July Trip to Massachusetts

Lucas's team had their last game of the regular season this morning. They lost 3-2, but man, if it wasn't for the other goalie! As a conservative estimate, we think the Zombies outshot the other team 3 or 4 to 1. It was that incredibly lopsided. The problem was that the other team's goalie was phenomenal. There's really not much else the Zombies could do. Oh well, they have a couple of practices next weekend and then the playoffs start in March. The latest standings aren't up yet, but since they won their previous two games (4-0 and 4-2), I expect the Zombies to finish the season in 2nd or 3rd place. I'll keep you updated once they playoffs begin.

I decided yesterday that it's about time I catch up on the summer photos so here's the start of the deluge. The following photos were taken during our first trip to Massachusetts in July. It's when Lucas and I went on our own, giving Marilu a weeklong break from our zaniness. I'll be posting videos from this trip as well as photos from the second Massachusetts trip (with Marilu) and their trip to Newfoundland and Labrador soon.

Much time was spent in the backyard by the fire pit. You really can't go wrong with fire and beer. Or maybe you can go really wrong with that combination. I can't remember.

I love the expression on Lucas's face as he stuffs toasted marshmallows in his mouth. That's his friend Kyle who lives next door to my mom. Talk about a contrast in size!

We were lucky enough to be down there for the 4th of July so after we watched the fireworks, we lit off some of our own.

My mom and Lucas with Quick Dick, another neighbor and probably the strongest 80-something you'll ever meet.

During that trip, Lucas also got a chance to ride one of Kevin's horses. He had a blast. One of the videos I'll post later has an extended look at his ride.

A random photo from the bubble bath. I may have put in a tad bit too many bubbles, especially since the tub has jacuzzi jets.

Fishing at the lake.

I think this might be Lucas's first game of Scrabble.

A couple of goofy ones.

Pictures from our visit with Jack and Dominic at the miniature golf course. It says something about me that the highlight of that trip was the patty melt I had at the diner immediately before golfing. Best sandwich ever.

Swimming at Nancy and Bobby's.

And potentially summoning dark spirits.

That's it for now. Like I said before, be on the lookout for LOTS of pictures soon.

CTC Hockey

As promised (to my dad, at least), I've linked a video from Lucas's hockey game at the Canadian Tire Centre last Thursday. It's part of the Future Sens program that gives youth hockey players a chance to play on the pro ice. This was the third year in a row that one of Lucas's teams got to play. They also got to see the Sens game that night. It was a pretty fun time since the kids got to fill up a whole row sitting next to one another.

As for the early game, they played against a team from Nepean and lost a really close game 3-2. It was a rare stress-free game though since it didn't count against the standings. They followed up on Friday night with a 4-0 victory against another Kanata team in league play. I believe there are 2 more games before the playoffs, and at this point, it looks like the Zombies will finish in either 2nd or 3rd place (out of 10).

So without any further adieu, here's the video. The Zombies are in white, and Lucas is #5, playing defense. This was one of the first times I've taken video of a game so it's a little fuzzy, but I think it came out okay.

Results

Well, the bad news is that the Zombies lost this morning, 3-1. Despite the score, it was a very close game. It was 0-0 until halfway through the second period, and the 3rd goal by the other team was very strange. I'm not sure if our goalie was distracted by the coaches or what, but he was standing on the completely opposite side of the goal, turned away, when they scored. So it was basically an empty net goal. The Zombies had several good chances, but as has been the norm this season, they almost always seem to be just inches away from the rebounds. Whatever the case, I definitely look forward to meeting up with this team in the playoffs since our boys can definitely hang with them.

The good news is that Lucas had a great game. The only goal that happened when he was on the ice was the aforementioned one so it doesn't really count since there is nothing the defense could have done about it. And as far as I can remember, the other team only had one shot (besides the goal) while he was playing.

On Thursday, Lucas will be playing at the Canadian Tire Centre in the annual game on "pro" ice. I'll definitely be taking pictures for that so more hockey photos are definitely coming. In the meantime, I need to attack my backlog of photos. I have a bunch from last year's vacations to Newfoundland and Massachusetts that need to be sorted and uploaded so watch for those soon.

Super Bowl? Pfft, this game is bigger!

Although the game will probably be over by the time most of you read this, tonight is the eve of what is probably Lucas's biggest game of the year so far. It's the Zombies' second game against the #1 team in his division, which currently has an 12-0 record and the most goals in the league with 50 (the next closest is the Zombies with 36). They also have the least goals allowed with 13 (once again, the Zombies are in second place at that stat with 18). They won the first meeting 2-1, which was the closest anyone has played them, and it quite honestly could have gone either way. On a more personal note, the coach of the other team is Lucas's coach from his first year in IP so a win over him would be twice as big.

