Puzzled

Earlier tonight, I had every intention of posting a chronological look at Christmas Eve with Lucas and his friends Thierry and Logan. However, while preparing to do it, I realized I couldn't find any pictures from 2006, which was when the kids were still in the bellies (yes, we took a picture of the three moms), or from 2009 (I have no idea if I lost that year or if we just didn't take any, which doesn't sound like us). As a result, I've spent the last couple of hours scouring my computer, to no avail. Tomorrow, I'm going to check my online storage, and if that doesn't turn up anything, I may take a look at the desktop PCs downstairs. Maybe something disappeared when I transferred the photos. Who knows?

In the meantime, some Lucas news. His first ski lessons of the season were this afternoon. He and Marilu actually spent the majority of the day at Mt Pakenham, skiing their hearts away (and tiring themselves out). Tomorrow is back to school, and it probably couldn't come at a better time since he's been driving us crazy. It doesn't help that he was cooped up in the house for several days last week due to the insanely cold weather.

Here's a few random photos from July to tide you over until I resolve the Christmas Eve conundrum.

First Post of 2014!

Sorry about the post-Christmas disappearance. For the first few days after Christmas, my free time was spent with one of my gifts, Assassin's Creed III on the Playstation 3. However, this whole week has been devoted to preparing for my Corporate Finance final, which is on Saturday morning. I promise I'll have more photos up this weekend.

Quick hockey update: Lucas's first "tournament" was on Dec 28. I use the quotations since it was technically a Fun Day. They didn't keep score, and it's all for fun, but they did play three games so it was tournament-ish. We've been harping on Lucas to keep both hands on his stick and to be more aggressive in going to the puck, and I'm happy to say there was definite improvement. He even scored three goals in the first game (we only saw 2, but he swears on the 3rd), so that was a nice surprise. I think it's nothing but practices for the next couple of months, and then in March, he might have up to three separate tournaments (um, Fun Days). So that ought to be a busy month. Unfortunately, we didn't get much in the way of pictures. The arena was pretty busy, and our cameras aren't that great at getting long distance action shots so you'll likely have to be satisfied with news of the events for the time being.

So that's that for now. I'll do everything I can to get a new update up by Saturday night. In the meantime, Tracey just contacted me a little bit ago to let me know her pictures from Christmas Eve are up. If you want to see more of how all 3 of us spent that night, check it out here. You'll have to scroll down a little ways, but you'll know it when you see a dinner party. :)

And lest I forget, Happy New Years!

Christmas Day 2013 (and a little of the Eve)

Merry Christmas! It's now approaching mid-afternoon here in Ottawa. Marilu is in the kitchen, working on a beef tenderloin, Lucas is doing his best to open up every single toy or game he received, and I'm here to update you with the goings-on of the Family Deal.

Before we get to Christmas morning, let's take a look at a couple of scenes from last night. I should note that Tracey took WAY more pictures than I did so I'll just link to her Flickr page whenever she posts the rest of hers so you can get a better idea of the entire night.

Each Christmas Eve, there's a gift exchange for the kids. Here's Lucas getting one of his gifts. You can never go wrong with Lego or Star Wars. He also got some Rainbow Loom elastics. More on that later.

One of the coolest traditions that has sprung from the Christmas Eve visits is that we've been taking pictures of Lucas, Logan, and Thierry each year, starting when all 3 were still in their Mom's bellies. Below is this year's version. It occurs to me now that chronicling the pictures from each year would make for a good post. Look for that in the next week.

Now, on to the festivities. Lucas was nice enough to fall asleep almost immediately when we got home on Christmas Eve, and then he waited until almost 8 AM to wake me up. Before the paper carnage began, I got this picture of the present haul.

You can never go wrong with Lego. Marilu and I both really like building Lego sets so the hardest part is having the patience to wait for him to do it and not just grab it and do it on our own. :)

Mini sticks hockey set. One of three hockey-related items he received. You'll see the really big one toward the end of this post.

This is one of my personal favorites: a Hess truck from Dave and Judy. Each year, Hess has a different version of their truck carrying different vehicles. In past years, there have been race cars, jets, and helicopters. This year it was a tractor. The reason I really like these is that they are a throwback to the Tonka trucks I grew up with. We still have all the prior versions he's received and look forward to seeing new ones each year.

