Lucas's First Play

As you'll recall from last week's post, Lucas was chosen to be the troll in his 2nd grade class's version of The Three Billy Goats Gruff. This morning was the big day, and I went to see him and his classmates put on a good show. Unfortunately, it was the last day of the semester for high school students so Marilu was unable to be there, Thanks to our handy camera, I was able to video his performance so neither Marilu nor you will have to miss our budding Laurence Olivier.



Other than a brief forgetting of his lines in the middle, I think he did well. His fall at the end--and subsequent wig flying off in the bow--got the biggest laugh of the show (his group was the last of 6). I think it's safe to say that my penchant for being a class clown when I was younger (and some would say still) has rubbed off on him.

Here are a few photos from the "afterparty."

Posing with his buddy Liam. (Trivia time! Liam was Jason Voorhees in the Halloween pictures.)

NFL Playoffs

Although Lucas likes both teams in the Super Bowl, there's only one he's going to be rooting for a week from Sunday.

In case you're wondering, he watched the whole game this past weekend, never giving up on them even though it looked hopeless until the last 5 minutes. So maybe he isn't the bandwagon fan I thought he was.

The Troll

Your daily dose of Lucas...

In case you are wondering why he's changed his hairstyle, he'll be playing the part of the troll in the classic story The Three Billy Goats Gruff, and this is part of his costume that he and Marilu came up with last night. His class is doing a "theatrical performance" (so says the note that came home from school) and different groups of kids will be covering a bunch of fairy tales. I'll be going in to see it next Friday, and I'll do my best to video it so you can all see how it goes. He's been practicing his lines for a couple of weeks now, and he's pretty excited about it, though a tad nervous.

Christmas 2014

Before we get too far from the big day, here are the highlights of our Christmas Day pictures. You may be scratching you head at this first picture, but the story behind it is that Marilu took it at 9:09 in the morning. Thus proving not all kids wake up at the ass crack of dawn on Christmas morning.

A few pictures prior to the unwrapping carnage that would soon commence.

And the massacre begins! In the interest of not boring you, I'm only showing a couple of the biggest presents he received--a Star Wars Rebels Lego set and an autographed Jonathan Toews Team Canada Olympic jersey. Oh, and a picture of the final haul.

Later on, we all played one of the games "Santa" brought for us, King of New York.

And finally, a couple from around the table before we dug into Marilu's prime rib feast.

Hope everyone else had a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year!

The Sneak

Last night, it was my turn to read to Lucas before bed. After reading two chapters in "The Notebook of Doom," I asked if he wanted me to read more. He shrugged and said no. I figured this meant he wanted me to read from "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" instead, but that got a no as well. I asked him straight up if he wanted to go to bed, and he answered yes. Puzzled, since he usually tries to stay up later, I brought him to his bed and went downstairs.

An hour or so later, Marilu headed up to bed. A few minutes later, I heard her raised voice telling Lucas she was disappointed in him. It turns out he snuck his iPad upstairs and was watching the cartoon Paw Patrol on Netflix in his bed. Due to past transgressions, he's not supposed to bring his iPad upstairs so this was a double whammy if you include staying up past his bedtime.

I found the whole incident more amusing than anything, but it's taught us that we need to keep an eye on him if he starts doing things out of the ordinary.

Speaking of last night, here's what Marilu was doing. That's the Sens vs Lighting on the TV and the World Juniors hockey game between Canada and Slovakia on the iPad. That's a true Canadian right there!

Welcome to 2015!

Happy New Year! I know it's a few days after the fact, but it's the first post of the year so I suppose it still applies. I'm starting this year off with an update to one of the most popular posts I've done on the blog, Growing Up on Christmas Eve. If you need a refresher, check it out here.

Rather than confuse the kids with where to look, I let Tracey take all the pictures this year (with her far superior camera), and then I just looted them all from her Flickr account. So without any further adieu, the 2015 Christmas Eve update of Lucas, Logan, Thierry, and Etienne.

The first two are almost identical except Etienne has a better smile in the second one. However, I thought the other 3 looked better in the first one. So voila, you get both.

Can't take pictures without the kids getting a little wacky.

This was my favorite picture of the 3 older boys, but unfortunately, Etienne is distracted.

And one last crazy one.

I can't recall if I've ever posted other pictures from the Christmas Eve party, but here are a couple of others I liked from this year.