The highly anticipated camping trip at Portola Redwood State Park was this weekend.  The site was open at 2pm, so we decided to get there shortly after that. Due to the timing, we planned to have the boys nap in the car as the drive was close to an hour.  Both boys passed out as soon as we started driving, but Logan woke up in 30mins and Connor in 50mins.  The last six miles of the drive was very windy and narrow; Stuart had to drive slowly in order to avoid any motion sickness by Logan or myself.  Fortunately the drive was uneventful.  We stopped by the Visitor Center and ran into Theresa and Martin there, then we drove to our campsite together where the Tsai’s had arrived and had their tent already set up.  We started unloading the car, then Stuart went to set up the tent.  Connor has been addicted to eating lately and keeps asking to “eat”, so the boys enjoyed their snacks in their new camp chairs with Brandon and Peyton as company.  The Kaos arrived at the site soon after.  Mckayla wanted to play with Logan, so the two of them walked around exploring together and Mckayla even agreed to play guns with Logan.  Theresa and Martin decided to go for a short hike while Dave and Ted started the cooking process and the rest of us just continued to play at the campsite.  The kids had a chance to experience the nature as they found a tiny caterpillar and were intrigued watching it for a long time.  When Kathy and family arrived, Brandon was so happy to see his buddy Ian and the two big boys immediately started playing games together.  Slowly the girls, Kira, Peyton and Mckayla, seemed to hang together while Logan ran around and played with Ian and Brandon.  Connor was not as sharing today; he was having a good time hogging all the soldiers, it took a long time before he was willing to share one with Marcus and one with Peyton.

     The feast then began; there were tons of food, skewed chicken, steaks, sausages, veggies and fruits.  The adults tried to enjoy everything while feeding the little ones.  Connor had quite a bit of snacks that he became more picky eating his dinner and was giving me a hard time.  The nice wine I was having definitely helped calm me down.  The funny thing at dinner was that Logan wanted to sit next to Ian, but Ian was between Kira and Brandon.  Being the great boy that he is, Ian came over to Logan to say hi instead.  Later on, Logan decided to chant for “Ian” to get his attention again, and Connor followed him to say Ian too.  So the kids giggled and enjoyed calling for Ian, and Ian just kept going back and forth to entertain all the kids.  Everyone just loves Ian!  The feast went on for awhile as we just took turns having a couple of us watching the kids at a time.  As the daylight started to go down, the kids enjoyed playing with glow sticks and finger lasers.  We then all gathered around the bonfire and to have coffee while getting ready for S’mores.  Logan was impatient while watching the S’mores being made stating “it is taking a long time”.  He enjoyed his share while Connor preferred having some graham cookies only.  It was getting dark, and Connor, being his recent rebellious boy, wanted to walk around without holding hands.  So he tripped and fell on his face again.  He had fallen down a total of six times during this trip and twice on his face.  This one was a bad thump sound when he fell; fortunately, no broken skin or broken tooth and he calmed down after cleaning up.  We were so relieved especially as we recalled one of our friends’ kid had tripped at a camp and broke a tooth.  The rest of the night, Connor was sitting with me contently so we both could enjoy the bonfire.

      It was probably past 8pm, Logan said he wanted to go to bed, but since everyone was still up, Logan did not mind hanging out longer.  After Marcus officially said goodnight to everyone, we told Logan that he could go too and he took the offer right away.  The four of us returned to our tent to change and brush the boys’ teeth.  Logan was happy crawling inside his sleeping bag while Connor was so excited crawling everywhere inside the tent.  Stuart offered to put the boys down on his own so I could get back out there to join the friends at the bonfire.  According to Stuart, Logan fell asleep nicely in his sleeping bag but Connor was difficult.  It took a lot of talking to and some crying before he suddenly just calmed down and felt asleep in his sleeping bag.  I ended up staying at the bonfire for probably two hours with everyone, minus Stuart and Chris.  It was fun just sitting and chatting with good friends in such a relaxing environment.

   When I returned to the tent before 11pm, both Connor and Logan were sleeping nicely in the bags.  Probably with the worries if Connor would wake up overnight, I could not sleep well all night and easily woken up with any noise.  Logan was shifting around a lot that Stuart and I had to put him back inside his bag twice but he remained asleep the entire night without any complaints.  We had brought only one comfy thick mat, just enough for Connor; maybe as a result, Connor slept very comfortable on it the entire night without much movement.  However he did wake up early at 5:45 and he was whimpering a bit and requesting to leave the tent.  It was still dark out and so I ended up holding him and showing him videos on my phone to keep him quiet.  He later on let me laid back down to hold him, and before I knew it, Connor fell back to sleep.  By 7:15, Logan woke up.  Stuart and I were very happy that we made it through the night.

    After 7am, everyone slowly woken up and gathered at the food area again.  The chefs resumed their effort in making all of us yet another big breakfast meal, bacon, steaks and eggs.  We enjoyed the wonderful food, then we all separated to cleaning up, packing up or playing with the kids.  By then, everyone seemed to have warmed up with everyone.  Logan was even playing with Theresa, Martin and Chris, trying to scare them with a toy snake.  Peyton was so warm to everyone; she called out to Logan and Connor often, and Stuart also had a nice conversation with her.  Most things were packed and cleaned up by 11am, so it was time to end this great camping trip.  Stuart and I felt lucky to have all the experienced campers taking good care of us.  Thanks everyone for this wonderful weekend.  Here the pictures I took.

