The Wedding

This will be easier than I thought. Since Marilu was in the wedding party, and I was trying to keep Lucas from running all over the place, I didn't take many pictures of the wedding and/or reception. In fact, looking at my photo folder, there are a whopping six pictures, only four of which are any good.

The first one is the only non-Lucas picture. If you ever wanted to see Marilu dressed to the nines, squint and you can see her on the left, alongside the rest of the bridesmaids. You can't really see it that well, but her hair was really well done. It reminded me of our own wedding day 6 years past.


Most of the groomsmen took a shine to Lucas at the rehearsal dinner so at the reception I took a couple of pictures of him hanging out with the boys. I think Darnell was his best friend since he kept giving Lucas little packets of milk, which he wolfed down. Also, in the second picture, you can get a better idea of what Marilu's hair looked like.



Finally, a picture of Lucas with the bride and groom. Somehow the stars aligned since he was acting like a wildman before and after this photo, but miraculously, he gave a big cheese and produced one of the better pictures I've taken of him in a while.


That's it for the wedding photos. I'll probably post the highlights from the rest of the trip over the next couple of entries before returning to the backlog of photos from June and early July.

Coming soon

My mom, ever alert, informed me that I said I would post pictures from the trip this weekend. Whoops. Between starting the second course of my real estate program, having guests this weekend (Marilu's brother John and his new wife Chantal), and just keeping track of Lucas, who is getting more crazy by the day, updating completely slipped my mind.

However, Marilu and Lucas are going with John and Chantal to Niagara Falls tomorrow for 2 days, which gives me plenty of time alone to finally spend some time updating. I'll try not to shout "blessed freedom!" too loud. :)

That said, I PROMISE to post new pictures by tomorrow afternoon. There, now I can't procrastinate.

FYI

Hello! We got back safe and sound last night after 2 long days of driving. I'll post some pictures and tell some tales sometime this weekend.

Real Estate/Vacation Updates

Since I'm on vacation, this blog seemed to be the ideal way to get out the news that I passed my first real estate exam with a resounding 100%! If nothing else, I sure know how to take a test. Anyway, next up is Course 2, which should last about a month and a half. Let's hope for the same results.

Also, the fact that I am writing this now means we did make it to Labrador without any problems. Lucas was a gem, as he behaved pretty much the entire trip, even when we had him at a restaurant until after 9 on the first night of the trip.

Talk to you all again soon!

A boatload of pictures, Part 2

Here's the last pictures I'll be posting before our trip to Lab City. We leave tomorrow morning (so, about 6 hours from now...I really should be in bed), and we'll likely be back Tuesday or Wednesday next week. I may try and update from the road, but don't be surprised if there are no updates this week.

First off, this picture was taken at the same time as the video where Marilu was tickling Lucas with her hair. Tell me that is not one happy kid.


I can't remember if I posted this one or not already. No one ever accused the Deal men of being normal.


Here's a picture of Lucas and my mom from his birthday party. This came from my mom's camera, which I uploaded a week after the ones from mine.


Also from my mom's camera, here's Lucas doing what looks like a T Rex impression at the party.


You can't really see his face too well, but I still like this photo. Hugging the dog, the sunglasses, the camo onesie. It's just too cute.


Kicking back on the patio after a weekend lunch. Tough life you have, kid.


Alright, that catches us up to June 14. I seriously have to go to bed since we'll be on the road to Lab City in about 6-7 hours. Sure, Marilu will be doing most of the driving, but I should at least make an attempt to stay awake. See you all next week! (if I don't post again sooner)

Classy little man

This one is too good to wait until we get back. As you may know, we are going to Labrador City for Marilu's brother's wedding. Lucas is going to be involved as the ringbearer so, of course, we had to get him an appropriate outift. Well, it took a while to get the picture below since he didn't want to wear the outfit and when it WAS on, he wasn't too happy, but I think I caught him well with this shot. What do you think? I love the "relaxing at the bar at the end of the day" look.


I was able to pose with him in this next one solely due to the TV being on. As you can see, he could care less that we are trying to take a photo.

Videos for a Saturday afternoon

Lucas jumps off his perch of death and tries to whack Marilu. It's much cuter than it sounds.




Here, he plays with the remote controlled car seen in the previous post.




A lot of things can make Lucas laugh. Here's one of them.




Who said you needed the tricycle to have fun? Lucas just needs the box the tricycle comes in.




A litte summertime fun under the sprinkler.



More pictures tonight, as promised.