One of the big differences in this game is that the Zombies finally have set lines with kids playing the positions they are best at whereas earlier in the season the coaches were still getting a feel for that. So hopefully that will help. I've given Lucas a little bit of monetary motivation. I told him if he can prevent any goals while on the ice (since he is defense), I'll bring him to get a toy/reward worth $30. If he can keep them shotless? $50. I don't really expect the latter, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll be out $30 of birthday money.

Anyway, I'll pop back on sometime before the Super Bowl tomorrow with an update to let you know how it went.

Oh, I didn't mention it anywhere, but the game's at 7 AM on Sunday morning.

More hockey news

I know, it seems like hockey news is all I ever talk about lately. What can I say? It's winter. We're in Canada. There's going to be hockey.

This past weekend, Lucas's team definitely fell back into their winning ways. As I mentioned before, they won their game on Saturday 3-1, avenging a loss to a team that beat them by the same score earlier in the year. Then, to top it off, they won their game on Sunday 9-0. Wow! Two kids had hat tricks and another one had two goals. On the defensive side of the game (which is what Lucas played), he only allowed one shot during his shifts. Pretty damn good!

Speaking of Lucas, we received an email from Lucas's coach (also named Lucas, amusingly enough) earlier in the week, providing us with some feedback about his play this season. I've included some of the highlights below:

"I wanted to let you both know what a great year Lucas has been having. First, and foremost, he is an excellent kid, teammate, extremely positive in the dressing room and on the bench. He has a great smile, and really loves his hockey!!

From a hockey perspective, he has been really developing into a great player on defence. He has been taking cues and positional guidance and applying them (and improving) every game. The coaches and his teammates have really been relying on him, and it's a big reason for a lot of our success lately."

He then went on to ask us if we wanted to play Lucas at forward anymore this season since he's been a defenseman since before Christmas. They would prefer him at defense since he is one of the best players back there. As it so happens, Lucas wants to play defense so it's not a problem. I've been telling him for a while now that scoring isn't all there is to hockey. If you're playing defense, it's just as important that you don't allow goals, and he's been pretty good at that this season, and he's learned to rate his performance on that rather than goals.

This weekend will be interesting since they are playing the top team in the league on Sunday. They are undefeated at 11-0, but last time they played, they just barely beat the Zombies 2-1 so we're hoping for another revenge win like this past weekend. Whatever happens, I'll be sure to let you know.

No pictures this time, but plenty in the next update!

Hockey News

This morning (Saturday), the Zombies had their first of two games this weekend, winning it 3-1. It was an especially satisfying win since they lost to this team in the third game of the season by the same score. That game was at 3:30 in the afternoon, and the team looked really flat. It was good to see what they could do when they were firing on all cylinders, which they definitely did today. Heck, it was almost a shutout since the other team got their only goal with less than a minute left in the game.

At this point, the Zombies are 5-4-1 and in 4th place with 11 points. If they win their game tomorrow morning, they could conceivably jump to 2nd or 3rd place since there are two teams tied for second with 12 points. First place is probably not possible since that team is 11-0 with 22 points. That said, Lucas's team played really well against them, losing 2-1, so if they meet in the playoffs, I like the Zombies' chances.

Lucas started out the year wanting to play on offense, but after a couple of strong defensive games, the coaches played him at defense. He didn't like it at first, but after playing it for a while, he's gotten much better and actually likes the position. He's been playing defense since before Christmas, and I suspect the coaches are going to keep him there for the rest of the year since he is fairly reliable. As a result, he's not likely to score any more goals this year, but that's because he'll be doing his job of keeping them out of the Zombies' net!

So that's where we are with his hockey. I know I uploaded a picture of Lucas and his best friend Zach in their hockey jerseys a few posts back, but here's one from their game (in mid-December) that I managed to get both of them in. Kind of a neat moment.

I have a bunch of other hockey photos that I need to sort through, including a hockey birthday party where Marilu played against Lucas. Once I pick out the highlights, I'll get them uploaded for your viewing pleasure.

In a last bit of hockey-related news, you may have heard that I've been taking skating lessons. Yep, finally taking the plunge and becoming a real Canadian, I guess. It's been going very well, and tonight, for the first time, I played a "game" for about an hour and a half at a community rink with Lucas's teammate Matthew, his brother Gavin, and his dad Mo. It was kids against the adults (most of the time), and to say I had a blast would be an understatement. I was already talking about it, but now definitely looking forward to playing in a league next year, albeit at a very low level. We will truly be a hockey family at that point. 