   Today was the first event day at Logan’s school, Western Day, and it was a celebration just for the children.  During the past few days, the children have been making some arts and crafts projects to prepare for today, ie. paper hat, vest and a boot.  Today the kids were welcomed to get dressed up to be cowboys or cowgirls.  We had gotten Logan a cowboy hat which he loves, and he wore that to school today.  According to the teacher, all the preschoolers from different classrooms gathered together after nap wearing their outfits and playing games.  They even had a campfire and grilled marshmallows afterward.

     The past two nights, Connor has gotten frustrated with potty.  He suddenly was interested in using the toilet like a big boy again.  I feel no rush in potty training him yet, but since he asked for it, I just let him try.  Both nights, he was able to pee on demand which was great.  Afterward, he continued to complain that he needed to go, so I sat him down last night on the toilet to attempt for a #2.  He really was trying to push initially, but nothing came out.  He then became quite comfortable sitting on the toilet hugging me that I finally had to call it a done after at least five minutes.  He was upset as he wanted to return to the toilet, and he ended up crying for awhile.  Tonight was worse.  After peeing on demand, he again asked to do more.  I knew that he had a bowel movement before leaving school, so I just kept telling him that he did a good job and that he was done.  But Connor just would not give up and could not be distracted by anything that we tried.  He continued to cry so much that I bathed him quickly and Stuart took him away to get changed.  After a long struggle putting PJ on, Connor finally calmed down to say good night to the rest of us; Stuart read to him quickly that he went down to sleep in no time.  Now Logan is calling Connor “the cry baby”.

     Logan is having so much imagination lately that he likes to pretend to be a different character.  He often calls himself a bad guy, and he names all of us to be either a good or bad guy too.  This morning when we were watching TV, Logan was constantly talking in a low voice “I want to be that guy, I want to be this guy.  No, I want to be this guy.  Connor is that guy, Mommy is this guy and Daddy is this guy”.  He was going on like that for several minutes.  Logan is doing the same thing during reading too.  He assigns himself and all of us as the characters in the books.  He is such a busy body these days!

    Last night when we were playing after dinner, Logan came and said hi to me wearing a fireman hat in the doorway, then he ran away and showed up at the other doorway in a cowboy hat.  He was giggling going back and forth changing his characters.

    Logan appears to be having some mild tummy issue.  Over the last couple of weeks, he had woken up overnight maybe 3-4 nights, including last night, to have a bowel movement, and the stool has been looser too.  Logan even complained of tummy ache occasionally for a couple of days last week which has resolved now.  There have not been any significant changes with Logan’s eating habit lately, except he is eating mostly cold lunches after he switched to new school.  Last night with the big dinner, Logan did eat quite a bit of diary food, pizza, creamy pasta and a big scoop of ice cream.  At 11:30pm last night, Logan woke up and needed to go to the bathroom, and there it was another looser stool.  Other than that, Logan returned to sleep fine and had a good day today.  I decided to write his doctor to report the situation.  I am still waiting for her response, but I wonder if we have to consider limiting his diary products.

    We got together for dinner to celebrate Robyn’s birthday tonight.  Our crowd is certainly growing; the reservation was made for 19 people.  We, the Tsaos, the Kaos, the Changs, and Theresa/Martin, all arrived at the restaurant in good timing.  We walked around in the front of the restaurant, sat around at the waiting room, then we were seated in a very long table.  During the whole time, Connor kept asking to “eat”, and this was after a snack at the house and an apple sauce in the waiting room. 

Once we were seated, all the kids were kept busy drawing with crayons, so we could mingle and order the food.  We had ordered a lot of food, and we were all busy eating while Logan and Connor were also occupied by watching shows on our phones.  Logan enjoyed some pizza, and ate the pasta and green beans that I gave him.  Connor ate some bread, few bites of pizza and pastas, and some green beans.  As soon as he was done, he started asking for “ice cream”.  After eating dinner, we ordered a huge chocolate cake and cream puffs for the adults, and some ice cream for the kids.  We sang happy birthday to Robyn, and the kids all dug in into the ice cream.  Connor was finished after having only a few bites of ice cream, then I let him out of his chair thinking that he would follow me as I walked to the other end of the table.  But it turned out that Connor walked over to see what Brandon, Mckayla and Peyton were doing instead; unfortunately he got shy when he realized I was trying to snap a picture of him and he walked away.  He ended up walking to Robyn and reading a book with her and Brandon, and later Peyton too.  Logan finished his entire bowl of ice cream.  He was quite content tonight at the table, drawing, eating, then back to drawing.  I think I did not say more than one sentence to him while we were sitting down.  After dinner, we tried to take a few pictures of the kids along with the twins in the stroller.  These pictures are often difficult to get as the kids don’t usually stay still, especially Logan.  We then said our goodnights and headed home to end the weekend.