Hockey Finally Starts and Pictures for Dad

I'm sure you're waiting with bated breath for this information, so here it is. Lucas ended up on the Novice B-3 team. Since that's a bit unwieldy, the kids re-named their team the Coyotes (after a brief flirtation with Coyote Lightning). The first weekend's practices were at the chipper time of 7 AM on both Saturday and Sunday so that was fun. This coming weekend, they are on Friday and Saturday at 5:30 PM. Now that's what I'm talking about! The Coyotes's first game will be on October 18 so that's something to look forward to. We haven't taken any pictures yet this season, but I'm sure we'll have some soon.

Actually, I do have one hockey-related picture ready for uploading. Last year, we dumped all of Lucas's hockey equipment over the floor in the basement after each practice to let it air out (if you don't, it can really stink). This year, Marilu bought this scarecrow looking thing, which has made organizing his gear much easier. It would also be useful if Kevin McAllister is ever home alone in our house and needs to ward off would-be burglars.

These next few pictures are from my dad's visit this past Spring. This is probably the easiest way to get pictures to him since email attachments may be troublesome. Hope you like em, Dad!

The Continuing Saga of Sort Outs (plus Marathon Photos)

With any luck, this will be the last post concerning hockey sort outs. For this year, anyway. Week 3 finished last night, and it looks like Lucas did end up back in the middle division, B. I guess his play last weekend helped offset his lackadaisical effort in Week 1.

Here's the kicker though. After running around and jumping through hoops these past 3 weeks, we got an email last night that the B division is short a coach, and they won't officially assign kids to teams until they get that last coach. It blows my mind that they can throw together this overly complex sort out system but they don't think of something as simple as thinking, "Hey, maybe we should make sure we have coaches before we start." Marilu had a good point when she said that they should figure out how many coaches they have first and then allow a set number of kids to sign up.

I'm sure someone will volunteer for that last position, but I'm guessing it's not going to be the most organized team, considering they are coming in at the last minute and probably took the job out of guilt. (Before anyone asks why I didn't volunteer, I can barely even stand on ice skates so I'm probably not the best candidate).

In other sporting news, Marilu ran her first 1/2 marathon yesterday morning. She's been training for it for months now, and it was great to see her achieve her goal.

Here's Marilu on our front lawn prior to the race.

The race was associated with the Army, and they had a bunch of military vehicles and weapons on display. Lucas was a little shy of getting in the vehicles at first, but then he saw this thing.

Oh, and did I mention the weapons?

To kill time after that, I took Lucas to Elgin Street Diner, a downtown restaurant known for its poutine. I told Lucas he could order whatever he wanted. So, he went with the four cheese poutine with extra cheese curds. I think it might have weighed more than him.

I helped him with it a little, but this is what he looked like when he was finished.

Afterwards, Lucas and I stood in a downpour under a tree near the finish line to cheer Marilu on. After 45 minutes of waiting, I turned to Lucas to ask him if he was dry. While I was talking to him, Marilu ran by and didn't see either of us. Lucas yelled, "There's mommy!" and by the time I turned around, she was already well past us. Not one of my happier moments.

For the record, she finished the race in 2 hours and 21 minutes. She was hoping to get in under 2 1/2 hours so goal achieved!

Week 2 Sortouts wrap-up

For those of you enthralled with the ongoing hockey sortouts for 7-year-old in Kanata, here's the latest. On Saturday afternoon, Lucas has his third session in the sortouts. Unlike last week, which was simply 4 drills, they scrimmaged this week so the evaluators could see how the kids played in an actual game scenario. It was pretty obvious from the start that his group was at or near the bottom in skill level. There were at least a couple of 8-year-olds (Novice level is 7-8) who were likely on skates for the first time, given their slow shuffling around the ice, concentrating less on the puck and more on staying upright. In addition, many of the other kids had limited skating and hockey skills. The plus side of all this is that Lucas looked great out there. Every shift he was on, he had at least one end-to-end skate with the puck while other kids tried to catch up to him.

Due to his play on Saturday, I expected him to bumped up a little for Sunday's session, but as far as I could tell, it was almost the exact same group of kids. This makes me wonder what the point is to the evaluations. But whatever, who am I to judge their pretentious, overly complicated system? Lucas hurt his knee during warmups and missed a couple of shifts, but once he got out there, it was pretty close to a copy of Saturday's session.

