First Day of School!

I'm taking a quick detour from the Disney trip to highlight Lucas's first day of 5th grade. Last year, I linked to previous years so you could go back and see the differences from year to year. However, this year, I'm going to put all the photos in this post and then from here on out, I'll just add new photos to this one. Makes it easier for everyone! (particularly me)

So without any further adieu...

Junior Kindergarten

Senior Kindergarten

1st Grade

2nd Grade

3rd Grade

4th Grade

And now the new one! 5th Grade!

It took a little bit of work to get him to smile/laugh like that, but it was totally worth it.

Disney Day 1: Magic Kingdom

While Wednesday was technically our first day in Orlando, we didn't do anything Disney-related, other than go to our resort, Port Orleans Riverside. My dad arrived about an hour after we got there, and we all had a fine meal at Boatwright's Dining Hall, a Louisiana-themed restaurant at the resort. We went to bed early since we'd been up since 3-something AM and were just plain exhausted.

Our first "real" day of vacation was on Thursday. We decided to start off the trip with a bang by going to the main Disney park, the Magic Kingdom. Well, I say "we decided," but with the way Fast Passes and meal reservations work, the bulk of the trip had all been planned out by Marilu about 60 days prior to out arrival. Gone are the days when you just show up to the park with money and a thirst for adventure. Now you have to micromanage every aspect of the trip months in advance. Kind of overwhelming since I rarely know what I'll be eating at my next meal on any given day.

Before our day at the park, we headed over to Disney's Polynesian Resort since we had reservations for a character breakfast. In a nutshell, this just meant we ate breakfast while lots of Disney characters roamed the room, providing photo ops. It was quite a tasty breakfast too so no complaints here. Below you'll see several of the photos we took there.

Pluto is Marilu's favorite character so she had to get in on the fun too.

A view of the front of the restaurant after breakfast.

Lucas took time out of his busy eating schedule to join a (sort of) conga line with several of the characters.

With stomachs full, we jumped on the monorail for a couple of stops and entered the Magic Kingdom! My first photo left something to be desired...

We decided to go to the Haunted Mansion first since we didn't have a Fast Pass for it, and the lines were still manageable. Like many of the rides at Disney, the theme starts as soon as you get in line with lots of nifty things to look at while you wait. Marilu and Lucas made sure to pose with some of the ghoulish props.

Up next was pirate training with Jack Sparrow and his first mate, whose name I can't remember. Lucas was lucky enough to be one of the chosen volunteers so he got to practice his swordsmanship with the pirates.

Since I was taking photos (with my trusty Google Pixel), there aren't as many photos of me as the rest of the family, but here's one of them, just after we got off the Thunder Mountain roller coaster. The line for this one was a bit long, but my dad started talking to the British guy ahead of us in line and they talked about soccer for at least 20 minutes. I think that might have been one of the highlights of the day for him since he's a big Liverpool fan.

Lucas showing off his 3-D look while waiting for Mickey's PhilharMagic movie.

One of my favorite memories of visits to Disney Land as a kid in California (and later as a teen to Disney World) was Tom Sawyer's Island. I can't remember who I was with, probably my cousins and brother, but I can still vividly recall exploring the island, particularly the caves.

I was a little apprehensive visiting it this time, thinking the rose-colored glasses might be in full effect. However, after blowing a good hour running all over the island with Lucas, from the caves to the fort and the barrel bridge, I gotta say, the memories hold up. Tom Sawyer's Island was easily the highlight of the day for me. Pretty impressive considering it's not even a ride. Unfortunately, this photo of Lucas at the playground was the only one I remembered to take. I guess I was having too much fun!

We forgot to take photos with Cinderella's castle in the background when we first entered the park so we made up for that later in the day.

We were pretty worn out by that point since we'd been walking around for over 6 hours. As such, we headed back to the resort to rest up and have dinner. Our plans were to return afterwards, but Lucas and my Dad decided to stay at the resort and visit one of the pools so Marilu and I went on our own.

We decided to do the selfie on Main Street USA that every other tourist ever has taken as well. I really gotta figure out the front-facing camera on the Pixel since the castle looked huge when I turned around, but here, it looks like it's a mile away.

We went on a couple more rides, including the Jungle Cruise and the Buzz Lightyear one. Below, we pose with the ride's namesake in the background.

To close out the night, we watched Disney's big fireworks show. As you might imagine, pictures don't do it justice, but I gotta say, it was phenomenal. 4th of July or Canada Day fireworks will never be the same after watching it. My apologies for the somewhat obstructed view on the left side of the photos. We watched from the bridge leading into Tomorrowland so we didn't have a completely clean view.

Later in the trip, we brought Lucas and my dad back to see the show, and I got much better photos (and video) of the show so that'll be something to look forward to.

After the show, we joined the throng of visitors flowing out of the gates, and after a packed bus ride home, we relaxed in the hotel bar with a couple of cold beverages, pleased that we survived our first full day.

Up next, Animal Kingdom!

The Disney Journey Begins!

