Within 48 Hours!

Yesterday morning, Lucas was happily eating breakfast and watching cartoons when I rudely interrupted him and made him wish all of you a merry Christmas. I hope you'll remember this when he starts bad mouthing me during the Father of the Year nominations in a couple of months.

Hopefully, this entry will, in some small way, make up for subjecting you to soccer videos from 6 months ago.

Soccer Videos

For your viewing pleasure, the soccer videos I mentioned in the last post. In the first one, we're just playing around. I accidentally tripped him, and he insists I trip him again.



In video 2, we're doing some random drill in the middle of the field.



Once again, a blog post that rivals an Ernest Hemingway novel. Thank you, thank you very much.

June Soccer Photos

Quite some time ago, I posted pictures of Lucas from his soccer practice. Those were from May. These are from June. For the record, the narrative in this post is not going to win any Pulitzers.

I should have some soccer videos up tomorrow. No doubt accompanied by some more scintillating prose.

June 2011 Randoms

Here are some more photos from bright and sunny June 2011. In the first one, Lucas prepares to launch a water balloon at my mom, who was manning the camera. If she took that today, she would have been risking a concussion as it would have been an ice grenade.

Bewilderment!

For Father's Day, Lucas made me this shirt at daycare. Have I ever mentioned that his daycare provider Andrea is super mega fantastic?

As evidenced by the bowl, we ate a lot of damn chicken wings that night. I think genetics have cursed him with the Kryptonite-level weakness I have for my mom's chicken wings. And those at the Cheshire Cat Pub.

This picture was taken behind Parliament building in downtown Ottawa. There is a little structure that was built for all the stray cats. It's hard to see in this photo, but Lucas is delighted because there is a raccoon back there stealing all the cat's food. Good for him...serves those lazy cats right.

Nice shot of Marilu and Lucas at a restaurant we found downtown, the Black Tomato. It had a nice courtyard and a good beer selection, and if you know ANYTHING about me at all, you'll know that latter fact makes all the difference to me.

Here, Lucas tries out his brand-new skateboard. We didn't manage to make it off the grass this year, but next summer, I'm hoping to get him on the street. With full padding, of course. He'll be taking ski lessons this January so hopefully that will start developing his balance for these types of activities.

On June 28, we celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary. What better place to mark the occasion than the aforementioned Cheshire Cat Pub, our favorite restaurant in Ottawa. The best wings and the best beer selection! What more could one want in life?

Santa Video 2011

YouTube took its sweet time uploading the Portable North Pole videos, but they finally finished in the wee hours of the morning. I had to take two separate videos since the PNP video lasted a while, and I was afraid my point-and-click digital camera would stop on its own. Here they are...





In case you are interested, you can see the original video here.

One thing you'll notice in the video is that we decided not to put Lucas on the nice list. He's had a real issue with listening to us lately so we picked the naughty option. He's not horrible, by any means, but it's enough that we thought putting the fear of God (or Santa Claus, in this case) might help. However, I didn't want it to explicitly say he was on the naughty list since I didn't want to make him cry or depress him.

As you've seen if you watched it, the video just says he's not on the nice list yet and that he still has time to get on it before Christmas. Even with that, he did have a moment there toward the end where his bottom lip starting quivering a bit. Afterwards, Marilu explained to him that he is on a list between the naughty and nice, and that seemed to help. That said, we are using the threat of calling Santa every time he acts up, and it is working like a charm. Ah, sweet, sweet blackmail.

Tapping Watch

Ok, the videos of Lucas watching the Santa video will have to wait until tomorrow. There are two of them, and they are both in excess of 200 MB. As a result, they are taking a LONG time to upload. The first one just finished after well over an hour, and the second one is still going. As such, I'll try and get them up shortly after I wake up tomorrow since it's after midnight here. Talk to you then!

Letter to Santa

This was the first year where Lucas could kinda/sorta write a letter to Santa. By that, I mean he wrote the opening and closing, and I filled in the main body of the letter based on what he said to me. Here's a picture of it.

In case you can't read it (click on the picture for a larger view), this is what it says:

"Dear Santa (that's Lucas's contribution, obviously. Either that or I've developed Parkinson's.)

Thank you for the gifts last year. I love you, Santa. I was very good today and mostly good this year. I want to be better. For this Christmas, I want a big Ninjago set, a big Star Wars set, and a new hockey shirt, Beyblades and Bakugans. Please can I have some candy.

Thank you Santa for my presents. I love you, Santa! Merry Christmas, Santa, and have a good day.

Love,
Lucas (he signed his own name)"

We sent the letter last week, and we've already received a response. I'm not sure if they do it in the States, but Canada Post has volunteers who write back to the kids. I'll post that tomorrow as well as the Santa video we made for Lucas. If you don't remember what I'm talking about, here is a refresher from last year: Santa Talks to Lucas. It's the last video in the entry.

Almost Caught Up! (In Fantasyland)

So I survived the trip to Detroit with five other guys. Just barely, with one of the highlights (lowlights?) being the point where I was throwing up out of a moving car in downtown Detroit. Remember kids, when you finish all your beer, it's a good idea to avoid shots of liquor. Anyway...