He'll have one more weekend of sortouts next weekend. According to the email, it's optional so once again, I'm not sure how accurate the evaluations are. As far as I can tell, kids get placed on how well they skated to a pylon and back last week. That said, considering how well Lucas did play this past weekend, it might not be a bad thing to be placed in the lower level. He's likely to be much more involved than he was last year, and it'll be pretty good for his self-esteem if he's one of the better kids on the ice.

Hockey news aside, here's a couple of pictures from earlier in the year.

This is from Lucas's first visit to Five Guys Burgers. The reason this is special is that he wasn't able to go there until his peanut allergy went away since they use peanut oil in their fries. I doubt we'll be back anytime soon though. The burgers ARE tasty, but I think they are ridiculously overpriced.

March Break 2014

No major news to speak of today. School is still going well for Lucas. Almost two weeks complete, and he hasn't gotten in trouble yet so that's a good thing. Based on the timing of his next hockey sortouts, we suspect he's in the bottom third. Oh well. Speaking of sports, we already had him signed up for a winter soccer session, and now we're thinking of adding a second one. Although Lucas likes hockey, it's obvious he has a lot more interest in soccer so we may as well feed that passion. Plus, unlike the insane hockey hours, all of the soccer will be in the late afternoon. Huzzah!

For March break earlier this year, we took a 3-day weekend trip down to Syracuse. A few years ago, the big mall down there, the Carousel Center, underwent a massive renovation and rebranded itself Destiny USA. In addition to the mall, there is now a wing that is geared toward entertainment and restaurants. It's actually quite impressive. So basically we spent our mini-vacation at a mall. :)

It should come as no surprise, if you know me and Marilu, that one of our first stops was at a bar/restaurant called World of Beer. They have a fantastic selection of beers available (especially compared to the woeful state of beer-serving establishments in Ontario), but rather than bore you with pictures of beers, we just have this goofy photo of Lucas drinking beer of the root variety.

Apparently, happiness is eating Cheesecake Factory cheesecake in a hotel bed.

On the second day, while Marilu shopped, I took Lucas to a place called Wonderworks. It was a really fun place, which might explain why I only have a single photo from it. I guess I was having too much fun with Lucas to remember to use the camera.

After Wonderworks (and lunch at Gordon Biersch), Marilu and Lucas tried their hand (or is it feet?) at the ropes course. I have an almost paralyzing fear of heights so I sat this one out. Lucas did okay though he did get pretty scared a few times. I think he may have inherited my genes in regards to acrophobia. First, some pictures...

...and then terror in video form!







I don't know if you can tell how high they are in the videos, but it's located on the third floor of the mall so it's quite a ways up there. According to the website, it's the world's largest indoor ropes course and is over 70 feet high. So even if he got scared, good for Lucas for trying it. On a related note, Marilu has no such fears and flew through the thing.

On the way back to Ottawa, we stopped at Target in Watertown to do some last minute shopping. Lucas decided to pick up this ensemble.

Sort outs

This past weekend's sort outs were so-so. Lucas really half-assed it on a couple of the drills. For instance, the first one involved skating as fast as you could to a cone, stopping quickly, and then skating backwards to the start point. When Lucas got to the cone, he elected to fall down to stop even though he is perfectly capable of stopping normally. On other drills, instead of skating with a purpose, he just glided along. As I've said before, I don't really care what level of team he ends up on. What I do care about is him trying his best, and he definitely didn't on Saturday.

By the way, I was corrected by Tracey (and later Marilu) regarding how long sort outs are. They go on for 3 weeks, not 2. So yeah, that's kind of insane, given that they are 7-year-olds. I'm not quite sure why hockey has to be so friggin' complicated, considering no other recreational sport I can think of even does sort outs, let alone 3 weeks of them, but I guess they have their reasons. At least this weekend's sort out involves a scrimmage. Plus, it's at 12:15, which is much better than this past Saturday, which required waking up at 5:50 AM.

And now for something completely different...

Back in June, we bought a new couch from IKEA for our basement. IKEA being IKEA, we obviously had to put it together ourselves so we brought it home in 4 large boxes. I'm sure you've all heard about how kids enjoy playing with boxes more than they like the stuff that comes in the boxes? Well, as you'll see in the next few pictures, Lucas proved that beyond any shadow of a doubt.