Whoops

Got sidetracked. Two posts on Saturday to make up for it!

A boatload of pictures, Part 1

The first installment of "boatload of pictures," my attempt to catch up somewhat on the backlog of photos before we leave for a week on Sunday. See the previous post if you have no idea what I am talking about.

May 24 was the date I unofficially designated "first day of summer." Why? Because it was the first day I could fill up Lucas's pool without worrying he would get hypothermia.


I think I've made it pretty clear in past entries that Lucas loves berries. As you can see here, he's taken his berry love to a new level, scooping blueberries out of the bowl with an ice cream scoop. Rawr!


This has accident written all over it.


Cute one of mom and son.


Remember the video a while back of Lucas running around the island in the kitchen with a bucket on his head. Well, here we see the star performer posing for a close-up.


I'm starting to think I could start a whole series on "recipe for disaster" pictures we have of Lucas. In this one, he's using the bucket from the previous picture as a stepping stool to try and get god knows what off the kitchen counter.


On May 29, there was a community garage sale and we got a bunch of stuff for Lucas for really cheap. One of those things was the remote-controlled car below. Unfortunately, you get what you pay for as I ended up throwing it out after about a week since it went through batteries like water and it defaulted to reverse. Lucas had fun with it while it lasted though, and that's all that counts.


Finally, no one likes to see a sad Spider-Man.


The "boatload of pictures" bonanza continues tomorrow. See you then!

A word is worth 1/1000 of a picture

A couple of cute tidbits from today:

1) Lucas now knows how to apologize. We put him in time out earlier, and when I went over to check on him (after, like, 20 seconds), he looked at me with those little Disney doe eyes and said, "Rorry." It actually sounded a little like Scooby-Doo. It's so cute, but the thing that gets me is that you can tell he totally knows what he is doing. Later on, when he was in a different time out (he likes to throw stuff at the dinner table, which typically earns him one), he almost immediately said sorry (or rorry). Even though he's just going through the motions, it's just too cute.

2) Before dinner, I took out the game board from Operation and let him play with that. Man, he was transfixed by that game for nearly an hour. He has no idea what the rules are or what he's supposed to do with the "bones"--he had more fun putting them back in the holes--but does he ever love touching the tweezers (or whatever they are called) to the metal and making the buzzing sound and lighting up the red nose. Once again, very cute stuff. He also tried Jenga but that didn't hold his attention for very long. He just likes knocking the whole tower over.

I didn't get any pictures of him playing Operation (though I will next time), but I did catch his apologizing during a time out on video. Unfortunately, I haven't uploaded that yet so it'll have to wait.

For those of you who didn't know, we're packing up and heading to Labrador City for about a week. Marilu's brother is getting married, and we'll also make a mini-vacation out of it. The only negative part of the whole trip is the ridiculously long drive (approx 16 hours, so I'm told) each way. Suffice to say I'm making sure Lucas has PLENTY of toys and videos and games and whatever else in order to keep him entertained.

Since we'll be gone for so long, I'm going to post a lot of pictures over the next few days, before we leave on Sunday. Mostly to help me catch up since I'm falling pretty far behind. Expect the first batch within the hour.

Some older stuff

With all of Lucas's birthday pictures lately, everything I have posted has been timely. However, I still have plenty of stuff from May waiting to be seen. So without any further adieu, let's take a look at some of those older photos.

What better way to have a drink than to look down your nose snootily at the camera while naked from the waist down. Yeah, you can't really see it, but he took off his diaper and the onesie is unsnapped. Nothing but class in the Deal household.


Kind of a weird face.


Here, he's playing hockey behind the curtain in his very unconventional hockey uniform. They really need to add hats like that to the NHL.


Ok, so this next one is not nearly as bad as it looks...


...or maybe it is.


More please!

Still here!

Sorry about the delay in pictures. My mom's visit threw me off since I'm used to her letting me know from afar when I haven't posted recently. I'll have a lot of new pictures up by tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon.

Lucas's 2nd Birthday (the actual day)

Yesterday, Tuesday, June 16, was Lucas's 2nd birthday. At 10:33 AM, to be precise. He went to daycare since they had a party for him (our daycare provider ROCKS!), and then he came home to a couple new presents that we saved from his birthday party so he'd have something to open on the real day. Not that he knows one way or the other, but it made the adults happy.

In our first video (of two), Lucas discovers his first big present of the day, a new sand and water table. We all felt kind of bad since he only got to play with it for about 10 minutes before we dragged him off to dinner. His shrieking as we carried him off attested to his approval of this gift.



