Thursday, August 28, 2014

Nickname

Apparently, Lucas has his first nickname. While signing him out from his hockey camp yesterday, one of the instructors mentioned they were calling him "Vegas." Deal ---> Dealer --> Vegas. Get it?

It's not just the instructors either. On the way back to the car, he was saying bye to some of his fellow campers, and they were responding with "Bye, Vegas!" and "See you tomorrow, Vegas!" Suffice to say, he likes the new nickname. It'll be interesting to see if he tries to use it when he returns to school next week. As nicknames go, there are far worse ones.

Saturday, August 23, 2014

Winter Sports

With Lucas due to start a week of hockey camp this Monday, followed by sort-outs in a couple of weeks for this year's hockey season (Novice!), I thought it might be a good idea to take a look at the last of the hockey photos from last season.

At the IP level, each kid gets a chance to be goalie at least once during the season. Lucas was really looking forward to it and had a great time playing goalie. That said, he wasn't very good at it. Most of the pucks he stopped were due to them hitting him as opposed to him actively stopping them. We're not too upset about that since based on everything we've heard, having a kid play goalie is a painful experience (particularly on the wallet).





Here's a video of our Brodeur wannabe in net.



A few more photos from the season that was.


If I'm not mistaken, this photo was taken at his very last practice. What a veteran!


I believe this next video is the biggest video I've ever uploaded to YouTube. It's 310 MB and over 2 minutes long. During one of the hockey tournaments at the Sensplex, I recorded Lucas for an entire shift. He doesn't do anything spectacular like score in this clip, but he does get involved a couple of times. He's #7 so keep an eye out for him. His good friend Zach is #16, and he scores a goal right off the opposing goalie's helmet at about the 1:23 mark.



That's all I have for hockey, but in keeping with the theme, I have a few other winter sports-related pictures for your enjoyment. It's much easier to appreciate them now, when it's still warm and sunny out.

As you may recall, we signed him up for skating lessons. His skating level was at the upper end of what they were teaching, but he still got a few things from it, most notably a lot of experience doing crossovers. Here he is doing some backwards skating (video of the same to follow).


While waiting for other kids in his group to finish, he had plenty of chances to be not so serious.



Here's the backwards skating video I spoke of.



One of the highlights of the skating class was a visit from Spartacat, the mascot for the Ottawa Senators. I think I may have posted a picture of Lucas getting a certificate from him in an earlier post, but here's a video of Sparty skating with the kids.



Finally, we go to the slopes. Well, "slopes" may be pushing it for a sled hill in the neighborhood, but technically, it's correct. Ever since Lucas started ski lessons, he's wanted to try snowboarding. We told him that if he learned to ski, he could start taking snowboard lessons when he turned 7. Since he's got skiing down, he'll be trying snowboards out this winter.

Why am I mentioning all this? Last winter, I bought Lucas a "kiddie" snowboard that could be used at the sled hill. As you'll see in the following video, he's already got some decent skills so I think he'll be set come January.



Hope that was worth the wait! I've got all the backlogged photos organized so I have no more excuses. Expect at least weekly updates of photos from here on out.

Friday, August 22, 2014

Update Coming!

I finally got around to downloading all the photos from our camera and both of our iPhones, and the grand total of pictures sitting in my To Do folder is just shy of 1000. That includes all the ones from our Newfoundland trip as well as our jaunt to Toronto a couple of weekends ago. I'm planning to organize them a bit and should have a new post (with pictures!) up within the next day or two.