Yep, he's definitely half-American. :)

One week down...

Lucas's first week of school is almost in the books, and thus far, it's gone well. After his first day, we asked him how it went, and his one word reply was "awesome." He likes his new teacher, and he also has a different French teacher, which is good since he didn't have the greatest relationship with the one last year. Completely understandable since the French ARE pretty insufferable.

Also, he won the lottery when it came to his classmates. The night before school started, I asked him if he could have one kid in class with him, who would it be? His answer was Hayden, his best friend from first grade. Sure enough, Hayden's in his class this year along with Liam, a friend of his who lives just around the corner. Probably just as important is the fact that there are no kids in his class who he didn't get along with in past years. So on paper, it looks like it'll be a good year.

I'm going to try and keep the rest of this post short with just a couple of random pictures from earlier in the year. You can definitely tell this first one came from a while ago, given the length of Lucas's hair. It hasn't looked like that since January. This was taken at a 67s game, the minor league hockey team here in Ottawa. They were playing in the Senators' arena for the last year or two while their arena downtown was refurbished so we went to several games. However, now that their arena is finished, we probably won't see them much. It's a lot easier going to a game that is 10 minutes away versus a half hour drive followed by godawful parking.

For those of you that haven't been around kids lately, here are a couple of pictures to let you know what you aren't missing.

And a couple more pictures for good measure.

In case I don't post again before the weekend, Saturday morning are Lucas's sort-outs for Novice hockey. For those of you not familiar with the hockey system here (like me this time last year), it's a multi-day affair where they gauge the skill levels of all the kids and assign them to teams with kids that have similar skill levels.

I suppose it can be a stressful situation if you're the kind of parent who thinks your kid is going to be in the NHL (haha, he's not, you moron). However, we're just there to have fun so wherever he ends up, we're cool with it. Having said that, based on his past play last season and his recent hockey camp, I would expect him to end up somewhere in the middle. Whatever the case, we'll know after next weekend. Yes, it takes 2 weekends. Hockey is really quite full of itself up here in Canada. :)

First Day of School - Second Grade

In keeping with tradition, here's a photo of Lucas from his first day of second grade. I took this about 20 minutes ago so this is about as fresh as a photo gets (on this blog, anyway).

I should note he wasn't THAT happy about going back to school. He was giving me a half-assed smile so Marilu got behind me and made faces or something to give him a cheerier disposition. It seemed to work.

If you're interested in seeing the evolution of "first day of school," rather than make you search through the archives, I've included pictures from the past below.

1st grade

Senior Kindergarten

Junior Kindergarten

Nickname

Apparently, Lucas has his first nickname. While signing him out from his hockey camp yesterday, one of the instructors mentioned they were calling him "Vegas." Deal ---> Dealer --> Vegas. Get it?

It's not just the instructors either. On the way back to the car, he was saying bye to some of his fellow campers, and they were responding with "Bye, Vegas!" and "See you tomorrow, Vegas!" Suffice to say, he likes the new nickname. It'll be interesting to see if he tries to use it when he returns to school next week. As nicknames go, there are far worse ones.

Winter Sports

With Lucas due to start a week of hockey camp this Monday, followed by sort-outs in a couple of weeks for this year's hockey season (Novice!), I thought it might be a good idea to take a look at the last of the hockey photos from last season.

At the IP level, each kid gets a chance to be goalie at least once during the season. Lucas was really looking forward to it and had a great time playing goalie. That said, he wasn't very good at it. Most of the pucks he stopped were due to them hitting him as opposed to him actively stopping them. We're not too upset about that since based on everything we've heard, having a kid play goalie is a painful experience (particularly on the wallet).

Here's a video of our Brodeur wannabe in net.



A few more photos from the season that was.

If I'm not mistaken, this photo was taken at his very last practice. What a veteran!

I believe this next video is the biggest video I've ever uploaded to YouTube. It's 310 MB and over 2 minutes long. During one of the hockey tournaments at the Sensplex, I recorded Lucas for an entire shift. He doesn't do anything spectacular like score in this clip, but he does get involved a couple of times. He's #7 so keep an eye out for him. His good friend Zach is #16, and he scores a goal right off the opposing goalie's helmet at about the 1:23 mark.



That's all I have for hockey, but in keeping with the theme, I have a few other winter sports-related pictures for your enjoyment. It's much easier to appreciate them now, when it's still warm and sunny out.