A photo of Lucas at the aforementioned sand and water table.


For his birthday, we brought him to Baton Rouge, a restaurant in Kanata that has some of the best BBQ ribs I've ever had. For his second birthday, we decided it was about time Lucas had his first taste of ribs and why not start with some of the best? This first photo is taken prior to getting the ribs. Lucas was eating anything we put in front of him, particularly chips and spinach dip. Heck, at one point, he dipped an orange slice into sour cream. Wacky child.


Years from now, when Lucas is a glutton like me, he can look back at this photo and see where his love affair with ribs began. Gotta love technology.


It probably shouldn't come as a surprise, given his love for fruit, but he enjoyed the cinnamon apples as well. Here, he tries to cram the entire bowl into his mouth at once.


I'm not sure why, but I also took this video of him eating said apples. Not the world's most thrilling video.



When we got home, we gave him the GeoTrax Grand Central Station that my mom had brought up from the States (so much cheaper down there). Apparently, he loved this thing at a friend's house, so we decided to get it for him. If last night's enthusiasm with the remote controlled train was any indication, this present was a major winner. On a sidenote, I'd just like to thank Fisher Price for making a product for kids that goes together easily. That thing you see in the picture? Took me about 10 minutes total to put together. On the opposite side of the spectrum is Little Tikes, who I would love to see go out of business (and quite possibly be cast into the bowels of hell). Putting together a Little Tikes product is a masochistic ordeal since they typically either leave out a piece or use the most insanely difficuly building processes they can think of. Unfortunately, they don't seem to have many competitors up here so I'm stuck buying their junk. Okay, rant over. Here's the train.


The neat thing about the GeoTrax set is that it expands so you can buy other sets or just more track pieces and make that thing as big as you want. I think Lucas is going to have a blast with that over the next few years.

Lastly, a picture of the birthday boy in his birthday shirt (enjoying his train, as you can tell). Happy 2nd birthday, Lucas!

2nd Birthday Videos

Here are a few videos from Lucas's 2nd birthday party on Saturday. Admittedly, none of them are earth-shaking or fall-down funny, but it helps complete the experience.

The first one was taken while Lucas blew out his birthday candles. We "practiced" with him a couple of times the last week or so, just so he wasn't one of those 2-year-olds who stares at their cake uncomprehendingly. He picked up on it pretty quick, and it would appear our "hard work" paid off.



The second one is Lucas and friends waiting for their pieces of cake. Lucas flirts with disaster toward the end of the video.



Finally, Lucas eats his cake. I get a kick out of the fact that he is responsible enough to ask for his hat while out under the sun.



Up next, pictures from Tuesday, his actual birthday.

Lucas is 2!

For those of you not in the loop, Lucas officially turned 2 at 10:33 AM this morning. It's unbelievable how much he has changed since he first appeared in this world, screaming and peeing all over the place. Well, the screaming and peeing haven't changed all that much, but you know what I mean.

We had a birthday party for him this past Saturday, and I've posted several pictures below. To see the rest of the pictures, you can see them in the photo album, which can be found here.

A view of the back deck, where some of the gang are chowing down on lunch.


The requisite "cheese" photo from Lucas.


Lucas got a hold of my beer bottle and went to town on it. Don't worry, there was nothing in it. What, you think I'm going to waste good beer on a 2 year old? :)


Here's a shot of the cake Marilu made. The theme of the party was dinosaurs so she made a stegosaurus cake. The plates on its back are strawberries and the tail spikes are candles. I think it came out pretty well.


Lucas gets ready to blow out the candles with Brandon waiting in the background to blow them out himself if Lucas has problems.


Despite Lucas's face to the contrary, the cake was actually quite good.


One of Lucas's presents was his first baseball mitt. We're still trying to teach him to put it on the correct hand...and not backwards, but those things will come in time, I'm sure.


"Ok, opened the truck, where's the next thing I can unwrap and destroy?"


I love his face here. Kind of a "thank you all for coming...now uh, you mind getting the heck out?"


Having fun with the dump truck.


This is one of those moments Lucas needed to be reminded to "be gentle!" while playing with Jayden. He was a bit excitable by this point of the party.


This was taken later on that night, just before bed. I think it's safe to say by the expression on his face that he had a good day, huh?


I plan to post a couple of videos from the party, but they take a while to upload so I'll include them in a follow-up post later in the day.

