Lucas's 9th Birthday Party

This past Saturday, Lucas had his 9th birthday party at the recreation center located about 5 minutes from our house. There's something to be said for parties that are close and easy to get to. All but one of the invitees go to his school so it was convenient for them as well. We're just all-around great hosts!

Anyway, it was a sports party so the kids got to play for an hour in the gym, before retiring to a party room for snacks and cake. Lucas's first choice of activity was dodgeball.

This one is a little blurry, but I thought it was funny to see him bean his buddy Carson.

They followed that up with a rousing game of soccer.

Finally, they wrapped things up with floor hockey. The birthday boy pouted a bit at the team selection until the helpers relented and let him play on Carson's team. It should be noted that Carson played in a higher division of hockey than any of the other kids last season so Lucas wanted that advantage. And it definitely showed...until me and one of the helpers joined the opposing team to even things out.

I like how the Red team looks like they are marching in this one.

Reveling in a goal, apparently.

After that, the kids headed to the break room where they lined up for snacks.

The birthday boy approves.

Happy Birthday!



A picture of Marilu's cake. She could explain it better, but it was essentially ice cream sandwiches under a layer of chocolate pudding/frosting, covered in Oreo crumbs, Quite tasty, I can say from experience.

Let the feasting begin!

After the cake, we had the kids do a few challenges where they could win prizes. The first was a darts competition (won by Kyle), then a hockey shooting contest (not surprisingly won by Carson), and finally musical chairs (tie between Carson and Deavon). The kids REALLY enjoyed this part of the party, which made us think that next year's party will be nothing but challenges. Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos of this portion of the party since I had to help out with the various events.

Last but not least, I had the kids pose for a picture, which has become something of a tradition over the last 3 years. One normal photo followed by goofiness.

And that's all, folks! Hope you enjoyed.

Through the years

Although I've done a retrospective with the Christmas Eve photos, I was surprised to realize that I've never done one with pictures of Lucas on his birthday. So without any further adieu...

2007 (0 years old)

2008 (1)

2009 (2)

2010 (3)

2011 (4)

2012 (5)

2013 (6)

2014 (7)

2015 (8)

His 9th birthday party is tomorrow afternoon so I'll add a photo from that once it's over. Hope you enjoyed!

Incidentally, I ran across this one from Father's Day 2010 that I liked so much, I decided to repost it for the hell of it.

9 Years!

Lucas is 9 years old today. Unbelievable! It seems like he was just popping out of Marilu last week, and now he's only a year away from double digits. Here's a picture of him from this morning posing with his gift from us, a Sphero Ollie (think 21st century remote control car).

Changes are afoot

I just wanted to give you a heads up that major changes are coming to the blog soon. Due to some little shitheads at Lucas's school finding the blog and teasing him about pictures of him in the bathtub when he was only a year or two old, I decided I'm going to make the blog more private.

I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do yet since Blogger is an all-or-nothing blog, meaning it's all private or all public. I've read where people maintain two blogs, one public and one private, so I may do that since I'm comfortable with the Blogger format. There are also other blog sites such as Wordpress that allow you to make specific entries private. That's the more elegant solution, but I don't know that I feel like switching to a whole new site.

Either way, in order to access the private stuff, you'll need to login, and I'll need to give you access. I honestly don't know how many people read this blog past immediate family so if you want access to the next incarnation of the blog, email me or add a comment to this post, and I'll be sure you're on the guest list when Deal Blog 2.0 opens.

That is all.

4 on 4 Tournament

Yesterday, Lucas had a cross-town tournament with his 4-on-4 team. "Cross-town" refers to the fact that there is a 4-on-4 league on the west side of town (at the Bell Sensplex) and one on the east side (at the Richcraft Sensplex). I'm not sure if they alternate who hosts it, but this year, it was at Richcraft so we got to go for a 30 minute drive early in the morning.

Each division had 5 teams in it, which meant each team would play 4 other teams. Then the top 2 teams at the end of the day would play each other for the championship. In Lucas's division, there were 3 East teams and 2 West teams (including his team). They did remarkably well in the round robin, going 4-0. They didn't even get scored on until the 3rd game.

In the finals, the game was extremely close, and the game ended as a tie. Lucas's team scored with less than 2 seconds left to tie it up so it was about as exciting as a game can get. Unfortunately, they then went to a shootout, which in my opinion is the most anticlimactic way to finish a hockey game, According to the rules, the shootout order is done by player numbers, starting from the lowest to the highest. This put Teal at a distinct disadvantage as the other team's two best players wore their lowest numbers and Teal's best shooters both were high numbers. As a result, Teal lost their first game since Lucas joined the team a month ago.

As expected, the kids didn't let it affect them too much. It probably didn't hurt that the only reward for winning was taking a picture with a big trophy. They didn't actually receive trophies or medals for the win so it didn't feel like they were missing out on much.

For what it's worth, Lucas played pretty well. He had two very pretty one-timers, and I was lucky enough to get the second one on video, which you can see below. It's a little hard to see, but he's #55, and he is the kid planted just to the left of the goal. The video's a little slow since the play is mostly in the corner, but it pays off at the end.



Here's a goofy photo Lucas posed for prior to one of the games.

2016 Massachusetts Trip #2, Part 5

I've still got another couple of months until we hit the 1 year mark on our second Massachusetts trip from 2015, but I wanted to get the last post in now, lest I forget. In my defense, I have been updating on more recent things, but it's true I really need to clear out the backlog on the stuff from 2015 sooner rather than later.

There's not going to be much text in this post since I'm tired and ready for bed. So enjoy the pictures. The first batch is from our ride on the Indian Princess, an old-fashioned paddleboat on Webster Lake (or Lake Chargoggagoggmanchaugagoggchaubunagungamaug, if you're a native).

And the second is from our visit to Purgatory, a state park in Massachusetts that has a bunch of really cool chasms and caves. Lucas was nervous at first but was having a ball by the end of it (and making ME nervous).

And that's it for Massachusetts 2015!