As you may recall, we signed him up for skating lessons. His skating level was at the upper end of what they were teaching, but he still got a few things from it, most notably a lot of experience doing crossovers. Here he is doing some backwards skating (video of the same to follow).

While waiting for other kids in his group to finish, he had plenty of chances to be not so serious.

Here's the backwards skating video I spoke of.



One of the highlights of the skating class was a visit from Spartacat, the mascot for the Ottawa Senators. I think I may have posted a picture of Lucas getting a certificate from him in an earlier post, but here's a video of Sparty skating with the kids.



Finally, we go to the slopes. Well, "slopes" may be pushing it for a sled hill in the neighborhood, but technically, it's correct. Ever since Lucas started ski lessons, he's wanted to try snowboarding. We told him that if he learned to ski, he could start taking snowboard lessons when he turned 7. Since he's got skiing down, he'll be trying snowboards out this winter.

Why am I mentioning all this? Last winter, I bought Lucas a "kiddie" snowboard that could be used at the sled hill. As you'll see in the following video, he's already got some decent skills so I think he'll be set come January.



Hope that was worth the wait! I've got all the backlogged photos organized so I have no more excuses. Expect at least weekly updates of photos from here on out.

Update Coming!

I finally got around to downloading all the photos from our camera and both of our iPhones, and the grand total of pictures sitting in my To Do folder is just shy of 1000. That includes all the ones from our Newfoundland trip as well as our jaunt to Toronto a couple of weekends ago. I'm planning to organize them a bit and should have a new post (with pictures!) up within the next day or two.

Cousins

As you may know, Lucas and Marilu are in Newfoundland for the next couple of weeks. This morning, Barb (Marilu's mom) posted the following photo to Facebook. I liked it enough that I had to share it here.

For those of you not familiar with the family tree, that's Colby in black and Kyle in gray. They are both first cousins of Lucas. Too cute.

Rugby!

My mom's been asking for rugby photos so this post will include some pictures of Lucas playing rugby. Unfortunately, given the distance we are from the action and the limitation of our camera, these aren't the best pictures in the world. Still, something is better than nothing, I suppose.

As you may know, this is Lucas's first year playing rugby. He's definitely been leaning toward the more physical sports since starting hockey, and since he can't play football until next year, we decided to sign him up for rugby, and he seems to be enjoying it. There's a 60-90 minute practice each week (the time varies), and then there are 4 tournaments, which consist of 2-3 games on a Saturday or Sunday morning. We had one tournament just outside of Ottawa, and then the second one was in Kingston, which is about a 2 hour drive from here. His third one is this weekend, but unfortunately he will be missing that and the 4th one as he will be in Newfoundland for the next couple of weeks.

The first photo is from his first practice, before they received shirts. It was a rainy Thursday afternoon, which repeated itself for his next 2 practices. I guess the rugby gods enjoy mud. That's Lucas in the orange shorts.

Next we jump to his first tournament. His team had a really good turnout and were able to field 2 full teams. Or close to full. I have no idea what a full team in rugby is. Marilu and I thought we would learn the rules of rugby by watching him play, but if anything, we are now even more confused. Whatever the case, they played against themselves here (red vs black).

Relaxing between games with his teammates. As you can see in the background, it was quite the event. I think there were tournaments going on for 4 different age groups at the same time.

They don't get medals after every tournament (thank god), but they did this time. The U8 Indians show the medals off in a group photo.

You may notice he's one of the shorter kids on the team. I have the list of birthdays since I'm the team manager, and I believe he is the 5th or 6th youngest out of 20. It's actually good for him since he prefers playing with kids older than him.

We were lucky enough to get this video from the first tournament. I say lucky since Lucas is involved throughout almost the entire video.



We didn't do quite as good a job at photographing his second tournament, but here's the best of what we got. This tournament was notable since it was our first tournament that required a relatively long trip out of town. I know it will happen a lot more, especially if he sticks with hockey, but for our first time, it was kind of neat. Afterwards, we walked through downtown Kingston and had lunch at a local brewpub.

Finally, here's a couple of videos from the Kingston tournament. Lucas isn't quite as involved as in the previous video since his team is on defense, but he's easy to find, as he is the rightmost red player in both. Sorry for the non-zoom. I was using my iPhone, which can't zoom for videos.