We're slowly catching up in the pictures as we have finally reached June. Only 6 months behind now! I'll try not to think about how sad an achievement that is. The biggest event that happened that month was Lucas's 4th birthday party, but I already posted pictures from that at the time so it probably won't be more than a couple of updates before we're only 5 months behind. So without any further adieu, let's take a look at what happened in June. Warm, sunny, bright, comfortable June. 

This first one was from the very beginning of the month. While we were out, Lucas and his babysitter Emma drew a picture on his easel. I thought it was cute enough to warrant inclusion here.

Apparently, Lucas takes after me when it comes to finding places to relax. He can get comfortable both inside...

or outside.

In case you're wondering what is going on in that last picture, we had sold that chair to someone who was paying us extra to deliver it. For what it's worth, I still miss that chair. I barely used it since it was downstairs in the basement (in a spider-infested corner), but it was a really comfortable chair. In our next house, I'm getting one for every room.

There must be something good on TV here.

End of May

I'm not going to be around this weekend so I wanted to put up the rest of the pictures from last May. We're slowly catching up! I'll be back Monday night and should have more pictures posted by Tuesday at the very latest, possibly even Monday. Enjoy!

Lucas helping wash the car. Of course, by "helping," I mean he took the hose and squirted everything he could.

Here's a great look. I don't think GQ will be calling anytime soon.

And to close out May, Lucas holds up a piece of asphalt he found by the pond. It doesn't get much more exciting than that, folks.

The Joy of Warm Weather

We're still 2 weeks away from the official start of winter, we have yet to get any snow that stuck, and yet I'm already looking forward to spring getting here. In the spirit of that way of thinking, here's a couple of photos from last May.

What says "warm weather" like mowing the lawn? Not one of my favorite things to do, but with a lawn the size of ours, it's done before I can even finish complaining. Lucas has been skeptical about the lawn mower in past years, but this year, he decided to help out for the first time.

Later on that day, we took a walk over to the pond and found this family of geese. Mama Goose wasn't too sure about us, but the babies and Lucas got along pretty well. Bringing bread will usually do that!

The End of Movember

For those of you wondering how Movember wrapped up, wonder no more. This post is for you!

Thanks to several generous donations, I raised $340 for prostate cancer research. In addition, the team I was a part of (Cheshire Cat Staches, named for my favorite restaurant here in Ottawa) raised over four grand. Not bad for the first year. Hopefully, we can double it next year.

I think my last Movember-related post ended with a picture from Day 20. The next day I took at picture was Day 26...

...and we wrapped things up on Day 30.

While the mustache is nothing to get excited about in that last picture, I swear to god that chin is the spitting image of Sergeant Slaughter's. Actually, the color of my mustache hair bothered me throughout this whole month. Even at the end, it looked like I had barely grown anything. As such, on Dec 1 (aka Day 31), I went to the local drugstore and picked up a box of Just for Men. The results follow.

Truly, a "mothers, hide your daughters" moment if there ever was one. After those stunning shots--all self-portraits since Marilu wasn't around--I started shaving it off. I was hoping to shave it down to an amusing shape before getting rid of it completely, such as a John Waters pencil thin one, but my shaving skills are not that impressive. Hence, I was stuck with this less-than-politically correct one.

Once again, thanks to everyone who supported me. I really appreciate your help.

Hockey Night in Kanata

Tonight was a milestone night for Lucas, especially from a Canadian perspective. It was his very first NHL game. My mom and Kevin are visiting, and as luck would have it, Lucas's school had a discount on tickets for tonight's game so we had great lower level seats for a reasonable price. What made the game particularly special was that they were playing the Tampa Bay Lightning, which was my favorite team for several years when I lived in Florida.

It looked like it was going to be a snoozer, as it was 0-0 after the first period, but there were several goals in the last two periods, and the Sens ended up winning 4-2. You can't go wrong with a win for your first NHL game.

For what it's worth, Lucas paid attention for the first period and a half. The last half of the game was spent primarily playing games on my iPhone, but at that point, it was well past his bedtime so we were happy with him. One of the most humorous moments of the night came during the first Sens goal. For those of you who have not attended an NHL game, after a home team goal, a very loud horn goes off and the crowd typically goes wild. I don't think Lucas was prepared for this, and he looked scared when it first happened. I picked him up to watch the celebration, and he regained his composure, but it was kind of funny to see the deer-in-headlights look immediately after the goal.

I'll probably have more pics from my mom's camera at a later date, but here's one we took on Marilu's iPhone. Enjoy!

Meet Colby

Lucas got his first cousin in late 2010 when Colby was born to Marilu's brother Jonathan and his wife Chantal. Because of the large distance between us, it wasn't until May that Lucas got to "meet" him. Thanks to the wonders of technology, they were able to talk via webcams. Below you'll see a photo and video from that encounter.

For what it's worth, Lucas got to meet Colby in-person later in the summer when he and Marilu visited Newfoundland.

Countenance

Woohoo, we have finally left April behind, a mere 8 months after experiencing it live. If that isn't a quick turnaround, I don't know what is. Hopefully, we'll get through May prior to 2014.

If you're wondering about what is going on in the pictures below, I believe I told Lucas to make faces and then just snapped away. So this is him being creative. Enjoy!