First, Marilu signed him up for a skating camp later on this summer, and he will be starting hockey shortly thereafter. So he is finally a true Canadian boy.
Second, today is Lucas's last day of senior kindergarten. I didn't get any photos of him getting on the bus--not that there's a snowball's chance in hell he would have posed for one--but here's a little reminder of his first day in junior kindergarten from a couple of years ago.
As soon as Marilu and Lucas get home from school today, we're jumping in the car and heading down to Massachusetts. Then tomorrow, Marilu and I will get on a plane in Boston and spend the next 4 1/2 days in Las Vegas for our 10th wedding anniversary. I'm sure Lucas won't miss us too much as he'll be having fun playing at Grammy's house or swimming in the lake.
Since we'll be in Massachusetts in a matter of days. I figured I better get the pictures posted from our last trip to Massachusetts first. As you may recall, we went down at the end of May for my cousin Greg's funeral. As somber as that occasion one, as you'll see in these photos, we still managed to have a good time, which I'm sure is the way Greg would have wanted it.
No trip would be complete without a cute picture of Lucas and Grammy as she prepared hamburgers for a BBQ. One thing I can say about Massachusetts is that I never go to be hungry.
Another thing we've done a lot the last couple of years is hang out by the fire pit. This is probably one of my favorite parts of the Massachusetts trips. I can sit there and watch the fire burn for hours...as the mosquitoes drain my body of blood. As you can see, Lucas is now old enough that we let him help out with the fire. I guess you can't learn fire safety too early!
At Greg's memorial reception, we weren't too focused on taking pictures, but I'm glad Marilu did get this one of me with my cousin John (Greg's brother), my uncle Mark, and Lucas.
As I said above, we're due to head out of town in a couple of days. We're driving down to Massachusetts on Thursday, dropping Lucas off with my mom, and then Marilu and I will be flying to Las Vegas on Friday to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. I can't promise anything, but I hope to put up one more picture update tomorrow since I noticed I'm starting to get behind on the pictures again. If not, I'll work on it in Massachusetts since we'll be there for another week after we get back from Vegas.
Believe it or not, Lucas is less than 24 hours away from becoming six years old. I can't say it seems like just yesterday he was a baby, but it definitely doesn't feel like six years. Since tomorrow is also Father's Day, we decided to have his party today.
After throwing his party at Monkey Around last year, we decided that not doing it at home was the way to go. No set up, no clean up, and all the activities are taken care of for us? Yes, please! So this year we decided on having his party at the place he does his karata, Pro Style Martial Arts.
As luck would have it, they were having a big fundraiser in the morning and early afternoon so we had to do it in the late afternoon. The upside to the fundraiser is that they had an inflatable hockey rink set up and the kids were able to play around on that for about 15 minutes at the beginning of the party. (In case you are looking for Lucas, he's easy to find. He chose to wear a green Hawaiian shirt so look for the only kid in a Hawaiian shirt).
Did I mention that Lucas invited 13 kids? All boys? To get an idea of what kind of chaos they were capable of, check out this video of them shortly after they went inside. If you watch closely, you can see Lucas wipe out on a ball in the last few seconds of the video.
One of the first things the instructor had them do is learn the karate shout (ki-ya!). I'm not sure if they were expecting the collection of shrieks that followed.
Here are some of the punching and kicking activities the boys performed.
And what's a party without races?
Blowing out the birthday candles.
One of the cool features about having a birthday party at Pro Style is that the birthday boy gets to cut his cake with a real sword. This was definitely a highlight of the party for Lucas.
You may notice a complete lack of pictures. Two reasons. First, we didn't get that many good ones. Second, and more importantly, our friend Tracey was taking pictures and she always gets much better ones than us. See last year's birthday party for proof. So once I get copies of her pictures, I'll post the highlights here.
Here are a couple of ours that weren't completely awful. In case you are wondering about the cake, the theme of the party was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and that's Michelangelo. Great job by Marilu!
Brandishing his weapon.
Just relaxin' at the rink.
One of the RARE moments of order.
Not really getting the concept of the relay race. (Love the red shirt on the kid to the right of Lucas.)
Chowing down!
So that's it for now. Like I said before, once I get Tracey's photos, I'll post them here. I also expect to have a few pictures tomorrow when Lucas gets his big presents.
Back in spring of 2009, we bought a not-even-2-yet Lucas a kitchen playset. He had seen one at his cousin Megan's birthday party a couple of months before, and he really enjoyed playing with it. So when it came time to get him his next big gift, that was kind of no-brainer. You can see a video of the whole affair below or check out the original blog post here.
The reason I bring this up is that we sold the playset earlier today. Now that Lucas is getting older, we decided it's time to free up some space and sell the things he doesn't use anymore. We've been holding on to a lot of toys well past their "expiration date," so to speak, in case we had another kid, but between what happened with Rory last year and the fact that we've decided to stop trying for another one, now seemed as good a time as any to start the purge.
We've sold a bunch of stuff prior to this, and although I've had whiffs of nostalgia, it wasn't until today's sale that I felt real sadness. Although he hasn't played with the kitchen seriously in at least a year and a half, and it was just taking up space in the basement, it was such a big part of his life that it makes me ache a little inside knowing that it's gone. I'm a very nostalgic person at heart so I suppose I am more susceptible to these types of feelings than most.
I'll take a look at our camera and see if I can find some new pictures to post in the next update. I don't think we took many photos during our trip to Massachusetts, but there's bound to be a couple of good ones on there. Until next time...
