First Day of 8th Grade

 Going back to school in a Covid-19 world...

A New Era

It seems impossible, but our little baby...who becane a toddler...who become a kid...who became a pre-teen...is now a teenager. Where the hell has the time gone?

Last night, before he went to bed, I got a picture of Lucas on his last day as a 12-year-old. I can't get the "cheese" smile out of him like I once did so I had to settle for this.

I think his birthday already would have been a little different than past ones, but in the age of Covid, it was doubly so. I've been working from home during the pandemic, using our main computer. A couple of weeks ago, Lucas asked if he could use the computer during the day on his birthday. At first I was going to just use a laptop, but in the end, I decided to go into the office since it was easier that way. 

As for a party, he didn't have anything like in yesteryear. We had takeout from an Italian restaurant he requested, and then we told him his main gift was that we would pay for a data plan on his phone. That's how you know he is a teenager! At one point, I did ask him if there is anything physical he would want as a gift that isn't electronic related. Nothing came to mind, and he was very happy with getting data on his phone so successful birthday, I guess!

Here are a couple of photos I took of the birthday cake celebration (key lime pie, by request). His friend Parker and his mom are part of our "bubble family," and they joined in on the singing so it wasn't super lonely.

I planned to upload the birthday cake video, but unfortunately, I need for the video to be on the computer. It can't pull from the phone like the photos. Oh well, I'll try and post it in a follow-up post when I upload the video from my camera.

Hope you enjoyed, We sure did!

(FYI, I just noticed he didn't change his shirt from 12 to 13 so some things never change.)

By request

Here you go, mom. This was from mid-April. Lucas was trying to work on schoolwork, and Beatrix was having none of that, apparently.

It's a Whole New World

As you've probably guessed, things have come to a standstill up here, along with the rest of the world. The remainder of Lucas's hockey season was cancelled so I have elected to believe that they would have gone on to win the rest of their playoff games and become the House B Peewee Champions of 2020. Go Cows!

This is March break so Lucas and Marilu were already scheduled to be off, and the schools announced they would be off at least an additional two weeks so they won't be back until the end of March at the very earliest. Though I guess we will see how things play out.

On Monday, my company finally told us to work from home so I started that yesterday (Tuesday). Once again, it's hard to say how long this will last, but I'll make the best of it even though working from home is not the easiest way to be productive. I've made it through two days so far so thumbs up for that. I'll probably go in tomorrow or Friday for a few hours just to get a break from Lucas asking if he can use the computer. God forbid he not be able to play Fortnite over vacation.

In case you missed it, Beatrix came home early from the breeder since Marilu and Lucas will be home to watch her. Along with her came her 6 puppies. There were 7, but once accidentally died the first night after they were born. The breeder thinks B might have rolled over on the pup.

Nevertheless, the remaining ones are as cute as can be. There is one beige one, one dark brown one, and the rest look like B. One even has a big white patch on its chest, similar to B's, though much more prominent on the puppy. Here's a shot of the pile of puppies having a nap, which is something they do 90% of the day, lucky little buggers.

Cows Update

As I've alluded to in the past, it hasn't been a good year for hockey. There were several kids who probably shouldn't have been playing at the House B level, and it made for a tough time. The season ended two weekends ago, and they had a whopping 2 wins and ended up in 7th (last) place.

However, this past weekend was the start of the playoffs, and the Cows managed a strong win over the 5th place team, 4-2. I guess this is as good a time as any to have a hot streak! Their work is cut out for them as they still have to play the 1st and 3rd place teams, but one win puts them into the next round of the playoffs. On top of that, even though they didn't have many wins, they did tie a lot, and their last game against the #1 team was a tie so anything is possible.

Their next game is this weekend, then the following two weekends are off due to March break, and then they will finish up the round robin toward the end of the month. I'll update as soon as the games happen.

Speaking of spring break, we will be heading down to Long Island for a couple of days since Lucas is finally getting his certificate of U.S. citizenship. It's taken the government 2 years to process his paperwork (insert joke here), but it's finally here. I will definitely have some pictures from that trip.

One more "speaking of." Speaking of pictures, I haven't taken many lately hence the lack of photos, but I wanted to mention that we bought a new desktop computer this past Sunday. As a result, I have a much more powerful (FASTER) computer to work with now so I will be uploading and organizing all my photos on here and should have some new stuff soon.

Hello January

I didn't get much picture organizing done over the holidays since Lucas had the computer in his room most of the time. Then, work has been so busy in January that when I get home I just want to relax. So, my apologies. I'll get there eventually.

However, I didn't want to go through an entire month without an update so here you go!

Incidentally, Beatrix had her ultrasound tonight, and it turns out she will be having 7 puppies. The due date is February 25. Should be interesting!