Tobin Family Website

NHL left winger and Vermont Native John LeClair was placed on waivers today by the Pittsburgh Penguins.  This came a couple days after being a healthy scratch for the second time this season.  The 37-year-old has been playing on the fourth line for the club and as such has averaged just under 12 minutes of ice time per game.  He is in the last year of a two year contract, paying him $1.5 million this season.  If LeClair clears waivers by Friday, the Penguins must decide whether to release him and be responsible for his $1.5 million salary or keep him and try to work out a trade in which they might have to pick up part of his salary.  Penguins GM Ray Shero made the move after consulting with LeClair on Wednesday.  Being the Professional that he is, LeClair has not complained publicly about his lack of playing time.  “It’s frustrating, but you have to deal with it,” LeClair said.  LeClair did not accompany the Penguins to New Jersey for Friday’s game.  He is 33 games shy of playing in 1,000 in his NHL career.  He has 406 goals and 413 assists for 819 points in 967 career games.  It is most likely that we will never see LeClair play as a Penguin again. 

On Wednesday morning, I left the house at 0645 and didn’t get to the office about 0915!  That set a new record for miserable commutes!  It was extremely foggy and there were apparently a few accidents.  I spent 30 minutes at a complete stand-still…..not even moving an inch!  Needless to say, I was late for my 0800 meeting!  To make the day even that much more enjoyable, I was at work until almost 8PM.  We had a meeting with our west coast contractor that started at noon eastern.  By the time we went through the 370+ slides, it was nearly 8.  The depressing part is that I get to sit through the whole deck of slides again next Tuesday while in San Diego, as this was only a dry run! 

On Wednesday afternoon, Karen called me at work to inform me that Ben’s teacher had called and was all upset about a story that Ben had written.  Apparently, Ben wrote a story about how a strange, 40-year old man jumped out of the bushes and attacked him and his friends while they were playing outside during the Thanksgiving break.  He story continued by saying that he had to kick the guy and poke him in the eye and that his parents decided not to call the police.  She questioned Ben as to the voracity of the story and he told her it was all true.  As you might imagine, the incident was “slightly embellished” in Ben’s story.  We questioned him at home last night and determined that he used a fair amount of “creative license” in his story to make it more exciting.  Well, needless to say the teacher thought it was pretty exciting and requested a conference with us this morning.  Fortunately, we were able to clear up the fact that it was a neighbor’s parent (not a complete stranger) and that he was just joining in the play after the kids attacked him with a nerf rocket.  Nonetheless, the young teacher had a lot of questions about who the man was and whether he had kids in the school system, etc.  We appreciated her concern, but were a bit uneasy about how concerned she was about the guy’s identity even after we explained it and Ben admitted the embellishments.  I think Ben learned a painful lesson in the process, having to tell his teacher in front of his parents that he hadn’t been entirely truthful when she asked if the story was 100% true. 

Delaney’s teacher called today to ask Karen if she would help in a T-shirt decorating event that the classroom has planned for Tuesday.  Karen was excited to finally be asked to participate, as she had indicated that she was a willing volunteer some time ago.  Delaney has gotten a bit of a reputation with her teacher as being a social butterfly.  It has gotten to the point that the teacher made a comment on her most recent report card that she needs to focus more on active listening and less on talking with her friends.  Aside from that, she got a perfect report card, and Ben also had straight A’s.

This weekend, I need to finish putting up the Christmas lights on the front of the house (weather permitting).  I decorated a pine tree that we have and hung a lighted wreath, but I also have the white icicle lighting to hang.  Many of the houses in the neighborhood decorated over the past week and it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas. 

We are excited about Christmas, but are thinking that we may not be traveling to Vermont after all.  We have been unsuccessful in locating a kennel for the dog, and I don’t think that bringing the dog to Vermont is a very good idea.  In some respects, I would like to stay close to home for the holidays….in other respects, I would like to be with family.  If we don’t go, at least we have been able to see everyone a lot lately with our trip to Vermont in August and the visitors that we have already had here in Virginia. 

The Genealogy project continues to flourish, although I have not worked on it since Monday night.  After my parents left, I decided to do some more online research on our ancestor and Mayflower passenger John Alden.  Because of his notoriety, I was able to find a LOT of historical and genealogical data on him.  I was able to trace the his ancestors through George Alden and then to Richard Alden who was born in 1531 in Scrooby, Hertfordshire, England.  I was also able to trace the ancestors of his wife, Priscilla Mullins through William Mullins, then John Mullins, then John Molines, then William Molines, then William Molyneux, then Thomas Molyneux who was born in 1445 Sefton, Lancashire, England!  I was also able to trace on her mothers side of the family through the Atwood line to the early 1400s. 

Next, I started working my way down from John Alden through Joseph Alden to try and confirm the connection to Abigail Allen (who married Shubail Waldo I in my Grandmother (Waldo) Tobin’s line).  I started with Joseph and searched for a daughter Mary Alden.  Many of the available genealogies didn’t show a Mary.  This is probably because the lines of research of those who uploaded them didn’t require them to identify Mary.  However, I found several of them that did include Mary and the data was fairly consistent on birth/death years.  This included at least one that continued the genealogical record down to Abigail Allen marrying Shubail Waldo.  This was a nice confirmation of what my father knew about us being direct descendants of pilgrim John Alden.

Next week I travel to San Diego on Monday and return Thursday early morning (a red eye return on Wednesday night).  I am not looking forward to the long to and from trips.  The only saving grace is that I am flying Delta and have already been upgraded to First Class on the outbound leg.  It is great to be a Delta Platinum frequent flyer!