More Legos from his Godfather.

I was proud of just how happy he was with this microscope from Aunt Tanya (aka the Godmother). Here's hoping he keeps his interest in science.

Even more Legos! Let the building commence!

This was probably the present that got Lucas the most excited. Rainbow Loom is all the rage this year with kids his age. In a nutshell, you use the "loom," a plastic device, to create bracelets and necklaces out of colored elastics. The kids trade them at school or give them to their friends. I don't necessarily get it, but then again, I'm far removed from age 6. Along with the extra bags of colored elastics he received, Marilu estimated we now have 5400 elastics in our house. That's the potential for a mess on a nuclear level.

Although he's never played the videogame these figures are based on, Lucas really likes Halo.

Our future Hugh Hefner tries on his very first robe.

You can't get much more old school than Matchbox cars. Thanks go to Uncle Jared for these.

Here's the hockey net I mentioned earlier (sans net, which has since been installed). Santa may have misjudged the size of net required for Lucas's age since this is an NHL regulation size net at 4 feet high by 6 feet wide. Odds are, if Lucas stays interested in hockey, he'll still have this when he moves out. In the meantime, it'll double as a soccer net or baseball backstop (thanks to my dad for the ideas).

Finally, here's the aftermath of Christmas Morning 2013. Like I said on Facebook earlier, it pays to be an only child (and only grandchild on my side). Lucas got more stuff than some charities.

Hope the rest of your Christmas is very merry!

Scenes from Christmas Eve Day

I'm going to have to make this super quick since we are almost literally on our way out the door for our annual Christmas Eve visit to see our friends Tracey and Andre. I just wanted to post a few pictures from earlier today.

This morning, Lucas and Marilu made cookies together, and this was the uniform apparently.

Later on, they visited a community rink and played some pickup hockey with Lucas's friend Liam and his dad. Try to ignore my finger in the 3rd and 4th picture. It was -25 C, and I was probably too numb to notice where it was.

These aren't from Christmas Eve, but they were taken this week so they're close enough. In the first, you can get an idea of just how much snow we've had so far this year. The second was just Lucas being goofy.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Hockey at Canadian Tire Centre

Lucas's first hockey game was a success. All the kids seemed to have a good time, and his team won, with the winning goal being scored with less than a minute left in the game. The pictures we took pretty much sucked, but thankfully, our friend Tracey (whose boy Thierry is on the opposing team) took a bunch of great shots with her much more expensive camera. Check 'em out below.

Proud parents.

If there's one thing he really needs to work on, it's keeping both hands on the stick.

Victory for the Zombie Minions!

Cheering at the Sens Game

Thanks to our friend Tracey, we have plenty of good pictures of Lucas's hockey game yesterday afternoon. Before that though, I wanted to share something from the Senators game we went to last night. Some older boys in front of Lucas took off their shirts while cheering for the Sens, and it only took a few minutes before our little hockey fan followed suit.

First Hockey Game!

Lucas is playing his very first hockey game this afternoon! He'll be playing at the Canadian Tire Centre, home of the NHL's Ottawa Senators. Hopefully, we'll have some good pictures to share later.

Parc Omega

These pictures are from another excursion we made this summer. Marilu and Lucas were flying out of Montreal to go to Newfoundland back in August, and on the way, we decided to stop at Parc Omega, a drive-through animal park in Quebec. It's similar to Lion Country Safari (for those of you familiar with that), but for obvious reasons, the types of animals are more suited for the cold. Otherwise, all the lions and antelope would die during the first Canadian winter.

The pictures speak for themselves so I'll keep the commentary to a minimum.

It was a nice day so there were quite a few visitors. Fortunately, we didn't have too many traffic jams like the one below.

"Well, hello there!"

There was a parking area that had a few trails connected to it. Lucas made a friend during our walk.

At the end of the trail, there was a surprisingly large activity area, complete with petting zoo.

As you can see in this picture, not all animals were free to roam. A few of them had fences to keep them away from other animals and presumably Darwin award idiots who leave their cars.

See ya later, Bullwinkle!