Touch a Truck 2012

Another thing that happened back in June was Touch a Truck. It's an annual event that takes place not too far from us where they fill a mall parking lot with all kinds of different vehicles. From Army trucks to ambulances to double-decker buses to construction equipment, there's a little bit of everything. The best part is that the kids are encouraged to get in the vehicles and explore. They also had some reptiles there, which I think was the highlight for Lucas. There's not really much else to say so here's a look at our visit to Touch a Truck 2012.

New Haircut!

Lucas's hair was getting a little unwieldy so we scheduled a hair appointment for this morning. For the last couple of years, we've been bringing him to Goobers, which is a hair salon specifically for kids, but their results have been mixed. As such, we decided to bring him to the place I've been going for the last 4-5 years. It also happens to be the place Lucas got his very first haircut (see here for a trip down memory lane). For his first trip back, I had my guy, Arben, cut Lucas's hair. Next time, we'll probably go together and get our hair cut side by side.

Lucas behaved extremely well, and as you can tell by this picture, he had a pretty good time.

Here's the finished product. Good looking kid!

Montreal - Summer 2012

While looking through my photos that haven't been uploaded yet, I realized that almost none of our photos from June made it on to the blog. The reason for this is quite simple. That was in the aftermath of the Rory situation, and I didn't post anything for a month or two. Now that we're a little removed from the summer, it's time to take a look at some of the stuff we did and places we went.

After everything that did happen with Rory, Marilu and I decided the best thing for us was to get away as a family so we took Lucas to Montreal for a weekend. Considering the circumstances, we had a pretty good time. The highlights were the hotel pool and our trip to the science museum, which had a very cool Star Wars exhibit at the time. See below for plenty of pictures of each of those as well as a couple of other random things.

Stopping at McDonald's on the way to Montreal.

Playing in the pool at the Delta Hotel.

And finally, a ton of pictures of the Star Wars Identities exhibit. If this comes to a museum near you and you are even a remote Star Wars fan, I highly recommend it. I was extremely impressed.

There's an interactive component to the exhibit that lets you create a Star Wars character based on your personality choices. You then get to name your characters. Here's a shot of our three. One guess as to which one was Lucas's. :)

May 2012 Highlights

Apparently, I managed to skip from April to July while doing my highlights tour of 2012. So this post will see me jump back a couple of months and show you the rest of the best for May. Before I get to that, I wanted to mention that it's a boys' weekend for Lucas and me since Marilu headed off with her girlfriends for a scrapbooking weekend until Sunday afternoon. Unlike past weekends alone with the boy, we have plenty of stuff lined up. Tomorrow morning, he has his martial arts lessons, and then in the afternoon, we've been invited over to a friend's house for a LAN party, which is basically a fancy way of saying we'll be playing video games with a bunch of other people. What 5-year-old wouldn't love that? On Sunday, he has ski lessons and then a birthday party for one of his classmates. Marilu will be home by the end of that, and we'll finish off the weekend by hopefully watching the Falcons and Patriots winning their respective NFL conference championships.

So, back to May. Now that Lucas is a full-blown student, I expect we'll be seeing more pictures like this one as we help him with his homework. To be honest, I'm not sure if he's even doing anything school-related in this picture or just coloring, but I liked the idea.

 As you may recall, Lucas played in a T-ball league called Blast Ball last May and June. I even think I posted some pictures way back when. Well, here's some more plus video. It's too early to tell if we'll sign him up for this again, but I thought it was a positive experience so we'll see.

My mom came down to visit toward the end of the month, and she helped make our "garden" in the front yard look good. Lucas and I provided limited help.

One of the highlights in May, at least from a photo perspective, was a little carnival they had at the nearby Hazeldean Mall. We went the year before, but 2012 was the first year Lucas was brave enough to go on some rides by himself.

Not the most thrilling ride in the world. Luckily, we went to this carnival before Six Flags, otherwise he would have been REALLY bored.

Incidentally, the photo above of him with his finger in his mouth is the 666th one I've posted to this blog. Take that for you will.

It's possible I've posted this next picture before, or maybe I just uploaded one that looked like it. Either way, it's cute so here you go: Lucas and Marilu at Montana's restaurant.

 And finally, sometimes you just need to kick back and relax on your Tauntaun sleeping bag.

Highlights from July 2012

As I mentioned last time, I'm not going to forget about catching up. So without any further adieu, here are the best of the rest of July 2012.

I can't recall what the story was behind these first 3 pictures, but I have a bunch of photos of Lucas sitting at the table laughing. Most of the time nowadays, he fake smiles for the camera or makes some goofy face so it's refreshing to see a genuinely happy kid.

When his hair gets long, it gets crazy as evidenced by our in-bath sculpting.

During a visit to Carleton Place, Jay took Lucas for a ride on his ATV.

Finally, Lucas doing his best to goof up a photo of him and Grace. This is the face we expect more often than the first three photos.

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.