The Kid Awakens

Lucas's birthday present from his godfather Jason arrived today. It's a Kylo Ren voice modulator mask. To complete the effect, he put on a hood and added the lightsaber he received from his Uncle Steven a while back. See below for the final product.

Christmas Eve 2015

Here's the 2015 installment of "The Boys on Christmas Eve." I've combined the best of my photos and ones I stole took directly from Tracey's Flickr page. Next year, I may refrain from taking any since you can tell the kids aren't sure which way to look in most of the photos, with some of them looking at mine and some looking at Tracey's. That said, the photos still look good.

Might as well get the "serious" ones out of the way first since they didn't stay serious for long.

And then chaos ensued.

Since it was a green Christmas, Tracey was able to get an ultra-rare picture of the kids playing in the backyard. Don't expect to see too many repeats of this picture in the future. Unless we all win the lottery and move south.

For past installments of Christmas Eve, go here and here.

Brand New Year

One of Lucas's "presents" from Santa were 2 very good seats to the Senators-Panthers game tonight, including parking passes in one of the best lots. You can tell I'm getting older since that was one of the highlights for me. Marilu had a bunch of schoolwork to do (though I think she just ended up watching Homeland instead) so Lucas brought me. Here's a picture of him with the ice behind him so you can get an idea of how good our seats were. Also, if you look closely, you can see his Zombies shirt that he got at his hockey team's Christmas party. You can't see it in this picture, but it has their logo on the front as well as his last name and number on the back. Pretty nifty shirt.

In other news, Lucas had his first guitar lesson this afternoon. I wasn't there, but according to Marilu, it went well. I'm really interested in re-learning (I played a little bit in high school) so we'll probably practice together during the week.

That's all for now. I'll post something more comprehensive soon.

Happy New Year!

We're about to head out for a New Year's Eve party at our friends' place across town, but I wanted to get one last post in before we go. For the first time, we're spending it apart from Lucas as he is celebrating at his best friend Zach's and we're going to the aforementioned party. In "honor" of that, I decided to  post a couple of pictures of Lucas and Zach from their hockey game against each other a few weeks ago. (and yes, they were delighted when they found out they had the same number)

And with that, I bid 2015 goodbye. Have a very happy new year! See you in 2016!

Merry Christmas 2015

My apologies for the delay in Christmas pictures. We've had some sort of social gathering nearly every day since Christmas Eve, and since adult beverages tend to be involved, it's easy to forget about the computer in the late night hours when I tend to post.

So without any further adieu, here are the highlights from Christmas morning. Starting off with some gift openings. You'll notice Lucas's eyes are bug-eyed and psychotic in some of them. For whatever reason, he tends to partially close his eyes in a lot of pictures that use a flash so I told him to force his eyes open. The results were amusing, particularly in the 4th picture below.

Marilu shows off her main gift from Lucas and me, an Ottawa Redblacks jersey. That's our CFL team, for those of you from out of town.

After Lucas opened his presents, we sent him downstairs to get something, at which point he discovered this fine piece of equipment.

Lucas and I model our (almost) matching Kylo Ren t-shirts.

Every year, Lucas gets Lego sets, and I always want to do them myself. This year, he got me my own.

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten Christmas Eve or any other events surrounding Christmas. I'll have those posted soon!

Preparing for Christmas

As promised, I've got pre-Christmas stuff in this entry. Specifically, the visit to Santa at the mall as well as our trip to the tree farm.

First up, Santa. We went to the same Santa we've gone to for all but one mall Santa visits. Lucas realizes that it's not the "real" Santa (it's a helper), but he enjoys the visit all the same since the helped reports back to Santa. Here are my two favorite photos.

For the first time ever, we went to a tree farm to get our Christmas tree. Accompanying us were my mom and Kevin, who were visiting us that week. It was a fun time since they had other stuff to do besides cutting down the tree. Speaking of which, it took us what felt like forever to choose a tree. It's so much easier when they are all wrapped up and sitting in a parking lot since there's not much to see, and it's basically a crapshoot. I don't know if we'll do this every year, but I'm sure we'll do it again at some point.

Getting ready to head over to Tracey's for our annual Christmas Eve get-together. I'm sure I'll have pictures of the boys from that so keep an eye out for something tomorrow. And if I don't talk to you before then, have a Merry Christmas!

A Boy and His Elf

It's 1:30 in the morning, and I just wrapped up a Lego project involving Lucas's Elf on the Shelf, Awkward. Don't remember what an Elf on the Shelf is? Read this post from last year to get caught up.

