Christmas Vacation in Florida - Part 1

As most of your probably know, we flew down south for Christmas to see my dad in Florida. Atlanta was the nearest major airport (about 5 hrs away) so we flew into there and drove down. Because we spent a lot of time traveling down to Atlanta, including a 4 hr layover in Toronto, we only drove halfway the night we got in, stopping in Montgomery, Alabama for the night. Here's a great picture I took of Marilu and Lucas cuddling, right before bedtime.


The next day, we got to my dad's and discovered just how kid-unfriendly his house is. I present Exhibit A, the glass liquor bottles on the open shelf near the floor. Lucas took a quick interest in that (I can't quite remember the story about the ribbons).


The next day was Christmas and that means presents! Here we see Lucas and my dad about to open one. My dad is sporting the spiffy Labrador hat we got him for father's day this past year.


Lucas isn't terribly impressed with the Xbox 360 my brother Jared got for Christmas. I'm sure that attitude will change in the years to come, if he's anything like every other boy on the planet.


For the time being though, there is obviously nothing better than getting a chance to play in a box filled with packing material. Oh, to return to those days.


Here he concentrates on opening another gift. It should come as no surprise that he was MUCH more interested in the opening part of the gifting process than the actual gift.


This is one of those "aww" photos. Lucas is hugging a bear he got for Christmas.


One of Lucas's more recent eccentricities is to open up the front of his sleepers. On Christmas morning, he also got his feet out, showing the world the following fashion statement. Man, I'm going to have so much ammo for when he gets married.


My dad has this little beagle figurine that Lucas absolutely adored. He would hold it and pet it, and sometimes, he even tried giving it water as you see below. As cute as it is, I don't think we're getting a dog anytime soon. One kid is more than enough work, thank you very much.


Later that day, Lucas discovered he could make faces on the side of his port-a-crib (not sure if there's a technical term for it) by pressing his face against it. I responded in kind and we had a good few minutes of laughter over that.


I know I've mentioned our child likes to climb a little too much for his own good so this climbing job was an amateur job, compared to some of the situations he's gotten himself into.


I should have the second half of the trip up sometime tomorrow or Tuesday. Hope you're enjoying!

Christmas morning...sort of

As I mentioned in a previous post, we celebrated Christmas early since it was easier than lugging all of our wrapped presents all the way down to Florida only to bring the unwrapped items back again. So Dec 22 found us in the living room, next to the tree, opening presents. Although it was Lucas's second Christmas, he wasn't really all that aware of what was going on last year since he was only about 6 months old. This year, he was very aware and he had a blast. It's amazing how much joy one can get from tearing open a present without even caring about the actual gift inside. Of course, we let him help open ours as well since he was having such a good time.

I've included several pictures from the morning below. Re-experience Christmas all over again!







The aftermath.


I had to include this last one since it amused me. Our tree started out normal looking, with ornaments evenly distributed over it. However, after a few days of Lucas attacking the lower ones with wild abandon--after a while, saying "no" apparently was just a suggestion--we had to rearrange their locations. So now we have a top heavy tree, which I suspect is not a rare occurrence in most houses with young ones.


For a little bit of nostalgia, here's a couple of links to last year's entries: photos and videos.

Another gift and SNOW!

Another of Lucas's early presents was from Marilu's parents. They got him a portable DVD player, which theoretically would make the flight down to Atlanta and the drive to Florida easier on him. As it turned out, Lucas is still not a big fan of TV and watching movies. I almost felt like a bad parent in the weeks leading up to the trip since we were TRYING to get him to watch TV, which is the complete opposite of what you normally do with kids, right? Anyway, the DVD was useful for me as I got to watch a couple of movies on the plane and in the hotel room so not all was lost. Plus, I'm sure he'll become more interested in videos pretty soon so it will come in handy for future trips. All of this talk leads to a picture of him watching an Elmo video at his new table.


And for those of you in sunnier climates, here's a couple of pictures from one of the crappier times we've had this winter, back on Dec 21. The first is a shot of our back deck and the latter is our front yard. Most of it melted while we were gone, but if the last few years have taught me anything (especially the 14 ft we got last year), Mother Nature is just biding her time.



Oh, what the heck, one more pudding smile for the road.

Gifts!

After going to a Christmas party at a friends house in mid-December, we discovered Lucas really liked some motorized dinosaur toys they had for their kids. As a result, I was out the next day to pick him up a dragon version of the toy. We ended up giving it--as well as several other gifts--early since we didn't see a point to waiting until Christmas. He still doesn't have any real idea as to what Christmas is, plus we were going to be flying to my dad's and didn't want to bring a bunch of gifts for him just to bring them all back. We did end up doing a mini-Christmas where we opened our gifts to each other (and the few remaining for Lucas) on the 22nd, I think. Those pictures will be in another post, probably the next one.