I suspect most people who read this blog will have seen our Disney vacation photos already via Facebook, but I'm going to go ahead and cover the trip here too since I can add more pictures as well as videos. I can also give more context for those photos that require it than I could with a simple caption.

Since I'm still organizing the photos (over 300 of them), today's upload will consist of a whopping one picture. It's the only one we took on our travel day from Ottawa to Orlando. While killing time at our layover stop in LaGuardia in NYC, Lucas decided to put on my glasses and hat. Spitting image.

Be on the lookout for the rest of the trip photos over the next couple of weeks.

October 2015 (and one from today)

I was just looking through some of my older photos tonight, and I noticed a couple of before and after haircut photos from October 2015. They really stood out since Lucas got a haircut tonight, and it's basically the same type of haircut he's been getting since early spring: a trendy cut that's really short on the sides and back but fairly long on the top, particularly in the front. In fact, I took a photo earlier so here's what it looked like about 4 hours ago.

Jump back almost 2 years, and it was a drastic change. Before...

And after. See what I mean?

Looking back at that fair month, here are some other highlights. First off, a couple of Lucas and Marilu at a rivalry football game between her alma mater, Carleton University, and the University of Ottawa.

Next up, Marilu's birthday. Here she models the Sens jersey we got her. I think the Falcons toque might also have been a present. I can't imagine why else she would be wearing it in this picture.

I can't recall where we went to eat for her birthday, but based on these photos, I think it might have been Baton Rogue. We haven't been there in quite some time due to a bad experience with a steak our last visit.

I wanted to point out that the other thing I did for her birthday was to make her favorite dessert, cheesecake, from scratch. I've never baked before, and I don't even care for cheesecake, but by all accounts, it turned out perfectly. One of these days I'll do it again.

And what October-themed post would be complete without Halloween? Two years later, I'm still pretty happy with the way these Minions pumpkins turned out.

Of course, you can't carve pumpkins without a bit of silliness.

You could probably take 1000 guesses and never figure out what Lucas's costume was that year:

That's because it was based on a supporting character on an obscure Casper cartoon he was obsessed with at the time. Nowadays, it's all about YouTube videos or tween/teen live-action shows.

And finally, this shot of him and Zach, post trick or treating. Got the iPads out and chowing down on chocolate!

Woohoo! I staved off being 2 years behind for at least another month or two. Seriously though, I'm going to keep weaving stuff like this in with the newer stuff until that mythical day that I actually catch up. Hope you enjoyed this partial trip down memory lane!

A's Baseball 2017 - End of the Season

Lucas's baseball season wrapped up at the end of June. Once again, he had a really good time even though the season was a bit of a mess for a couple of reasons. First, Ottawa's springtime weather was just awful. The season got pushed back a week or two in May due to wet fields from rain and late snowfalls. Then, during the season itself, it seemed like rain arrived every time Lucas's team had a game. If I recall correctly, in their first 10 games, 4 of them were cancelled. I think they all got rescheduled by cramming in a bunch of games at the end of the season, but it wasn't ideal.

The other problem was the organization versus last year's season. For instance, on top of the regular season last year, we had a Saturday tournament against a league from the east side of town, and then at the end of the season, we had a day-long tournament. You may remember that as a busy day for us as it was also the day of Lucas's 4-on-4 hockey tournament, and both of his teams made it to the finals. This year in baseball? Nothing, nada, zilch. They just had their regular season and then had a couple of exhibition games on the final Saturday (which I think were just makeups for the rainouts). No tournament, no league champions. Kind of disappointing.

All that said, Lucas had a great time since he had no less than 4 good friends on his team. I think that's the most kids he's ever known before the season even started. He also really likes baseball, moreso than even hockey, I think. It's a shame, though, that the baseball season is so short. The spring season is only half of May and the month of June. Hockey, while fun to watch, goes on for about 14 months every year so it would be nice to add some of that to the baseball season. Though I guess bad weather doesn't stop hockey so there's the rub.

Anyway, here are some pictures of Lucas and his teammates from the last day of baseball. Enjoy!

This one was taken immediately after the first of their two exhibition games. Lucas and 3 of the aforementioned friends--Zach, Magnus, and Kyle--pose for the camera.

After that, the team had a pizza party. Once the kids finished scarfing down the food, the coach gave them a pennant that had the team name and all their names on it. Lucas's is already on the wall in his room.

The whole team posed for pictures after that. There was a serious photo, but one fun is that? Here's one of the goofy ones. That's Lucas right in the middle, administering what looks like a chokehold.

The rest of the photos are from the second game, later that afternoon. Here, the patient outfielder waits.

Preparing to bat.

Not preparing to bat.

I believe this was Lucas's last at-bat of the season. I particularly like this shot since you can see he got a good hit. If you look closely, you can see the ball in the upper right part of the photo. I can't recall if this was a single or double. He'd probably know. :)

And one final shot for the road, with Lucas at shortstop and Zach in the foreground at second.

And that's that for baseball. I'm going to be heading down to Massachusetts tomorrow afternoon for the long weekend, but when I get back, I'll have plenty more pictures to post. Hell, I still have some from 2015 that need to be uploaded!

So have a good weekend, and I'll see you again soon!