Since Awkward "goes back" to the North Pole after Christmas Eve, tomorrow is the last day Lucas will see him until next year. Now as I said in last year's post, by the time Christmas rolls around, we're usually getting desperate for new ideas on where to put Awkward and aren't too sad to see him go. However, I find I'm a little anxious and/or depressed with his departure this year.

You see, Lucas is 8 years old and will be 9 next year. Based on various articles I've read online, a majority of kids stop believing in Santa by age 9 and by 10, it's only about 1 out of 5 kids who still believes. So clearly, the jig will be up soon, if not next year then likely the year after that, and the thought of that makes me sad.

I know there's been some debate in recent years as to whether parents should "lie" to their kids about Santa. I am firmly in the corner of YES, screaming it from the rooftops, in fact, for this particular argument. If I were to name the top 5 things that made childhood magical for me, Christmas and Santa Claus would definitely be at the top of that list. As far-fetched as a lot of it is as an adult, it was wonderful as a child, and if I could, I'd love to still be able to believe that a jolly fat guy in a red suit flies through the night once a year, delivering toys to all the good little boys and girls of the world. So why would I want to take that away from my son?

To an extent, I believe that once a child stops believing in Santa (and Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, etc), once they give up on that "magic," they have moved on from being children and have started that march toward teenager or tween or whatever comes next. And I'll be honest, I don't want Lucas to be there yet. I still love him as my little boy who looks up to us and thinks we can do no wrong. In my mind, once he moves past Santa, he'll be one step closer to moving away from us, emotionally and socially at first, and then further down the line, physically.

I know I'm probably overthinking the situation (I've been accused of that before), but that's why I sit here late at night, a little bit of a lump in my throat, typing at my laptop as Lucas sleeps and Awkward waits downstairs for what could be their final meeting.

For what it's worth, I fell asleep early so Marilu set up Awkward as you see in the picture below. As you'll recall from my post about Santa's video message a couple of days ago, Santa didn't render his naughty/nice verdict this year so we decided to have Santa send Lucas a direct message so he knows where he stands.

Since I'm typing this right now, I obviously didn't stay asleep, waking around 11:30, a common problem when I go to bed too early. The perils of being a night owl! Wanting to add a little more to Awkward's last night of 2015, I created the following message in front of the basement TV using Legos.

It may be a little hard to read, but it says, "Goodbye Lucas." I'll be honest, I thought it was going to be a simple task that I would wrap up in 10-15 minutes. However, Lucas has a LOT of Legos and trying to find the right pieces (mostly small ones) in that massive pile was an ordeal. It ended up taking me over an hour. I'll acknowledge that part of that is because I am just plain awful with Legos, but most of it was spent searching.

Anyway, I hope he appreciates this, and years from now, if he happens to read this as an older kid (or should the blog survive, as an adult), I'd just want him to know that doing stuff like this was some of the best times I've had as a parent: helping to create the magic that makes a child a child.

Back tomorrow (or later today, as the case may be) with Santa pictures.

Portable North Pole 2015

Click here to see Lucas's video from Santa this year (via Portable North Pole). Unfortunately, they switched it up so that it doesn't have as many features as previous years. Most importantly, there isn't a part that indicates whether the child is on the nice list, the naughty list, or somewhere in between. It's available with the premium video, but I didn't feel like buying it when I made the video. Lucas was disappointed, particularly since he's definitely on the nice list this year, so I may have Santa send a last minute video in the next day or two, letting him know he's good to go.

Football Videos

Whoops, it's been longer than I thought since my last post. What with my mom visiting for a week, studying for exams, and then all the hoopla to do with the holidays, I guess I lost track of time. I'll make up for it with daily (or near daily) updates between now and the end of the year.

Before I get to the good stuff, I wanted to mention that we saw the new Star Wars this morning. I won't spoil anything, but I will say it was fantastic and everything I was hoping for. Let the countdown begin on Episode 8!

Toward the end of the November, I posted the rest of the pictures from Lucas's football camp and mentioned I would upload videos. Well, better late than never I guess so here they are.

First off was a blocking/pushing drill. I think it's safe to say the other kid had the size advantage here.



The next two videos are plays where Lucas is either a running back or full back. He's probably supposed to be blocking in them, but oh well. He'll learn those moves next year. :)





Chatting up one of the coaches on the sideline.



And finally, even though he wasn't able to catch and/or tackle the opposing player with the ball, he hustled after him so that was good to see.



I'll be back tomorrow, probably with Christmas-related stuff.