minutes?” Lisa reported that the tension in the room was palpable as Patrick and three other finalists misspelled their words and were all called back up for another round time and time-again. In fact, Patrick had three attempts at the winning word, finally nailing it in what his principal quipped may have been “round 42.”

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Burried deep in the damp basement of McClellandFamily.com we keep a box of old archived blog posts. Every so often we dig them out, blow off the dust and publish them here on the new and improved blog. (They were originally posted in that sappy old blog with that racist logo.) Rather than leaving them there to perish or simply bringing them forward to this blog and filing them by date where you would never see them (honestly, does anyone really read posts from 5 or 6 years ago?) we file them here under a catchy title usually with the word “archive” in it. That’s a hint: For you regular blog readers, search the word “archive” and you may see stuff you’ve never seen before. Here’s what we’ve brought out of that damp basement lately:

To my wife Lisa on Valentine’s Day 2005: A lover’s day poem written by Steve and a photo or her lipstick-written response! Originally posted February 14, 2005

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We are sad to say we are leaving Steve and Emily home. Love you and we’ll miss you!(Steve’s note: Patrick got to go this time to make up for missing the trip in March of 2004 (he was too young, we deemed.) The whole family also went in December of 2006.)

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In the deepest recesses of the recycle bin we discovered a recently-tossed, two-page story, hand-written by Patrick, about our trip to Turks and Caicos in the Bahamas. The trip in February of 2008 is well documented on this blog but until now I believed that I was the only one taking notes. No one in this household, short of Patrick who was 6 at the time, knew that he was

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Mike and Jody treated us to a weekend in San Francisco, a Jimmy Buffet concert and the hotel room to boot.  We were joined by Gina and Connie for the night. This is the last known photo before “Wasted Away Again in Margaritaville.”  Thanks Mike and Jody! We had a blast.

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As a Christmas present, Santa brought us tickets to the Egyptian exhibit at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. We finally used them in March. Steve loved it, Lisa tolerated it and the kids ran through it as fast as they could.

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Our Halloween started out early with a trip to the Fog Willow Pumpkin Farm. We picked out several pumpkins, ate hot dogs and then settled into lawn chairs and blankets for a movie showing. Great fun!

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Independence day was celebrated at the cabin with the Wassermanns and Petterle’s. Also Les, Dan, the Killers (Honestly, Amy when all three of us are together in one place at one time, can’t we manage to get a photo together?) Eva and Roger joined us with the kids for a couple of days too. It was a full house, but we had a fun week. We entered the usual float pulled by Mike’s jeep in the parade. Steve road the unicycle in the parade for the first time.

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On father’s day, I could think of nothing better to do than to spend the day at Folsom Lake with my two kids and 5 other father’s, all family and close friends. We had a blast and the day went by way too fast.

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The Killers made it up to our cabin for a fun-filled weekend of skiing and sledding. All of the kids took a lesson for a few hours and then joined us on the slopes at Donner Summit for the rest of the sunny day of skiing. Sunday was spent sledding just down the street from our cabin. We had a great hill with some super-fast runs all to ourselves.

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