Last but not least, thanks to everyone who came to the party. We had a great time and really appreciated seeing you. Oh, and Lucas liked your presents. :)

Early birthday present

We've been planning to buy Lucas a tricycle for his 2nd birthday for a while now, especially after he expressed so much interest (scratch that, delight is a better word) in the one at daycare. Since his birthday party is this coming Saturday--with his actual birthday being June 16th, next Tuesday--we decided to buy the tricycle this past weekend. Being the pushover parents that we are, we couldn't help but give it to him early. My reasoning is that he doesn't understand the concept of birthdays anyway, so whether we give it to him this week or next month, it's all the same to him.

To say he was excited is an understatement. I put the thing together in the living room, and he sat next to me the whole time, either watching, holding the tools or bike parts, or trying to help out. As you can imagine, the latter was usually the exact opposite of helping out, but he meant well.






An hour or so later--hey, I'm no handyman AND I had distractions--the tricycle was complete and Lucas posed for pictures. This is one of those cases where we didn't have to prompt him to smile. At all.



Here he is on his first "ride." What you don't see in the video (or the previous pictures) is that there is an extra piece that attached behind the seat that allows me to push the trike just like a stroller and I can even turn it. Having pushed him around on the neighbor's tricycle without that handle a weekend before, my back thanks me profusely. It makes life a LOT easier, for any of you mulling over whether it's worth it.



One last thing. You can hear Marilu mention it briefly in the first video, but Lucas wore that helmet from the point we picked it up at Walmart until right before he went to bed. Yes, that includes dinner. We couldn't help but laugh and joke that he looked mentally challenged eating dinner wearing a bike helmet. Hey, whatever floats his boat, I guess.

Sprinkler

Over the past couple of weeks, one (or sometimes both) of Lucas's eyes has been getting a little pink. It comes and goes, and there is no discharge or anything so we'd pretty much ruled out pink eye, but Marilu brought him to the clinic this morning just to be safe. The doctor thinks it's probably just allergies. This isn't all that surprising, given his gene pool. Marilu has a few allergies herself, and I have some of the most sensitive eyes EVER. My mom used to torment me by saying "drip" or "wet," which would typically lead to my eyes watering. Heck, they are a little watery right now, just from typing that.

Enough of current events, on with the media.

In the past, Lucas liked to stick his head in the pots and pans cabinet, and once in a while, he would crawl in the bottom and play around. As you can see, things have progressed.


The weather in early May wasn't that great up here (or throughout the rest of the month, come to think of it). As such, we sometimes had to toss the raincoat on Lucas to let him play in the backyard. In this series, he was trying to get the sprinkler turned on, even though it was overcast and pretty cool out. Logic is not a word often used with toddlers.







This video, the last of the sprinkler series, makes me laugh out loud with Lucas and all his "daddies."

The Cheese Bear

Man, every time I think I'm catching up, I look at the date of the photos I'm about to post and realize, nope, still way behind. These are from April 30.

I introduced Lucas to Kool-Aid popsicles for the first time that night. As you can probably tell from the picture, the popsicle was a big hit with him.


Later, he not only let us put his bear head from last Halloween on, he actually liked it. A far cry from October when he was tearing it off as soon as we put it on him.


Still wearing the bear head (for a while, at least), Lucas says "cheese" a few times. I find this video really cute.

Imagination Movers

I've probably mentioned this before, but Lucas's favorite TV show is a Disney program called Imagination Movers. It's live-action, and it's about 4 guys who work in an "imagination warehouse" and help people solve problems. Very basic stuff, but the music is catchy, and it's not annoying like some kids TV shows (die, Dora, die painfully).

Imagination Movers is one of the few programs that Lucas typically will watch from start to finish, which makes it good for those times where we need to get something done without him interfering (such as cleaning up after dinner). Lucas has also gotten into the habit of dancing along with the various songs they play on the show. Below, I've included video clips of him dancing to three different parts: the theme song, the "brainstorming" song that is played before they start trying to solve the problem, and the song they play at the end after the problem has been solved.

These videos just show Lucas (and Marilu's legs), but nowadays, we usually dance with him. For anyone looking in our front window during such times, we must look like an odd family.

Videos on the way

I spent a good deal of tonight uploading videos so that they'll be ready for future posts. Videos are one of the things that really slow me down so that should quicken the process considerably for everything up until late May. I'll have at least one new post up tomorrow for your viewing pleasure. Hope everyone had a good weekend!