Happy New Year!

I'm back! Sorry about the delay since Christmas. Between seeing friends or family nearly every day between Christmas and New Years and my mom being here for most of the last week, I lost track of my postings, but I'm back now and ready to get a strong start for 2013.

I still plan to catch up with all the older photos from 2012, but I'm going to try and post current photos as soon as possible so as not to get stuck in this hole once again. In that spirit, this first post of 2013 is going to highlight Lucas's first ski lesson of 2013, which we went to at Mt Pakenham this past Sunday.

We put Lucas in the same level of classes as last year since he hasn't been since then, and we figured it might be good to get a refresher. What's new this time around is that Marilu bought skis so she'll be skiing during his lessons and then taking him up some hills afterwards to get some extra practice.

That plan already paid off in this first week as he had a blast skiing with Marilu. During his lesson, they only got a chance to go up the little practice hill a couple of times during the hour due to all the other kids taking lessons. With Marilu, he went on a slightly bigger hill 4-5 times before we had lunch. After lunch, they went a couple of more times, and then much to our surprise, he asked to go up the chair lift to the top. He and Marilu made it all the way down the gentlest run, the Wizard, without too many issues so it looks like he's off to a great start. I think we can change the level of his lesson so that might be something to look into if he gets a lot more experience with Marilu over the next couple of weeks.

You can barely recognize him here as he is completely covered. Probably more than needed since it was a relatively mild day. He ended up taking the balaclava off after lunch. FYI, the color for his lesson group was "berry," and I guess they nicknamed themselves the Purple Ninjas.

On the slopes with Marilu. He fell his first few times going up the towbar, but by the 4th one he had it down pat. He also got much better on the hill, eventually skiing the whole way down without crashing.

Here they are, about to get ready for his first chairlift ride. If he ever becomes an Olympic skiier, I guess we can look back at this picture as where it all started.

Posing for the camera.

Finally, a couple of videos of the two of them on the towbar hill.

Christmas 2012

Merry Christmas, everyone! We're literally headed out the door as soon as I finish this update since we're driving across town for dinner at Marilu's cousin's so I'm going to post the pictures from this morning sans commentary. Have a great day!

Christmas Eve 2012

Every Christmas Eve since Lucas was in Marilu's belly, we've gone to the home of our friends Andre and Tracey. Since I'm updating this post via my iPhone, I'll keep it short and sweet. Here's a photo of the kids from this year's edition of our get-together.

Winter in Kanata

If you've been watching the weather channel, you've probably noticed that we've received a lot of snow this week. This morning, Lucas and I made the most of it, playing with some of the neighborhood kids for an hour or two. The cold weather also served to help out my slight Crown Royal-induced hangover from last night. :)

Before we came in, I had Marilu take a few pictures of the two of us hanging out in the snow. I hope you enjoy the pictures.

We're probably going sledding soon. I don't know if we'll bring the camera, but if we do, expect those pictures later today or tomorrow.

Portable North Pole 2012

As you may remember from last year, Portable North Pole is a website that allows you to create a personalized video message from Santa for your kid. We've done it for the past 2-3 years, and since Lucas has enjoyed it, I made him another one this year. Since he has been better overall this year, we let him be on the good list as opposed to having to work his way onto it. If you'd like to see the video, you can view it here.

April 2012

My plan to update every day until the end of the year hit a snag since I've been sick the last couple of days, thanks to a cold Lucas brought home last week. As much as being under the weather sucks, at least it has been infrequent this school year. In fact, I believe this is the first time I've been sick since he started back up in September. Contrast that with last year where I was sick almost once a month.

Today's blog post focuses on the five remaining photos from April 2012. Up first is a picture of Lucas and his Nanny from when she came to visit. I just noticed I am inadvertently photobombing in the background.

It used to be that when you asked Lucas to pose for the camera, you would get the cheese smile, where he grinned from ear to ear. Nowadays, you are more likely to get something like this.

As you may know, Lucas loves Legos. In fact, two of his biggest Christmas gifts this year are going to be Lego sets. He tends to be a lot more creative with them than I was at his age, as you can see below.

I'm not exactly sure what look he was going for here, but as with most 4-year-olds, he pulls it off.

Finally, a shot from the park. I call this one "Heavy Metal Cowboy."

March 2012

I already posted a lot of pictures from March earlier in the year. If you recall, that's when we went on our cruise. Of the remaining photos from that month, these 4 are the highlights.

This first photo is a bit fuzzy, but it's the first shot I ever took of Lucas with his cousin Colby so I wanted to include it for posterity.

This one of them was taken after the cruise, and I'm including it for the sheer cuteness. Plus, it will be fun to see their faces when we show it to them 10-15 years from now.

Lucas with a beef jerky cigar. I believe this is from the hotel room in Orlando the day before we left for the cruise.

And finally, a candidate for Picture of the Year 2012.