For now, here's Lucas with his new dragon.


Another of his early gifts was a new table. My mom was kind enough to get this for him. At first, we were going to get a fancy wooden one that admittedly cost way too much. However, the more we thought about it, the more we realized that this would be a table that would be used for eating, doing crafts, and lots of other stuff that weren't going to leave it in the best of conditions. As a result, a nice sturdy plastic table fit the bill.

Here, he checks out the table.


Not surprisingly, he found the screwdriver I used to put the table together much more interesting than the table itself. As you can see in the second picture, he picked up the idea of what it was used for pretty quick.



Of course, not long after I put the whole thing together, our little monkey found another way to use it, one that wasn't really intended.


These last pictures are from the same dinner as the popular "pizza in the pjs" video that I posted prior to our Florida vacation. We have one wacky little boy.

Smiles and crazy outfits

Smiles!



Smiles while eating pudding!


For some reason, Lucas really wanted to put boots on over his PJs so I helped him out. The results follow...

Happy New Year!

More pictures to come from Dec 31, but for now, Lucas, Marilu, and I wish you all a happy 2009!

Company Christmas Party

Here are some pictures of Lucas from my company's Christmas party on Dec 7. We start off with him coloring with Marilu.


This next one may be a little hard to see (so click it to enlarge), but he's got a big ol' grin as he goes to see the baby one of my co-workers is holding. Too bad the red eye is making the little girl behind him look like an extra from Terminator 4.


Lucas tries to figure out how to get into the tent where all the bigger kids are.


Ah-ha! He found his way in.


Lucas gets his present from Santa...


...and promptly tears into it. I should point out that Lucas did pretty well with Santa this year. Yeah, he always approached him with caution, but he never flew into a breakdown like some young kids do. Who knows, maybe that's coming next year. Probably not though since Lucas is way too personable.


Later on that day, I got one of the few photos of our decorated tree looking normal. By that, I mean one in which all the ornaments weren't moved up and out of reach of his royal terror. You'll see in later posts what I mean.

We're back

Today was a LONG day, filled with delayed flights, missed connections, and lots of waiting around in airports. I think these pictures of Lucas, taken moments after we got home around 10 PM pretty much sums up how we felt after we walked in the door.




I'm now going to take a cue from him and retire to the bed myself. I'll be back tomorrow with the first of several posts, covering the Florida trip as well as all the Christmas and Christmas party pics.

Video Marathon

Tomorrow, we're headed out for nearly a week to visit my dad in sunny Florida. It'll definitely be good to get out of here since on the days it's not snowing, it's bitterly cold. I won't miss it a bit, let me tell ya.

If I have time later, I'm going to do what I've done the last few times I've been away, and schedule posts to run while we're gone so you still get your Lucas fix. However, today I wanted to put up an early Christmas gift of sorts, 6 brand-new Lucas videos!

One thing to note regarding YouTube: recently they have added the ability to view new videos in high definition so if you click the "watch in high quality" link at the bottom right of each video, you should be able to see a much crisper picture when watching the videos. You'll have to go to the actual YouTube site though. I think you can do that once the video completes on this page.

As you can see in the first video, the digital camera is still one of the main focuses of Lucas's life. I think he wants that thing more than any toy he's ever seen. No babies were hurt during the making of this video, but one sure was annoyed.



In the second video, Lucas plays around with a couple of spoons I gave him (he did much more off-camera), wanders around, and poses for the camera.



Video 3 finds Lucas in the tub. He's recently discovered how to make splashes much bigger than the small ones he does with his hands.



This is a sequel of sorts to last week's video where Lucas was putting blocks in his pajamas. You'll me amazed at what goes in there this time.



This is a very cute one where Lucas does his impression of ol Saint Nick.



And finally, a fairly straighforward video of Lucas eating dessert, a chocolate pudding.



If I don't post again before then, Merry Christmas, everyone!

Just plain cute

Just a few random shots of Lucas from Dec 4. I should warn you now, some of them are VERY cute so prepare yourself.

Cause sometimes the best way to eat a piece of bread is with a fork.


Here Lucas models one of the crafts he made at daycare, a reindeer antler hat.




And finally, Lucas shows off his favorite winter hat.



Bye!

Not sure how I forgot!

One other thing, Lucas turned 18 months old this past Tuesday, Dec 16. You can tell he's getting older when I forget a "milestone" date like that. Anyway, forget about it and scroll down to the new pictures!