Funatorium Explorium 2012

We're not done with February just yet! A new event, the Funatorium Explorium, debuted last February, and Lucas and I spent the day at it, along with our friend Jay and his two sons. The idea behind FE (I'm not typing that out again) is for parents and kids to play together. To that end, they have scads of activities, ranging from the physical (such as wall climbing and martial arts) to the crafty (like Legos and art stations). For more info about FE, check out their website here. I just noticed the dates for their 2013 appearance, and you can bet that we'll be there.

I'm not sure why Lucas is hoarding Legos since right behind him are 122,200 more.

In addition to making their own Legos, the kids could view Legos made my "professionals." They had a lot of really cool displays, but I liked the Star Wars ones the best.

This was one of those things you find at carnivals where you have to climb across an unstable ladder to reach the other side. Unlike the carnival versions, which are nearly impossible, these were much more kid friendly.

The next "play structure" involved putting a vest on that was attached to a bungee cord. The kids would then try to run as far as they could before the cord snapped them back. It looked fun enough that I tried it once or twice myself.

I'm not sure if this next one had an official name, but I referred to it as the Spiderman wall. The wall is metal, and Lucas put on magnetized boots and gloves, which allowed him to stick to it.

Carter and Lucas battled it out with pugil/jousting sticks.

This last picture shows Lucas in a Bodyzorb. Basically, the kids (or adult) get strapped inside it and then run around hitting each other. This results in them rolling around, sometimes upside down, without too much chance of injury.

I'll wrap this up with videos of Lucas on the Spiderman wall, the pugil stick match, and the Bodyzorb pit. Sorry about the quality...all I had was my iPhone.

February 2012

In keeping with the theme of last post (i.e., ancient photos), we now head back to February. First off, the munchkin shows us some of his "cool" poses. I can't get over how crazy his hair was back then. He looks like one of the Beach Boys (back when they were young and not dead).

As I've said many a time, not every photo is a winner.

But ones like this are far in the majority, thankfully.

Clowning around with his friend Sam.

And another ski photo, from several weeks into his lessons. He was feeling a lot more comfortable on his skis by that point. Hopefully, we'll get plenty of good ones this season.

Before I go, I have to relate a story about Lucas from this morning which was embarrassing at the time but amusing later on. Last night, I was wrestling with Lucas on his bed, and at one point, when I wasn't paying attention, Lucas jumped up and landed on my crotch, causing a fair amount of pain, which caused me to exclaim something I probably shouldn't have in front of Lucas. Well, this morning, when I dropped him off at Andrea's for his daycare, the very first thing he said was "I crushed my daddy's balls last night!"

That's my son, everyone. Thank you and good night.

January 2012

After my last post, I decided to start organizing the photos I plan to upload over the next few weeks. In my Photos directory on my laptop, I have about a zillion different folders, but for the purposes of our discussion, they fall into one of two groups: Uploaded and To Do. While looking over the photos in the latter category, I realized I still have some photos from further back than I expected. If you guessed January 2012 (since that's the title of this post), you would be correct. The same goes for just about every other month from last winter and spring. Mind you, I've already uploaded the majority from that timeframe, but these are ones that I felt warranted the spotlight. So without any further adieu, here's the "best of the rest" from 11 months ago.

I can't recall where he got the pieces for his outfit below, but Lucas put together a ninja costume and then wielded the dreaded cardboard tube.

I think these next two pictures are from Lucas's first ski lesson. He had a pretty good time with that last year and is scheduled to start again in early January. This year, Marilu bought skis of her own so the two of them will do some skiing together after his lessons. That should help him learn a bit quicker.

I found this one amusing since its kind of like the portrait of the 21st century family.

Speaking of 21st century families, Lucas and I have a "swordfight" with a lightsaber app on the iPhones.

Newfoundland 2012 - Part 5 (St John's)

Finally, we reach the end of the Newfoundland vacation photos. There were 4 photos remaining that didn't fit in any of the other categories so they get dumped in this last post. Toward the end of the trip, Marilu, Lucas, and I took a trip into St John's to see George Street and the surrounding area.

This first photo was taken at the bar in the Yellowbelly Brewery, pretty much the only place to buy decent beer in Newfoundland. I use the term "decent beer" loosely since I don't know if I can properly describe just how atrocious the craft beer scene is in St John's. It makes Ontario look positively cutting-edge. Suffice to say if I lived there, I think I would become a liquor drinker.

Afterwards, we had lunch at Jungle Jim's. Lucas got a nifty mask that he was proud to show off.

We decided to walk off the beers and lunch by visiting nearby Bowring Park.

I know I said I only had 4 photos for this post, but it turns out I forgot to post a good shot of Marilu and Lucas from Signal Hill. So, bonus photo!

This may be a bit ambitious, especially considering my update speed as of late, but I have ambitious plans for the last 20 days of 2012. I'd like to try and catch up, something I haven't done since probably 2008. As such, I hope to post a new entry every day in December. I can't promise anything, but I will try my best. It would definitely be nice to stop groaning when I look and see that there are still pictures from before summer started.

One other thing, Marilu informed me that the whales in the last post are minke whales. The photos made them look a lot bigger than they actually are.